That should say;
“Ounce I leaned to let autocorrect do its think, my typing speak probably tripped.”
I have an iPhone, I don’t use autocorrect, and I manage to type as fast as I need to.
There was a learning curve, I admit.
first time I played with an iPhone I couldn’t type a sentence for shit. I was always hitting the key to the side of the key I wanted. That was caused by me looking down the side of my index finger to sight where I was aiming. Once I realized that the actual was about 1/2" over from the edge of my finger, I got good quick. Took me about 2 days to get OK at it and about a week to get good. Playing Mahjong and solitaire helped a bunch in practicing my aim.
Steve Jobs hates buttons. Really.
You are not right about this, but your apparent outrage about phone brands is weirdly entertaining anyway. This post typed with an iPhone, for the record.
Autocorrect certainly has its moments where you just think “what the fuck?” (or rather “what the duck?”), but it’s not like spellcheck. It’s using the letters near the letter to you typed as input to guess what word you’re trying to type. It wouldn’t have made the “ounce”, “think”, or “speak” mistakes (because they either have a different number of letters, or the different letter isn’t anywhere near where you’d have made a keystroke), but it would have certainly let “leaned” and “tripped” go by.
I’ll lay in bed and read and post on my iPhone using its Wi-fi connection. Time is not really of the essence when posting to a message board, but I’ve gotten adjusted to the virtual keyboard and can type quite smoothly with my thumbs. One feature of the iPhone that I like is that when you come to the end of a sentence, if you double tap the spacebar, it will automatically put a period after it and capitalize the beginning letter of the next word.
I also have the Dragon Dictation app, which uses voice recognition to type as you speak, but I find it’s not always 100% accurate and you sometimes have to do some typing and correcting with it. For example, when I want to insert a comma, it misinterprets the word “comma” as “karma.” But all in all, I do find the iPhone’s keyboard to be fairly easy to use.
Maybe for your purposes. But could you really type 1000 lines of C++ code with a touchscreen keyboard?
That’s the sort of thing I need to do for work.
I don’t care for any of the physical keyboards I have used. This has included Blackberry and Android phones. The buttons are so small and so close together that it is hard to type anything longer than a text message.
The iPhone keyboard, on the other hand, is easy. The letter you are hitting pops up big when you hit it, and once you get the swing of things it is pretty easily to rapidly type things. Autocorrect is sometimes helpful, and pretty easy to click that x to ignore an unwanted word.
One thing I think wasn’t available originally that they added is the ability to type into the keyboard in portrait mode. I am really glad they added that. I have a much easier time typing that way.
I am surprised anyone would call it garbage. I can see not liking it because you are used to the physical keyboard. But, garbage? That’s ignoring how well it is designed, and how well it works in the real world.
suranyi:
How often are you using a phone’s physical keyboard to type 1000 lines of any type of code?
If you’re typing 1000 lines of c++ code on an iphone, you deserve the aggravation for using the wrong tool.
My Nexus 1 has no keyboard. I wish it did!
It is however a lot thinner than it would be with a keyboard, and since it fits iphone 4 holsters, I suspect Apple just wanted a thinner profile as well.
Although Apple and it’s users are the spawns of satan. They eat people’s cats, you know.
There are 5 basic smart phone form factors.
- big touch screen/virtual keyboard
- smaller touch screen with a physical keyboard
- Big touch screen with a keyboard that slide out vertically
- big touch screen with a keyboard that slides out horizontally
- not sure if these are made any more but a smart phone that looks like a a regular mobile phone with a mobile phones keyboard and a non touch screen
Apple, with its vertical integration, made the decision that it would sell one type (and arguably the most popular form factor) and one type only because Apple has made their business out of vertical integration with little or no choice.
Me, I personally like form factor 2 because I type much faster with a physical thumb keyboard and I hate the sliders. YMMV.
Yeah, you just have to learn to trust the autocorrect function and keep going. Go back for typos later - I basically touch type on the iphone now.
Always proofread, though.
I’m typing on my iPod Touch right now and it’s easy peasy. I think my friends’ Android phones have even bigger screens and keyboards.
I just had to give up my RAZR for an LG Cosmos Touch and it’s awful. Not only is the touchscreen vastly inferior to the iPod’s touchscreen, but the keyboard makes me type like I am pretty much illiterate. The keys are super awkward and small and hard to press, and so far I have not seen autocorrect work once.
On top of being heavy and thick, a keyboard is also another thing to break. Moving parts break. I had to return my first Cosmos Touch 24 hours after I bought it. Dropped it once on a carpeted floor and it ceased to be.
Oh, you’re just talking about a phone? Never mind.
I think the lack of keyboard is more a matter of design philosophy rather than a hard-headed marketing decision. There are a lot of people who prefer physical keyboards and I suspect Apple would increase its marketshare if it produced an iPhone with a slide-out qwerty like the Droid/Milestone. However Steve Jobs doesn’t like buttons so Apple probably won’t go there.
Personally I prefer physical keyboards too because they provide better feedback and are easier to use when you are moving. However I don’t really type that much on my phone so I will seriously consider a touchscreen only phone next time. It won’t be the iPhone though. I definitely prefer the larger size on the Android phones, typically 4 or 4.3 inches instead of the iPhone’s 3.5. When I use a touch keyboard I also like the haptic feedback that you get on Android phones. And I prefer the four-button UI on most Android phones compared to the single button on the iPhone.
Yes, but they don’t sell themselves on being the thinnest smartphone in the world.
A friend of mine said it a few years back, and I have been carrying the torch ever since:
“If you are unable to adapt to touchscreen, the future is going to be very grim for you.”
He said this about 10 years ago, and he was right faster than I would have believed.
I’m carrying a Torch too, but mine has buttons. 