[geeks] iPhone interface

[Mark Benson]

On 15 May 2009, at 06:16, Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> On May 14, 2009, at 08:25 , Mark Benson wrote:
>
>> Yeh, you're absolutely right, hence my thinking it's unfair. It seems
>> any Apple product seems to cause huge polarisation issues with people
>> who swear blood and murder if you don't like it and an equal number  
>> of
>> people who hate it so much they want it wiped form the earth. Aren't
>> 'advocates' great :)
>
> If you could peel your thumbs off that ridiculous screen and  
> pathetic UI long enough to use them for honest learning, you'd  
> realize just how staggeringly incorrect you are.
>
> But then, since you use an iPhone, you obviously cannot be educated.
>
> (typed on a BlackBerry, a man's PDA)
>
> <pauses for effect>
>
> Hey, that was fun, and strangely addictive, you glass screened,  
> drooling mouth breather!

Oh, you cad :P

> Anyway, the funny thing is that even though I made the above up as a  
> joke, I've read far worse on nearly ever cell phone and PDA forum  
> I've visited, which is one reason I almost never go back a second  
> time.

Forums are either good or bad, I've found. I deliberately avoid ones  
for popular games and popular hardware because I was scarred for life  
by being part of the 'Apple Community' for 7 or so years. I guess  
zealots and idiots pop up everywhere but the ones Apple products breed  
just seem to be particularly fierce :S I've seen people on Apple  
mailing lists *litereally* explode into so much bad language even I  
had to avert my eyes and I'm not really bothered by that sorta stuff.  
Not only that but as a moderator when you try and calm them down or  
warn them to quit it they savage you as well, not pleasant. I guess  
that goes for a lot of 'communities' though, I know I've had that  
*sort* of agro in other places too but never as badly as with Apple  
zealots in bad moods.

> On a more serious note, I've found that all of the PDA input  
> keyboards suck initially because they are small, so it seems to me  
> that it is a matter of training no matter which one you get.

I use Touchpal on WinMo which took minimal learning and is pretty  
intuitive. I agree though, hence  my point about having to learn the  
keyboard on my MDA and hating that to start with too.

> The only ones I have serious problems with after some practice is  
> the Garmin GPS onscreen keyboard because it is just plain stupid  
> (square layout in alpha order), and I never have been able to get  
> real good with telephone layout text entry.

I'm dyslexic (specifically I struggle with co-ordination of my hands  
when typing and writing) so I really don't get on well typing on phone  
pads because I've just about managed to program my fingers to be used  
to one-tap entry. The amount of brain power I used to have to burn off  
eriting an SMS on a keypad phone was one of the major reasons I bought  
a PDA with QWERTY :)

> Also, some of the physical keyboards are pretty bad if they  
> compromised too much on quality and ergonomics, but most of the  
> mature units have that pretty well down.

That's also true. The iPhones autocomplete is... interesting for sure  
and I hope it's get better or less counter-intuitive in 3.0. Either  
way I gotta wait for WWDC to see if they are going to upgrade the  
units before I buy one. I'm probably gonna overlap

> I'm thinking really hard about the iPhone.
>
> If they were on T-Mobile, I would have already done it.

I know, that's a pain in the ass, I've gotta leave T-Mobile and go to  
O2 (admittedly not a major bind as O2 aren't that bad, I'm just glad  
the iPhone isn't on Vodafone - they suck big time in the UK). I really  
feel sorry for you US folks that have to tolerate AT&T to get an  
iPhone. I've heard so much bad karma about them since it launched :(

> Cell phone companies suck.  I don't think there is much debating that.

I've never had any beef with T-Mobile UK to be honest, I get excellent  
customer service from them and their staff are always very pleasant  
and get on the case with stuff when you ask them to.

My first HTC Touch died of touchscreen schizoid (it kept going way out  
of calibration) and they got me a new phone shipped out on exchange  
the next day once they'd determined it really wasn't dead and it  
wasn't me begin a divot, which is only fair. Even then though they  
were helpful and, critically, not patronising during the whole  
process. They pretty soon realised I was a geek and a long time WinMo  
user that knew his onions and let me get a new phone rather than doing  
the old 'we must make you do this even though it won't help' tech  
support BS.

I'm really very sad to have to let them go, so I'm going to keep my  
current phone with them on a PAYG SIM with them so I have an account I  
can go back to in 2 years time when I decide I don't like the  
iPhone :P I may even at some point buy a PAYG data USB stick for my  
laptop from them also. We get great deals on that over here now.

-- 
Mark Benson

My Blog:
<http://markbenson.org/blog>
Visit my Homepage: <http://homepage.mac.com/markbenson>

"Never send a human to do a machine's job..."