[derekw]

A friend in his late 60s is considering buying the iPhone 3G S, and I am not sure it's a good choice for his needs.

He has a Mac but until recently uses a paper day-planner. I showed him iCal and he likes using it now. (He still uses Excel as his address book!) Only problem, he can't access iCal on the move like he can with the paper day-planner.

All he needs is a little device that allows him to access his iCal on the move, schedule appointments on the move, and sync back to his Mac. Please focus on this usage only, as he doesn't care and doesn't have the tech-savy to use 99.9999% of other functions.

Major concern, he has BIG FAT fingers. He absolutely HATES little keyboards. He can't type anything on those keyboards. What devices would allow him to type in events and very short notes? If he can't type smoothly, he would be hating that device, I am sure. I wonder how well iPhone and iPod Touch take fat fingers. Would any stylus based device be better?

Thanks for helping!

[Spheric Harlot]

It doesn't sound like he has a decent alternative to the iPhone, actually.

[Laminar]

You'll have a hard time finding a physical keyboard the size of the iPod/Phone's on-screen keyboard. I have fairly big hands and I much prefer the iPod's keyboard to my BlackBerry Curve's.

[mdc]

Do you have an iPhone or iPod touch he can use to try the keyboard? If not do you have access to an Apple Store where he can try it?

The iPhone and Mobile Me would allow him to have constant Mail, iCal, and Address Book wireless synchronization.

I think the iPhone would be good for him as long as he is okay with the keyboard.
The other option would be to try an iPhone stylus. I found this one and this one on thinkgeek.com.

[derekw]

I am the original poster. Getting my friend to try out iPhone's keyboard at an Apple store may actually scare him away, as I think it takes a few days for an iPhone to bring up its keyboard accuracy?

Thanks for bringing up the iPhone stylus. This seems like a good contingency plan, if we choose to go with the iPhone (or Touch) and the iPhone keyboard doesn't work out well.

So iPhone's virtual keyboard works better for fat fingers than real hardware keyboards a la blackberry?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by derekw 

I am the original poster. Getting my friend to try out iPhone's keyboard at an Apple store may actually scare him away, as I think it takes a few days for an iPhone to bring up its keyboard accuracy?

It's possible that it improves the word prediction over time as you add your words to the dictionary, but the other snazzy things like increasing the receptive area around the expected letters when you start typing certain words, and the spelling correction, work extremely well out of the box (YMMV).

The trick is to just type away and trust that the iPhone's gonna do okay at figuring out what you meant to type; if need be, you can correct any mistakes later with the loupe.

The biggest problem is gonna be to get him to just do what he cares about and trust that Apple's autopilot will take care of the rest.

Actually, that's the biggest problem for any Windows switcher, as well.


Also, now, with 3.0, you get the landscape keyboard in any application, so it's as sausage-finger-friendly as you're ever likely to get.

[Eriamjh]

Tell him to lose 70 pounds and his fingers will shrink. (no offense meant, but nobody is "big-boned")

Or he can get one of these:

[mduell]

An older blackberry (like the 8700); the buttons aren't terribly large, but the depression pressure is high enough that you don't trigger the one you didn't intend to press. Syncs with iCal via any of several third party apps.

[derekw]

a question on iphone's typing correction: is the correction based on each word on its own, or does it correct based on each sentence? in other words, does iphone correct the words after considering how all the words fit into the context of the whole sentence, or does it look at each word in isolation? thanks.

[mdc]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh 

Or he can get one of these:

I heard that that doesn't sync all that well with iCal.