Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> > 
> > Ah. I was wondering why everybody is so excited about the iPhone. (Is it 
> > because it has an "i" in the name? I'm still waiting for Apple's 
> > intelligent vacuum cleaner, the "iSuck". :-P )

> It's a incredible product from Apple - afaik it doesn't have even the 
> one button Apple is famous of! And still it's a telephone, beat that if 
> you can.

  Actually it does have one button. But that's about the only button it has.

  IMO the iPhone is rather innovative. Before the iPhone you had basically
just two options for smartphones: Either ones with the standard phone
12-key keyboard (plus a few), where writing anything was a big pain in the
ass, or ones with a lot of space wasted for a full-fledged qwerty keyboard
(although the Nokia E70 style of keyboarded phone does this a bit more
efficiently).

  So the people at Apple thought: Why waste valuable space for a full-fledged
physical qwerty keyboard when that space could be used for the actual
*display* of the phone, and a fully *customizable* qwerty keyboard could
be used on that display?

  There are obvious advantages: The keyboard layout and contents is not
fixed (as it inevitably is with a physical keyboard) but can be customized
on a per-application basis. And, most importantly, the keyboard doesn't
take any space *at all* when it's not needed. That space can be used for
whatever you want because it's just a display. A rather enormous one.

  IMO Apple has taken a significant step in phone innovation, which others
will certainly soon follow. (And, not surprisingly, Nokia and a bunch of
others have already announced their own versions of touchscreen-only
phones.)

  People often have prejudices against the touch screen in the iPhone,
but that's because they have never tried it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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