Back to the Future with iPhone Typing

Reading a review of Documents To Go, a Microsoft Office-compatible document creater/reader app for the iPhone (as well as many other PDAs/smartphones) made me think of the old “laptops” that first appeared in the early 80’s. When typing on the iPhone in landscape mode you only get a few lines of text remaining visible, and Documents To Go exacerbates this further with additional menu bars that take up more vertical real estate (though they can be invisible-ized when not needed).

Here’s a screenshot from the MacWorld review. As you can see, there are only 3 lines of text visible (perhaps 5 with the menu bar off):

Here’s what the old Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 looked like, perhaps the world’s first true laptop computer from 1983:

Two and a half decades later and we’re back where we started…

If you’re just typing a quick message then such a letterboxed view is perhaps acceptable, but for working properly on a multi-page Word doc it’s just horrible. I would sometimes use my old Palm Tungsten T3 (which had one of the larger Palm screens) along with a fold-up keyboard, and it actually wasn’t too bad. But that’s my minimum for a tolerable experience when writing anything even moderately lengthy.

I have to admit that I find myself less and less enamored of the forced compromise that the iPhone creates between keyboard and content by placing both on the same screen. I don’t find any of the permutations satisfactory for what I need. Obviously I’m in a minority however, as most people love their iPhones according to one recent very small-scale survey.

End of an Era: Apple Pulling out of Macworld

This will be Apple’s last showing at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, and Steve Jobs will not be delivering the keynote in January, Phil Shiller will.

The company says it has many more ways to reach its customers now rather than just trade shows, which is true. And they have done non-trade show announcements in large settings more frequently. Still, it is a shame to lose the example of great stagecraft that the Macworld Expo delivers every twelve months.

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