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The BIG Reason

Music, opinions, and portfolio of Mark Eagleton, musician and web developer in Northern CA.

Regarding Tactile Feedback and the iPhone Keyboard

With everyone and their mother chiming in about the iPhone, I figured I should probably say a thing or two about mine.

With everyone and their mother chiming in about the iPhone, I figured I should probably say a thing or two about mine.The first thing I'd like to say is, yes, it is the shit's meow. It has changed me. I came over from a Razr on T-Mobile. This is my first smart phone, but the fact that I already knew how to set ring-tones for my contacts, edit their information, check my voicemail, and sync my contacts the moment I first touched it, really does say something about the rampant incompetence of the mobile phone industry. I hope you guys hurt for a while, because you really deserve to.

The second thing I'd like to cover is the keyboard. There's lots of skepulation (or skeptical speculation) about the usability of the keyboard. Tactile feedback, or not being able to feel the keys as you type, seems to be a big concern for people who haven't spent much time with the phone. There are two parts to this, really, and neither one is even the smallest deal.

Tactile feedback comes in two forms—feeling where the keys are without looking at them, and then being able to feel that you have successfully pressed them. The former isn't possible on the iPhone, and the latter is only slightly possible in that you can feel when your thumbs have touched the screen. There is audible feedback with each key press if your sound is turned on. This does a pretty adequate job letting you know how many times you have touched a key, but it isn't tactile.

Needless to say, this freaks a lot of people out... at first.I assure you, being able to feel that you have touched something, without actually feeling where you are touching it with your fingers is an easy thing to learn. We string and trombone players call it intonation. On the double bass, I can tell when the fingers of my left hand have pressed down a string. I can tell where on the string they have pressed from a combination of their relation ship to each other, the relationship of my left arm to the neck of my instrument, and the relationship of my left hand and my right hand. Further correction is provided by my ears actually hearing the pitch of the note. With a little practice and repetition, you don't even need to think. You just kick ass.

The iPhone is really no different. I can tell that my thumbs have pressed the screen, and I can tell where they have pressed from their relationship to each other, and their relationship to the iPhone. Further correction is provided by the iPhone's word hinting system that automatically accepts suggestions by touching the space bar. The hinting system is super smart. It has a dirty mouth, and even learned how to spell my wife's name after one or two tries. After a couple of days of typing, I pretty much had it down.

Trust me, it's a non-issue for people with fingers.

As for the negatives, I wouldn't mind a few additional features, but it's already so far beyond anything else on the market, that you just sound like an ass whining about it. (You know, there are starving people in China who have to run Windows on their computers. I don't even have to do that on my phone.)

As for actually getting additional features, when Apple wants to add them to your phone, they can push them to you via iTunes. If I wanted more features on my old phone, I would have to buy a new phone.