A niche use case for on-screen keyboards
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 25th Oct 2012 14:52 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless 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.
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leos
Member since:
2005-09-21

I don't remember a single Garmin GPS that used a physical keyboard. Most of the people I know who traveled at all owned a GPS with a touch screen keyboard.


Of course Apple didn't invent the on-screen keyboard. They just made it not suck. The on-screen keyboards on GPS units were horrible (and still are actually). Apple made it not suck by:
- using a capacitive screen. Touch screen keyboards on a resistive screen are completely unworkable because you need too much pressure to activate keys.
- Making it fast and responsive. You can't type quickly if the keyboard can't keep up (again a huge issue on GPS units).
- Making a powerful autocorrect system. This allowed people to type roughly and still get the correct output. I make mistakes on probably 20-40% of the words I type, but the autocorrect fixes the vast majority (some of course it screws up).

All you can say about phones is they improved on it but even then T-9 for instance existed since the 90's and now works with a soft keyboard is all.


Same as with any technology. There is not a technology on this planet that is not building on something previous.

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