Apple's New Calling: The iPhone

John Navas wrote:
> In short, technology -- until recently, touch screens weren't stable and
> reliable enough to appeal to the masses.

I have always wondered about light pens for desktop displays.
They were invented ages ago, but never seemed to catch on.


--
Wes Groleau

Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which
the only specification is that it should run noiselessly.
-- unknown

---

› See More: Apple's New Calling: The iPhone

SMS wrote:
>
> Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:
> > EGV wrote:
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >> That was why, two and a half years ago, Jobs sicced his wrecking crew
> >> of designers and engineers on the cell phone as we know and hate it.
> >> They began by melting the face off a video iPod. No clickwheel, no
> >> keypad. They sheared off the entire front and replaced it with a huge,
> >> bright, vivid screen-that touchscreen Jobs got so excited about a few
> >> paragraphs ago. When you need to dial, it shows you a keypad; when you
> >> need other buttons, the screen serves them up. When you want to watch
> >> a video, the buttons disappear. Suddenly, the interface isn't fixed
> >> and rigid, it's fluid and molten. Software replaces hardware.
> >
> > I've wondered what drove the phone/PDA industry to stick with buttons
> > and keys for so many years.
>
> Look at the original Palm Pilot, or most of the PDAs, and they have very
> few buttons, just a few at the bottom.
>
> What happened is that users wanted to do more text and e-mail work, and
> a keyboard made more sense than filling the entire screen with a soft
> keyboard.

On the Palm, the soft keyboard takes up about half the screen. If you
want it. If you can handle the handwriting recognition, the screen real
estate isn't wasted. Once you decide your customer needs a keyboard and
implement it with mechanical keys, that space is taken up forever.

> Add on PDA keyboards were popular, but a pain. Since the
> attraction of the iPhone is the large screen for videos and web
> browsing, and its PDA functions are limited, the lack of a keyboard
> makes sense.
>
> On phones, it was much cheaper to use a keyboard and a small display for
> the number, than a large display.

This is true for displays that were designed to display simple
alphanumerics. But once a manufacturer decides to go with a multimedia
screen, the soft keys only cost a little more software.

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:[email protected]
------------------------------------------------------------------
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.

John Navas wrote:
>
> On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:54:04 -0800, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
> <[email protected]> wrote in <[email protected]>:
>
> >EGV wrote:
> >>
> >>[snip]
> >>
> >> That was why, two and a half years ago, Jobs sicced his wrecking crew
> >> of designers and engineers on the cell phone as we know and hate it.
> >> They began by melting the face off a video iPod. No clickwheel, no
> >> keypad. They sheared off the entire front and replaced it with a huge,
> >> bright, vivid screen-that touchscreen Jobs got so excited about a few
> >> paragraphs ago. When you need to dial, it shows you a keypad; when you
> >> need other buttons, the screen serves them up. When you want to watch
> >> a video, the buttons disappear. Suddenly, the interface isn't fixed
> >> and rigid, it's fluid and molten. Software replaces hardware.
> >
> >I've wondered what drove the phone/PDA industry to stick with buttons
> >and keys for so many years. I've worked with touch screens on factory
> >automation systems for a couple of decades and the logic of presenting
> >the user with the buttons they need and only the buttons that they need
> >at each step in a process is inescapable. Now, make the look and layout
> >of each button specific to the process step so the user can't screw up.
>
> In short, technology -- until recently, touch screens weren't stable and
> reliable enough to appeal to the masses.

'Recently' being almost 20 years ago? I've seen reliable touch screen
h/w from back then.

> --
> Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
> John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:[email protected]
------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Insert witty message here <<

Dave Balderstone wrote:
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I have always wondered about light pens for desktop displays.
>> They were invented ages ago, but never seemed to catch on.
>
> I had one for my C64, way back when. A solution in search of a problem.

When the software had no need for a mouse, it also had no need for
a light pen. But once you write software that depends on point-n-click,
it seems like a touch screen or light pen is a good solution to the
problem some people have of coordinating mouse movements with pointer
movements.


--
Wes Groleau

Don't get even -- get odd!

Thurman wrote:

> If failed because guys sitting at computer consoles didn't want to reach
> across the desktop to touch a screen every time they needed to do something.
> Instead of using your mouse each time, imagine literally touching your
> screen to move the mouse; it's tiring. What did catch on was trackballs.

Yes, that's the bottom line. Touch screens are annoying for many tasks.
There have been very reliable touch screens for decades. HP did one
using a linear photo-diode array that was very clever, and very
reliable, back in the 1980s.

The reason that many of the PDA phones use small keyboards is because
it's much faster to do text input on them than to use a stylus or a
finger on a virtual keyboard, or to write and do text recognition.

"Broher Zachary" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Feb 4, 8:08 pm, SMS <[email protected]> wrote:
>> The reason that many of the PDA phones use small keyboards is because
>> it's much faster to do text input on them than to use a stylus or a
>> finger on a virtual keyboard, or to write and do text recognition.
>
> I can use the stylus and virtual keyboard much faster and with less
> mistakes than my hard keyboard, especially for non-standard characters
> and symbols. If I had to do it again, I'd forego a phone with the
> keyboard, but that's just me.

Now that I have had my 8525 for 90 days, I've been using Transcriber
increasingly.

If entering URLs, I tend to use the keyboard for accuracy, but for short
additions to lists like groceries, hardware, etc., it's faster for me to
handwrite a line item.

But on WinXP, I'm using Dragon Speak even for emails.

> >> The reason that many of the PDA phones use small keyboards is because
> >> it's much faster to do text input on them than to use a stylus or a
> >> finger on a virtual keyboard, or to write and do text recognition.
> >
> > I can use the stylus and virtual keyboard much faster and with less
> > mistakes than my hard keyboard, especially for non-standard characters
> > and symbols. If I had to do it again, I'd forego a phone with the
> > keyboard, but that's just me.
>
> Now that I have had my 8525 for 90 days, I've been using Transcriber
> increasingly.
> If entering URLs, I tend to use the keyboard for accuracy, but for short
> additions to lists like groceries, hardware, etc., it's faster for me to
> handwrite a line item.
> But on WinXP, I'm using Dragon Speak even for emails.

Is Speech Recognition getting closer on cell phones? I mean for text
messaging? Can any phone remember a phrase? Like "I'm late, home
soon". Or "Call me at work". A couple of years ago (I think) several
phones had voice dialing but that was a single word only. Text
Messaging via speech would be cool. Even in its infancy.

"The New Guy" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>> Now that I have had my 8525 for 90 days, I've been using Transcriber
>> increasingly.
>> If entering URLs, I tend to use the keyboard for accuracy, but for short
>> additions to lists like groceries, hardware, etc., it's faster for me to
>> handwrite a line item.
>> But on WinXP, I'm using Dragon Speak even for emails.
>
> Is Speech Recognition getting closer on cell phones? I mean for text
> messaging? Can any phone remember a phrase? Like "I'm late, home
> soon". Or "Call me at work". A couple of years ago (I think) several
> phones had voice dialing but that was a single word only. Text
> Messaging via speech would be cool. Even in its infancy.

My Hitachi G1000 of June 2003 had speech recognition >without training<. It
was rather uncanny that I could speak "New Guy home" and it would find your
number for dialing with no training on my part or the phones. It then would
present a menu of "should I call?- answer yes or no". That's where a gremlin
would pop up. It could find names and numbers in a flash, but couldn't
recognize my Texas "yes, no, quit".

A year later Hitachi came out with a free patch. After installing it, the
G1000 recognized my Texas action commands; but nothing else. It would not
respond to spoken names any more.

My Razr and 8525 use 'sound pattern recognition' not speech recognition.
They don't understand 'new' nor 'guy'. They associate a sound of determined
time with the dialing database. I could assign the word 'brilliant' to your
phone number and it would work.

We use that trick in speech recognition. We assign a word processing address
to a sound. At the close of a letter where you type your name, address,
contact info, you just associate that info with some unused word like
'furball'. When you speak it, all gets typed.

There is another type of speech recognition that originally was offered by
Sprint. For a fee, you are seamlessly connected to a 'speech server'. The
words you speak are decoded on their server, not your device. I never used
it so I can't testify to accuracy. That same technology is the one used by
IVR (Interactive Voice Response) units now. The ones I use for finance
transactions and tech support are very accurate.

For your standard phrases listed above, I think the Razr has ten stored
responses for messaging. I don't use Cingular messaging on the 8525.