All Articles Tagged keyboard

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?

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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.

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Apple has posted another video. Today, it’s an instructional video for the Apple iPhone keyboard. The magnifying glass is a nice effect for cursor placement. We also now have confirmation that contact names are added to the dictionary.

Engadget got one of the 200 iPhone testers to spill some beans about features of the iPhone, and the tester told Engadget what they thought of it. The important snippets are mostly about the keyboard and text input:

• overall: “disappointing.” The tester had troubles with two-thumb input after trying “a number of days;” the iPhone video up at Apple says “a week and you’ll be fine.” I have no idea who’s right here.
• “It won’t replace a BlackBerry. It’s not good for text input. It’s just not a business product.”
• text correction needs a bigger dictionary for proper names [they don't mention if it finds dictionary proper nouns from the address book, which is important]
• keypresses require strong force and “needs some getting used to”

It would seem that Engadget’s leaker works in the Obvious department, which should help Steve Jobs track him down:

• Apple Bluetooth Headset will be $100+
• page loads are slow on EDGE network
• the screen smudges when you put your fingers on it

The din about the keyboard is really starting to reach full force. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to lose points in reviews because of people not being able to master it out-of-the-box.

Speaking personally, I’m ridiculously excited and nervous about a software keyboard. Less for unused buttons and more for the display is a win in my book, but you still need to be able to use it. If it’s about as fast as T9, I’ll be fine. If I want to write a magnum opus, I’ll use a keyboard. That is to say, a hardware one, not a software one; I have a secret hope that Bluetooth keyboards will someday be available (or that they’ll work out of the box).