From John Gruber’s recent iPhone post Taps:

Let’s just assume for the sake of argument here, though, that the iPhone on-screen keyboard works well, at least by handheld device standards.

To be honest, this aspect of the iPhone is the biggest question mark in my mind. We all know Apple makes cool interfaces and the iPhone looks to be yet another one in almost all ways, but the on-screen keyboard has some serious usability issues that I’m really skeptical that Apple addressed.

The biggest problem with on-screen keyboards (and I’ve used several in the past) is that they lack the tactile “I pushed this” feedback of their mechanical brethren. When you’re typing, this mechanical feedback is a MUCH bigger deal than when you’re just tapping “OK” or “Cancel”. The lack of tactile buttons was a major complaint on early Windows Mobile phones and is one of the reasons I ditched the Sprint PPC-6700 a while back for a Treo. While the PPC-6700 has a keyboard, you never open it to enter a phone number because it’s too awkward, so you end up using the on-screen keypad. That’s really hard to do one-handed.

If you think on-screen keyboards are just as effective as one that has real buttons, I really recommend you try out the wonderous Virtual Laser Keyboards. By wonderous, I mean they suck hard. Harder than a Dyson vacuum. It’s because it just isn’t comfortable or intuitive to type on something that doesn’t move.

That’s why I think the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard is going to suck. I’m cautiously optimistic that my heros in Cupertino will solve the problem, but from the video demo of the iPhone at it’s announcement and Steve Jobs’ obvious struggle to input text on that thing, I’m not really holding my breath for a miracle.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Tech, Mac Stuff, Cellular. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.