| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |
| A niche use case for on-screen keyboards |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-10-25 14:52:26 |
| When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, one of its most prominent and most controversial features was the on-screen keyboard. In as world dominated by devices with physical keyboards, it was seen as a joke, something that could never work. We know better by now, of course, but while I still prefer the physical feel and clicks of a real keyboard, a recent new endeavour of mine has made me appreciate the on-screen keyboard in a whole new way. |
|
| Too much credit to Apple |
| By Priest on 2012-10-25 17:17:39 |
|
Once you accept the idea of having a touch screen device moving the keyboard to the screen becomes obvious. My GPS for instance is a flat touch screen device with a keyboard that existed before the iPhone. Even other touch screen phones (with keyboards, like Prada) existed before the iPone. I don't think it is fair to say it was "seen as a joke" before the iPhone. This is an interesting read: http://arstechnica.com/tech-poli... Apple basically succeeded in picking a good time to enter the market but touch screen phones (even with keyboards) were happening with or without them. |
 - Score: 1 |
| Thom, I'm envious of you |
| By WorknMan on 2012-10-25 17:28:23 |
| I wish I knew German and Dutch, so then I could read all those hard-coded subs on movie downloads :) |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Are you really thanking Apple for this? |
| By tupp on 2012-10-25 17:29:28 |
|
> I don't understand why you are thanking Apple. Agreed 100%. However, to get the point through the reality distortion field, it is important to be very direct and thorough in one's assertion, so I will continue... From the article: > When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, one of its most prominent and most controversial features was the on-screen keyboard. Apple did not invent the touch-screen qwerty keyboard -- they were late by decades. Furthermore, Apple was not the first to put a qwerty touch-screen keyboard on a touch-screen phone. Likewise, Apple was not first to put a touch-screen keyboard on a tablet. > In as world dominated by devices with physical keyboards, it was seen as a joke, something that could never work. No. Touch-screen qwerty keyboards were not seen as a joke nor as something that could never work. Use of such keyboards was already well established on PDAs, tablets, slot machines, ATMs, etc. Touch-screen keyboards were merely considered inferior to tactile physical keyboards for serious/lengthy input, as they are considered to this day. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: I'll be damned |
| By Drumhellar on 2012-10-25 17:40:25 |
| That could very well be worth $1,200 that Amazon charges for it... |
| - Score: 2 |
| I very much enjoyed this article. |
| By Sabon on 2012-10-25 17:49:14 |
|
I very much enjoyed this article. Thanks Thom. I've often wanted to write a book where I started out in one language and slowly started changing to another language until, maybe 85% of the way through the book it was changed completely to the second language. There are only a few problems. 1) I don't have enough time because it isn't a high enough priority for me. 2) I don't know a second language (which is a reflection on the U.S. school system of the 60s and 70s and maybe till today. 3) I'm probably not a good enough writer to write a book that enough people would be interested in reading. |
| - Score: 0 |
| RE: Too much credit to Apple |
| By Alfman on 2012-10-25 18:04:39 |
|
Priest, "I don't think it is fair to say it was 'seen as a joke' before the iPhone." I agree with you, on-screen keyboards are obviously obvious :) . They were just never popular because 1) touchscreens were relatively expensive for consumers, and 2) they were very inefficient compared to real keyboards for entering data, which is how most personal computers were used a decade ago. Tablets today are less about data entry and more about entertainment, which is the dominant factor in why on-screen keyboards are good enough today when they were not back then. Typing on a virtual keyboard is still dreadfully inefficient. For my needs I'd still prefer a tablet where I can swivel around a real keyboard when I need to. Never the less, I agree with Thom in that supporting alternate languages & layouts is an advantage for virtual keyboards. Edit: I share tupp's opinion as well. Edited 2012-10-25 18:09 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[2]: I'll be damned |
| By Alfman on 2012-10-25 18:16:19 |
|
Drumhellar, "That could very well be worth $1,200 that Amazon charges for it..." Haha, I presume that was sarcasm. But hold on, did you notice the screenshot where it was programmed with a dedicated porn button? You'll be sold yet! :) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product... |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Thom, I'm envious of you |
| By MOS6510 on 2012-10-25 18:34:29 |
| Ik zou er niet aan beginnen, Engels klinkt veel stoerder. |
| - Score: 3 |
| What about Turkish? |
| By earksiinni on 2012-10-25 19:25:47 |
|
Since you expressed an interest in Japanese and are now learning Korean, why not take up a language in the same family (Altaic) that is much closer to your swamp* and easier to learn the orthography of: Turkish. Like Korean, political/rational reform has determined Turkish's system of writing. The Arabic script was replaced with Latin characters in the 1920's at the behest of Ataturk, first president of Turkey/father of the country/hero figure, who decided that the difficulties of the Arabic script were hindering literacy. I don't think that Arabic script is inherently more difficult to learn than any other, but it was part of his push to make Turkey a European and "modern" country. However, from an orthography nerd's perspective (who, me?), the switch to Latin script was legitimate because of how Ottoman Turkish in particular used the Arabic script. Unlike English, which is a hodgepodge in its vocabulary but fairly pure in its grammar, Ottoman Turkish is a combination of Turkish, Arabic, and Persian with Western influences in its vocabulary, grammar, and orthography. I should know, I've studied it, and it's a complete mess. Moreover, the orthography continues to get simpler as vestiges of Arabic script are continually purged away. The "a" with a circumflex over it has traditionally corresponded to the "thin alif" sound, roughly corresponding to the long vowel "a". They've gotten rid of that now, the "they" being the Turk Dil Kurumu, which is something like your Taalunie. Except now with the Islamists in power they are trying to bring back Arabic features into the language, like rearranging the order of the alphabet from "ABCDEF..." to "ABJDHW...", etc. Just my two cents ;-) *Just across the border in Deutschland, that is ;-) Edited 2012-10-25 19:31 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: Comment by nutt |
| By jebb on 2012-10-25 20:21:18 |
| Funny, having lived and worked for a number of years in France, the UK, and Germany, I have to switch layouts depending on the language I'm touch typing in... |
| - Score: 1 |
| News | Features | Interviews |
| Blog | Contact | Editorials |