Want a physical keyboard for your iPhone this badly?
[via Engadget Mobile. Thanks DazeEnd for the encouragement...!]
All Articles Tagged keyboard
Join Dieter, Chad, Chris, and Rene for iPhone 3.1, 3.0 bugs, keyboarding, laptop replacement, and the one year Appy Anniversary. Listen in!
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone back at Macworld 2007, he prefaced the introduction by saying what was wrong with current not-so-smartphones — the hardware keyboard. They don’t go away when you don’t need them. They don’t change if you switch from text entry to bitmap editing, for example, And if you come up with a great idea later, you can’t go back an add an extra button.
Now it’s 2009 and Apple has released the iPhone 3GS, yet many people, including notable technologists, have called the lack of a physical keyboard a deal-breaker.
Is it? Let’s take a look after the break.
Turns out all you need is an old PDA keyboard, the iPhone 2.0 SDK, and a dream. Okay, that, plus tons of smarts and hackery. Hey, at least this one isn’t as hard as the previous workaround we saw. Says Ars Technica:
The work is built on a 1200 baud modem that connects to the iPhone via the headphone port. This allows two-way transmission of data using frequency shift keying, the same method used in early modems. This modem was modified to accept input from infrared and USB connected devices, allowing the use of a keyboard. Further, a 2.0 SDK-compliant terminal app enables text input.
Will Apple ever open up the iPhone to real Bluetooth keyboard support? They did just announce A2DP Stereo, P2P, and SDK access for peripherals at the iPhone 3.0 Sneak Peek event, but not keyboards… Are we waiting on a special Apple designed iPhone keyboard to make an appearance at WWDC perhaps? Or will hacking continue to be the only game in town?
Not only has the iPhone 3G finally been unlocked, it’s now also been hacked to work with a Blue Tooth keyboard. Sure, it’s not the elegant, Apple, “it just works” solution the world at large has been waiting for, but a “it’s hard work” solution for those desperate and ingenious enough to tackle it. Ars Technica’s Erica Sadun breaks down the solution:
For the external approach, Ackermann modified a Robotech Bluetooth module, which he placed in an iPhone battery sleeve and connected to the iPhone (serial) connector port at the bottom of the unit. This allowed the the phone to communicate directly with the the module using the Bluetooth serial port profile.
And you can find out more at Ackermann’s blog, if you want to try it yourself. Do you? Or are you waiting (and waiting…) on Apple?
Could Steve Jobs be secretly developing and testing a slide-out keyboard version of the iPhone to make certain tic-tactile thumb typing enterprise customers happy? Sure. And he could be getting ready to license OS X to Dell and switch out the Mac casings to the little beige box company.
Of course, the same Jobs who said Apple wouldn’t make a slider also said Apple wouldn’t make a phone, and only a seasoned Kremlinologist can divine anything even remotely resembling Apple’s forward looking plans anyway, so here, to go along with iFlip and iPhone Nano, is the iSlider:
What he is apparently doing is canvassing the idea with operators. “If you had a keyboard version, how many would you take?” And he has taken this beyond just chatting: actual prototypes – not just mockups – have been sent to senior executives at some operators. I’m not allowed to even hint which operators… but I can report that the keyboard has “issues” which are not yet resolved.
What “issues” remain unresolved? The big, honking lack of keyboard? Only time and and a Macworld Jobsnote Boom! will tell.
Personally, I’ve never been great on hard keyboards (as my old Treo, still sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic, will tell you), so I’m not particularly interested in this. How about you? Any urge to get your QUERTY on?
The iPhone OS, like its big Mac brother, has a lot of little tools, preferences, and settings, some explicitly surfaced, others hidden away. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) brings us one of each this week!
First up, by way of RipDev’s molecular decomposition of the code (either that or a well-placed source…) is a way to enable screen capture on your jailbroken iPhone:
After setting the preference in /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/com.apple.springboard.plist, just restart Springboard and use the following super-secret key combination: Hold down the Home key and toggle the mute switch. Your screen flashes white, a screen shot appears on your camera roll. [...] If you’d rather not edit your property lists directly, add http://repository.ripdev.com as an Installer repository and install Apple Screenshot Enabler. Warning: trying to remove the mod via Installer.app caused my phone to reboot. It just would not uninstall properly.
Next, for our international readers who may want to use their own TLD (top level domain such as .ca, .uk, .de, etc.) rather than the standard .com, here’s a way to internationalize your Safari Touch keyboard:
In settings, choose General > Keyboards and enable some of those international keyboards. Next go to Safari and start to enter a new URL. Tap the globe to switch the active keyboard from US English to some other nationality. [...] Finally, tap and hold the .com button. After a second, a regionalized version of .com appears just to the left of the default.
Hit the links for more and If anyone gives them a try, let us know how they work (or don’t) for you!
Sramana Mitra has an interesting post up comparing Apple to Palm. Actually, she’s been on a tear lately when it comes to Palm and how they’ve dropped the corporate management ball. She scored a comprehensive interview with former Palm Executive Eric Benhamou, which reads very nicely but is also a clear example of how the problems Palm has now are the direct result of their earlier problems. Basically they followed the exact opposite trajectory that Apple did in nearly the same time period (basically).
Anyway, back to the intersection of the two companies. Mitra writes:
Rubinstein and Jobs could not agree on the iPhone’s strategy wrt the Keyboard. This tells me that Rubinstein has a separate but perhaps also compelling vision on how the keyboard needs to be incorporated into smartphones. I can’t wait to see what that vision entails!
John Rubinstein (Palm) vs. Steve Jobs (iPhone) – Sramana Mitra on Strategy
It’s surely not the case (one assumes) that Rubenstein left Apple over the keyboard issue (though that would be hilarious); but it is interesting that the guy who ran the iPod division, the podfather himself, was pro-physical-keyboard for the iPhone. Now, of course, he’s hard at work over at Palm, they who basically specialize in keyboard + touchscreen smartphones.
One wonders what other ideas Rubenstein had that didn’t make the cut on the iPhone. If “Podfather” Rubenstein’s input was 86′d on the iPhone, then one assumes that it was all Ive and Jobs, just like everybody’s always said.
There’s an insightful post over at 37signals that talks about the handoff of design cues that iterate from product to product from Apple. He adroitly notes the design similarities between the iPhone and the new iMac; he similarly notes the connections between the iPod and the old iMac. It goes without saying that a company that was in such a hurry to drop keyboards for their iPhones sure makes some nice keys for the computers that still need them. [Daring Fireball Filter]
So, after twelve hours of waiting in line, it didn’t take me long to take the iPhone out and start playing around with it. I didn’t get the zip and seal treatment that some folks got at AT&T stores, but then again, the MOA was trying to zip people through as efficiently as possible. Here are my impressions, there will be a full review later with video and pictures.
