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Spook E · Jun 27, 2007, 09:26 AM

New video tour up at apple.com:

link

It really looks a lot better now than what i had envisaged and makes me believe that people will adjust to a lack of physical keys fairly quickly, the guy at the end going at it with two thumbs was very quick!

The algorithm they use to guess words and expand/shrink keys accordingly is very nifty, as is the little magnifying glass that comes up, which was something rumored, but unseen till now.

Anyone else think we are being buttered up for a dual screen mac laptop in the future? Apple filed those patents earlier in the year for a keyboard-less laptop IIRC, were now seeing a move in that direction with the iPhone's virtual keyboard and some of the interface elements in Leopard such as coverflow and resolution independence.

Here's a link to a macthemes article on it: link

kman42 · Jun 27, 2007, 10:16 AM

That guy at the end was flying. It almost makes me think they sped it up, but I doubt it given the amount of scrutiny the keyboard/typing is under. They must have held a competition to see who was the fastest at HQ and filmed him typing.

The magnifying glass is cool and I can easily see it expanding to give copy/past functionality. You could select text with it and have the keyboard layout change to then include a copy/paste button. Given Walt's dismay in his review about not being able to copy/paste, I'm sure the Apple engineers are already working on an update.

mdc · Jun 27, 2007, 10:45 AM

Yeah, the guy was flying at the end. He's probably been using the iPhone for a while, but it's nice to see that it's possible to type that fast. I watched the end part (his typing) again but watched the screen of the iPhone. He butchers the spelling of reservation (I think it was that word) and the iPhone corrected it for him.

I think the fact that it has spelling correction in it will cause a lot of people to type faster. I've used the automatic correction on my BlackBerry to change words I often misspell to the correct spelling. Predictive text on cellphones only works if you spell the word correctly.

analogika · Jun 27, 2007, 10:56 AM

Well, the primary reason he's flying at the end is because he's just typing away, messing up like hell along the way, but damn the torpedoes, and iPhone completely covers for his mistakes.

That's truly amazing.

JonoMarshall · Jun 27, 2007, 11:41 AM

Heh, I feel bad for the old-timers... all those years of touch type accuracy for nothing.

Long live the yoof of today and god bless the technophobes!

philm · Jun 27, 2007, 11:45 AM

Hey, I noticed he calls it a 'mobile phone'. I thought the US term was 'cell phone' and 'mobile' was used everywhere else.

GSixZero · Jun 27, 2007, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by philm

Hey, I noticed he calls it a 'mobile phone'. I thought the US term was 'cell phone' and 'mobile' was used everywhere else.

I think mobile phone is the most generic term... kind of like how we all call MacBooks 'laptops' but they're really 'portables' or 'notebooks'.

GSixZero · Jun 27, 2007, 01:27 PM

Originally Posted by kman42

That guy at the end was flying. It almost makes me think they sped it up, but I doubt it given the amount of scrutiny the keyboard/typing is under. They must have held a competition to see who was the fastest at HQ and filmed him typing.

I think the speed is helped by the fact that he isn't having to hold the iphone. It seems to be suspended and he just has his hands around it.

Secondly, I watched his fingers pretty closely and was pretty skeptical as he only made one or two minor typos... then he totally mangled the word 'reservation' (he typed 'reaeevadion') and iPhone seemed to know what he was meaning. Pretty impressive.

::maroma:: · Jun 27, 2007, 01:48 PM

Originally Posted by GSixZero

I think the speed is helped by the fact that he isn't having to hold the iphone. It seems to be suspended and he just has his hands around it.

Yeah, that's the iPhone's Gravitational Distortion Field in use there. It was developed from Steve's RDF, so it should be pretty solid. Steve's RDF has been refined to near perfection over the years, so I'm confident in the iPhone's GDF. I predict people walking around with their iPhones floating next to them, kinda like when Han Solo was frozen in carbonite and was being taken to Jabba's crib. Cool stuff!

(man, I think my brain is fried from all this iPhone info)