If your employer wanted to give his workers that cutting edge buzz, he'd buy you all an Apple iPhone, right? Maybe so, but businesspeople are in for a steep learning curve learning to use the iPhone touchscreen for entering text. Consulting firm User Centric reports that people accustomed to the QWERTY keyboards on such business stalwarts as the Blackberry and the Treo take twice as long to type the same message on the iPhone.
"The device (iPhone) itself has innovative and interesting technology,
but that does not necessarily mean that the touchpad is innovative,"
Gavin Lew, general manager of User Centric told InformationWeek. "It's a feature for business users and those who send text messages frequently that at the end of the day is just a touchpad."
The touchpad has been around for a longtime in consumer electronics, so
the 20 participants in the study were familiar with the interface. The
frustration came over the sensitivity of the iPhone keypad, which
resulted in 11 errors per message versus 3 errors when the same message
was created on the participants' phones. Ten of the participants owned
phones with QWERTY keyboards, and 10 had phones with multi-tap systems.
None of the participants had ever used an iPhone.
"...and more than half preferred the feel of an actual key, which they claimed helped them type faster." This is mysterious only in a politically correct world. Anyone familiar with electronic hardware of any kind, even down to the lowly calculator, knows that the vast majority of men prefer buttons that click when depressed and the vast majority of women prefer those that do not. Hey Apple! Do you have a touchscreen that clicks when I mash my huge thumbs on it? Or does that mean it's broken?
