Apple considered physical keyboard for first iPhone - Page 2

 

 

In addition to your good post: The new movie, The Hobbit, is being shot at 48 frames per second. According to Peter Jackson the sharpness of each frame makes the overall viewing experience much better as each frame has less blur due to capturing less motion. The viewer is getting much more of the available sharpness of the lens and film with only a change in the frames per second.

Do you like virtual keyboards?

J.

 

GOSH DANG IT, JUST SHOOT SIXTY. Cameron is shooting in 60fps from now on; why won't everyone just do that?! Sixty is already established; why use 48?

Ok. Just checking.
I find Apples minimalistic keyboards (the real ones) excellentl to type on. This is because I can position my hands around the keyboard and rest them on the desktop. Very nice and and accurate typing and ergonomic too.

The auto correct option (it is an option, you can turn it of in settings) is not for everyone.
I know people that seriously dislike it, but have no complaints about virtual typing.
I use two main languages and it is annoying if the language button is hit by accident. Otherwise it's an execllent feature and works fine for me, you must however be willing to 'trust the system' and understand that the system learns from its autocorrect mistakes.

J.

Converting 60fps to 50fps isn't that nice. The world is a lot bigger than the US alone.

J.

I'm glad they went without the physical keyboard. In hindsight it is easy to see the beauty of such a disruption, like multiple keyboards available to a single device.  My favorite thing about the on-screen keyboard is that it is one less thing to break. It still sucks mightily when one key on the keyboard breaks (it's almost always the 'e' key too). Of course Apple has a history of being the first to ditch what some people believe to be an integral part of a system. We all remember the wails of despair when they dropped the 3.5" floppy from the iMac. And its still fun to watch the optical disc/drive in the throes of its death too. CD's, DVDs and blue ray discs are dying and I ca't wait to not see another one. 

You must see it like this: when the CD was introduced in 1984, the claim was that an excellent LP system (the ones with the very special needles and concrete wall anchors and very special suspension systems) was way better than the CD all the time (at least if the LP was new and only played once).
So it took them a wile to come to this point.

But I do know of very serious tests at the time that showed that people with absolute pitch could recognize a CD from master tape or LP. The complaint was that the CD sound was to 'sharp' and mechanical.
Of course Philips (the inventor of the CD (*)) denied this, but later research showed that the effect was measurable and real. The reason was that the DA converters at the time were not good enough and had to be improved to get rid of this 'sharp mechanical' effect.
After introducing 1 bit over sampling (a marketing term that stood for 256x over sampling, if I recall that correctly), all problems were solved and the CD was truly superior in evey aspect.

J.

(*) Sony was the official co inventor, but anyone with real knowledge of the situation (like me) knows that Sony was only co inventor in name; Philips had to have a strong partner to push the CD standard and this was the price to pay.

Yeah! You'd probably need to spend an additional six figures on storage devices and by the time you buy a camera to shoot video like that, another six figures.

 

 

1. Stop whining.

2. Buy 3rd party case with attached physical keyboard.

3. Whine about something else with obvious solution.

 

 

What does FPS have to do with how much motion is captured by a single frame? The sharpness of an individual frame is determined by shutter speed, not by frame rate.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_blur

 

I think that HVD using HEVC as the codec for the video could handle those movies quite easily.

 

But you're right; the cameras are impossibly expensive right now.

 

SHV is, however, the last meaningful resolution we'll ever have to see advertisers whining about. The eye can't parse greater detail than what it can provide.

Good to know. Thanks.

 

 

Yay, Wikipedia FTW!

 

This is correct. The BBC will be filming parts of the Olympics in Super Hi-Vision and showing the content in a few cinemas in the UK.

I far prefer the flexibility, and advanced technology of the iPhone, but..........I must admit, I miss my BB keyboard.

 

 

I miss not being able to pick up the receiver and asking an operator to connect me to 1016W, and then my grandma would answer. :-(

 

 

At some point, I have to wonder 'how much is enough'? For the first 50-60 years of TV, improvements were obvious. Color was obviously better than b/w. LCD TVs were a big improvement. HDTV was a big improvement. But the difference is becoming more subtle. Blu-Ray is just not that much different than DVD, for example. And as we step beyond Blu-Ray, I wonder if the difference will be visible at all.

 

It's much like the evolution of computers. For 40 years, newer computers were important because performance was never fast enough. But today, for most users, even a low end computer is more than sufficient and the driving force for new computers is much lower.

There is absolutely no way to say that Blu-ray is not much different than DVD.

99% of what is posted here isn't news. But it is hit fodder, which is the real goal

Touch screen interface on the iPhone was revolutionary but to me only so because it eventually enabled the real revolutionary device the iPad to become a valid product category. Ever since switching to a keyboard phone after three iPhone thefts I 've found that touch screen plus physical keyboard works the best for me. I cant even consider going back to a  touchscreen phone alone, not unless they go haptic. The ipad another story, ans now almost all my forum, quick mail and notes etc. etc. input is based on the onscreen keyboard, but I can't go all on screen keyboard  on the iPad either and dock it to get some major writing work done on a apple physical one. 

 

So buttons on a phone ftw for me at the moment...funny how things work. :)

 

 

DrDoppio's question was valid and that wiki doesn't really answer it.

There's an assumption that you're capturing video during the majority of the time that the camera is in operation. That is, if you're at 30 fps, most people assume that the shutter is open 1/30 of a second, so anything that moves faster than that is captured as a blur. If you capture 60 fps, the shutter is open 1/60 of a second, so there is less blurring.

However, the two do not HAVE to be linked. it is possible to have the shutter open 1/100 of a second, regardless of whether you're capturing video at 30 fps, 60 fps, or even 10 fps. If the shutter speed is 1/100 of a second, then the amount of blurring in each frame will be the same, regardless of how many frames you capture per second. You will, however, have a 'choppier' video at the slower fps numbers, even though the blurring in each frame will not be changed.

However, in practice, it's a moot distinction. The shutter speed is proportional to fps, so if you have more fps, the shutter speed will almost always be shorter and you will therefore have less blurring.

 

 

Way to ignore my question. 

No one is denying that there are more pixies in BRD and that there will be more pixels with UHD or whatever comes after that. My point was that the differences to the viewer become smaller with each increment. S-VHS was noticeably better than broadcast TV from the 60s and 70s. DVD was noticeably better than S-VHS, but the difference wasn't quite as obvious. BRD is better than DVD, but again, the difference becomes less obvious. At some point, the differences will be invisible to the viewer. Even before that, the differences will become insignificant to the viewer.

It appears to me that we're very close to that line, maybe even already past it. To me, with a 60" 1080p TV at about 10 feet, the differences between BRD and DVD are subtle and hardly noticeable if you're simply watching the movie rather than intentionally looking for differences. Given the progressions, it seems to me that increasing the resolution further wouldn't even be noticeable to most people (with a very tiny number who view a 120" display under ideal conditions being the exception).

 

This post deserved to be repeated.

 

 

 

 

Which phone do you have?

 

 

This is interesting and, unlike much of the drivel here, mostly well argued.  But I have trouble with words like "trending towards" and statements about whether smartphones would have "trended towards" multitouch.

 

Also, making the distinction between stylus and fingers muddles the issue - the real technology is multitouch, not finger-touch. That was in development for years before Apple heard of Fingerworks. Without the iPhone, multitouch smartphones would still have been deployed in the mass market.  That cannot be debated, no matter how passionate one is about Apple's inventiveness, because convergence of the two technologies was inevitable and already in development. There were a number of handheld devices in research labs with multitouch built in. I do not know if anyone of them were smartphones but that's not important. The fact that Apple cannot claim total and original ownership of multitouch on smartphones cannot be more evident than in how the company has gone after competitors for IP violation. Correct me if I am wrong, I do not believe a single case is simply about general multitouch on a smartphone. If they have, it would not be a clear cut case either. If Apple really invented smartphone multitouch, wouldn't the IP battle be so much simpler?

 

But would multitouch have been deployed on mass-marketed smartphones as soon as 2007 without Apple? No.  As elegantly? Not at first.

 

Make no mistake, just as QWERTY keyboards would have appeared on phones without RIM, multitouch would have appeared on smartphones without Apple.  But, pointing this out should not be seen as a slight on Apple innovation. Apple's record stands tall without the need for anyone here to defend it (in part because no one here is qualified, period).  Whatever is written here does not change the fact that the iPhone is a revolutionary device.

Edited by stelligent - 4/29/12 at 10:23am

Just curious, how do you know that 'no one here is qualified' ?
And what qualification is required?

J.

 

 

The commentary speaks for the speakers.

 

 

Exactly. look in the mirror.  There are some very qualified folks on this board, and there are a lot of just plain interested ones who nonetheless have very good intuitions.  Just because you don't agree with someone else's analysis of the past 10 year of tech development doesn't mean much.  

 

And yes I mean 10 years.  2007 wasn't just a pull-it-out-the-ass-sideways year, there was a lot of run-up across the entire industry that made a device like the iPhone possible. And most of that dev was evidenced in how others were using just parts of it at a time. The magic of the iPhone was that it put far more of the available tech into the phone form factor than anyone else either dreamed of or thought possible at that point.

 

 

In any categorization, there cannot be "a lot" of "very good" people. If they are all "very good", then they are effectively ordinary or worse, which makes you wrong in your assessment. Otherwise, your bar for "very good" is really low, which makes your opinion worthless. You decide which it is.

 

 

Effectively, this is what I said. But you summarized it better, I'd say, because it's not just about multitouch. There's perhaps hope for you, after all.

I know you want to behave as if you're smarter than other people. Unfortunately, that isn't the case, as your post assumes that the group of folks who frequent these forums are of comparable intelligence to the average person. If you actually weren't in that dreadful ordinary/worse category, you'd have been able to postulate that perhaps Hiro considers the average IQ of this forum's members to be higher than normal. If you weren't sure, you'd have appeared less foolish if you'd asked for clarification.

 

Glad I could explain the context of another user's post to you.

 

 

Nope. I did not and do not have to make such an assumption. The level of intelligence here (which BTW is likely lower than you suggest but I understand why you want to believe in that fantasy) is irrelevant to the validity of my post. See if you can figure it out on your own. The fact that you incorrectly believe you've scored a logical point is informative ... about you.  It affirms one of my previous posts - the commentary herein speaks for the speaker ;)

 

 

His consideration or assumption is not relevant in my context.

 

 

Thanks for trying to help but it was a fail :)  Keep trying. If you can't be terrific, you can at least be prolific.

Edited by stelligent - 4/29/12 at 1:45pm

Who cares if multi touch was being worked on in some lab somewhere (even before apple bought Fingerworks). Fact is no phone brought to market utilized multi touch before the iPhone. Now all smartphones do. Just like there were tablets before the iPad but how many of them were successful?

 

 

Chill your shorts. No one is shortchanging Apple (at least I am not). Market success is important but not the only thing worthwhile talking. If you're not interested in related discussions, can I respectfully suggest you shut up and let the adults talk?

Honestly, I really hope that we don't write off the physical keyboard from phones entirely. I have a Droid 4 (as well as many other phones...), and while the iPhone's soft keyboard is fantastic, for long text I find a good physical keyboard  preferable. Even with the slide-out, for short typing (entering URLs, text messages), I used the soft keyboard - which I might add is not even in the same league as Apple's - but I really do appreciate having the mix.

 

I am sure that Apple could pull off a fantastic physical keyboard phone. It would be a bit uncharacteristic of them to go in that direction, I think, but I would pick up an iPhone with a slide-out keyboard in a heartbeat.

 

 

Don't even try.  You aren't all that and a bag-o-chips  Your logic is pathetic, especially where you make baseless assumptions to try and shore up the wall of shiite you build.

 

I'll spell it out very slowly.  

 

1) YOU @stelligent, are the one who has displayed lack of experience and analytical ability. You use generalization and easy to adapt statements to claim you stated or agreed with whatever you want to later.  I didn't say or confirm what you have been writing from the first page of this thread, that's just your added personal assumption used to make you feel better at work.

 

2) I made no such statements about large averages,  and your understanding of the Law of Large Numbers as it juxtaposes against self selected populations is so missing that you have no clue that you just showed your intellectual bare ass trying to sound all hoighty-toighty about average people.

 

3) I can think of a few dozen folks I have interacted with on these boards over the past 12 years, about a half dozen are in this thread, that are FAR and away superior to the average Joe on the street with respect to tech issues.  There's self-selection at work, thoroughly contradicting your low bar can't be good people posting here position.  I don't expect you to agree with that given your heightened sense of self-worth and I don't give a rat's ass whether you do or don't.  But damned if I'll let such arrogant drivel pass without comment to inoculate innocent eyes from thinking you might be right.

 

 

As for "heightened sense of self-worth", that's a good thing for all of us to have, isn't it? And I'd argue you have a pretty healthy dose of it, given that you feel you are speaking up for the rabble here.

But, notwithstanding your heightened sense of self-worth, I have to be honest with you - I no longer see any logic in what you are saying. Law of large numbers does not apply here; nor did I mention it. The phrase "the Law of Large Numbers as it juxtaposes against self selected populations" does not make sense. Oh boy, your whole post is a mess ...

 

Sorry I rattled you so. It wasn't intentional. Calm down and read everything carefully again. I was right that you were wrong. Honestly.

Edited by stelligent - 4/30/12 at 5:25am

 

 

QFT. That says it all.

 

I'll just let everyone gander up at the lack of response and self immolation the rest of that was.

 

 

No...  no it didn't.

 

Just some more conformation bias to proclaim apple as the only ones capable of change.

No, Apple did not consider this.  Some poor SOB at Apple suggested a physical keyboard, and Jobs screamed "THAT'S THE STUPIDEST FUCKING IDEA I'VE EVER HEARD!"

 

 

Is this supposed to be sarcasm? Every company examines possible reference designs. This includes Apple. You just don't see the designs that don't make it to market or sometimes even prototyping stages. A company like Apple might go through an incredible amount of reference art before anything is physically constructed. You can argue Apple does things differently, but that doesn't mean that they follow a rigid preconceived notion of a product from start to finish. They've actually talked about remaining agile and capable of quickly changing direction. I think much of this is blown out of proportion by a rabid fan base.