IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

WOW, it's possible to use a bt keyboard with an IPhone. This is the future ... it shows the advantages of Apple's closed source strategy. :eek:

http://www.ubiqkom.org/blog/?p=41

:D
It's quite amazing that this is an unsupported hack and you need a jailbroken phone.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

and yet you see all kinds of US tech blogs reporting it as impressive progress...

gag me with a keyboard...

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

And I read that Apple is trying to make it illegal to jailbreak their phones. Though this was just by reading headlines as I didn't care to read the full articles.

I also remember reading a while that someone had coaxed a stripped down version of greasemonkey onto an iphone and everyone was so impressed. So stupid as we have had greasemonkey on Maemo for quite some time.

The other thing is that technically 99% of the apps that we (well me anyway) install and use on Maemo are not Nokia supported. That little dialogue that we click OK on before an app installs says that Nokia does not support the software. Not that I need their approval. At least they let us do what we want and just make us verify that we know that they don't support what we do.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

I seriously don't get why they wouldn't let you do such things as such in the first place.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

they need a reason to show of that "clever" software keyboard they made...

its all about the "user experience"...

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Adding functionality adds complexity. UI designers like to brag about how their products are so functionally crippled simple that they can be used by an untrained chimpanzee precisely as well as by a dedicated computer whiz. (They often neglect to mention that the "use", in both cases, consists largely of throwing the product against a wall and spitting on it.)

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Actually it's not a hack, it's a hoax, apparently there's a VNC icon instead of a BT one. Ooops. So you still can't use that keyboard with anything in your pocket, UNLESS you have a N810 which it pairs with and works with just fine :)

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Yeah, it's not broken ...... it's advanced!

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/05/j...rd-says-hello/

But now it is wireless! OMG!

And attila77, almost any smartphone or PDA from the past five years can use a bluetooth keyboard. And Bluetooth headphones. And Bluetooth networking.

But the iPhone has "the most advanced mobile browser !!!!!11!11!!11!" so I guess Apple decided to leave those out...


Still a nice hack though... (even if it was VNC)

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Apple is a ******ed company. They take the most illogical approaches to user interaction just to be different. Steve Jobs pokes fun at the stylus and says its a thing of the past but then you see a 3rd party stylus comes out and everyone is like "AWESOME OMG!!1111 iphone IZ DA BEST!!" Then you have apple mice and trackpads on their laptops with only 1 button. Apple just hates doing what others do for no good reason. The laptops have stupid gestures for right clicking instead of just adding a second button. I don't want to perform some kind of damn sign language on my trackpad just to right click.

And that is my rant :D

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

+1 for the Invader Zim allusion.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Or you can just Ctrl + click.



(Not that I like Ctrl clicking.)

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Personally, I love my two-fingered right-click -- which I can do anywhere on the trackpad's surface (i.e., no button's needed).

-T.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

I *bet* you can Ctrl+click on an iPhone too. ;) Probably with the new external keyboard :D

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

haha ctrl click is terrible. They should have implemented 2 button mice as a standard a LONG time ago:rolleyes:

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Well, first off, Apple has an existing user base, part of which--believe it or not--hates mice with more than one button. Not throwing your existing users to the wolves as you strive to gain greater market share is a cause often championed, well, right here.

Second, Apple has had mice with right-click ability for years. There may not have been two, obvious buttons, but the shell rocked to left- and right-click. It was just the trackpads that, sadly, lacked the functionality for a while.

Finally, I can understand giving Apple grief over notebook trackpads that needed the assistance of a keyboard key to right-click, but USB mice for desktops? Sheesh. It's not as though the average (or even above average) PC comes with a mouse worth keeping. I'm happiest when I can drop the keyboard and mouse from a PC configuration, even if it only saves me five bucks. Any keyboard and mouse that comes with a PC is tossed, unopened, into the storage closet anyway.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

iirc, its not so much the shell that rocks, as its a sensor that detects if the finger is on the left of right side of the thing. so if you press with the right while the left finger is resting on the shell, it will see it as a left click...

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

I wonder why it's such a big thing to add a second mouse button or bt keyboard support. These things don't require much development work.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

It's conceptual, one of those things they feel they need to keep in order to be 'Apple' not just another niche PC manufacturer. And nobody is better in hyping their approach as superior (even when, often enough, it isn't) than Apple.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Err, I don't think extra development work has anything to do with either. Mac OS has supported multi-button mice for at least twenty years, I'd guess, and many applications have had context menus that could be activated by right-clicking.* The support has been there, a user simply needed to plug in a multi-button ADB, or later USB, mouse.

On the hardware side, I believe Apple has mostly used Logitech guts for their pointing devices. I had a three button Logitech bus mouse for my 8088 IBM PC way back when, so if anything, I'd say Apple has been paying Logitech for the minor bit of work necessary to keep cranking out pointing devices with fewer buttons than their normal fare.

Also, as I pointed out above, Apple has been shipping mice with left- and right-click support for quite some time. They just went out of their way to design that support into a mouse that didn't look like it had multiple buttons. Though Apple certainly didn't invent the mouse, they led the change in bringing it to the masses, and at the start, they just wanted to make the newfangled pointing devices as simple as possible. Later, they kept catering to users, some of whom, yes, feel their OS is superior to other because it doesn't require right-clicking.

It's a design thing, not an engineering thing.

Is it silly? Maybe. Using it as a reason to feel superior certainly is, but then I've seen equally goofy "my OS is better than yours" arguments from users of plenty of other operating systems.

As for the no-Bluetooth-keyboards-for-the-iPhone issue, I can't imagine that's engineering either. I can see Apple so determined to make the phone simple and easy to use that they deliberately block the use of Bluetooth keyboards. After all, having reviews mention that to really use the phone for email or whatnot, power users should skip the on screen keyboard and instead buy and pair a whole 'nother device might have hurt the "It's simple!" image. No Bluetooth keyboard support leaves everyone to work with the on screen keyboard for a time, come to accept it, and declare it, "not too bad, really."

Ta-da! Ugh.


* Or Ctrl-clicking. Or click-and-holding. Or...

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

@attila77
This could be the fact for this f***ing mouse button, but what about the keyboard support? They even sell bt keyboards (I have one and I like it)

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

I have one (of the thin small alimuminum type), too, I use it regularly with my NIT. My guess (good as any) is, as was already pointed out, that the whole touch/finger thing has been hyped so much that adding a keyboard, even external would be nothing short of admitting that omitting a keyboard was a design choice, and not a 'revolution'. Also, the vast majority of iPhone users really doesn't need it, and it would mean yet another thing than can break the 'just works' mantra.

A third option, not sure how big of a factor that is, is that Mac production (hence keyboards) is completely separate from iPhones in every way - production, development, distribution, support. So, supporting it would be a complication, only a small number of users would benefit and wouldn't be in line with Apple philosphy. In Apple terms, a feature.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

But it seems to be a big thing for the IPhone community. As tso pointed out there are several blogs reporting about this improvement.

I think Apple just made a mistake.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Oh my fricking god! BT keyboard paired with a phone! Never seen this thing before, it's pure revolution!
/sarcasm off

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

The truth is, Apple doesn't actually have ridiculously brilliant (eg: best in industry) UI designers. They are good, and they know how to make things pretty, but the only way they can come up with to make things streamined is to render them borderline useless and then offer a completely different software package for people who want any kind of functionality. (See iMovie 6 vs. iMovie `08 fiasco).

My favourite example is the dock, which has a severe limitation in its design: There is no organization. It's a flat line of icons and we just have to hope everything fits on there because the alternative is Searching (don't worry, I wouldn't subject anyone to that) or digging through the completely enormous Applications folder. Curiously, they don't do very well indicating that the dock is simply a panel with user-specified shortcuts and many users are entirely unaware of the Applications folder, largely because it is completely nonsensical to have them organized through the same interface as documents.

Then they come up with buttonless mice and trackpads which, frankly, have confused the daylights out of every person I have introduced to them. (As has the matter of rescuing music from the evil clutches of iTunes, which pops up every now and then).

So, err, I'm not too surprised that they would disappear bluetooth keyboards, prompting homebrewers to do it for them.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

It is certainly of interest to the more tech savvy (and geeky) end of the iPhone user spectrum - and these are exactly the people who blog around are more active in on-line communities. On the other hard, considering the number of iPhones in circulation, their number is very small.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

But they buy bt keyboards from apple. I still see no reason for not offering bt kb support. Each way, with this support, they maybe sell more hardware and have a more powerful device. Apple strategy for the IPhone includes being atractive for business people who I think will use an external keyboard.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Apple is not as monolithic as it may seem, it's just a common brand/moniker (not unlike IBM in this respect).

That's blackberry/palm land. The iPhone is far more about showing off and style than about (non-voice) work (no offense intended for any hard working iPhone owners present :) ). Hence that's not really iPhone audience.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

But apple is trying to make it a business phone ;)
see:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

I use my n810 keyboard to type messages on my iphone through VNC. Though I still cant wait for a small dedicated keypad for the iphone.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Btw if someone made light of the above post I think it would shift a lot more of the tablets! Especially as you can add BT or USB keyboards to the n810 for remote input.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

... and it happens again

"Apple previews iPhone OS 3.0, adds copy and paste, ..."

see http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/a...iphone-os-3-0/

Again ... WOW

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Shake it shake it babe...

Auto-login for WiFi hotspots...?

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

MMS ? Low expectations are the key to success.

Anyway, the hotspot auto-login is I believe something different - finding and logging in on previously unknown open hotspots. Correct me if I'm wrong. Maemo doesn't do this either by default, but I don't mind as do think it's a bit reckless (do you really want to expose your tablet to an unknown network and trust it your internet traffic without even as much as clicking an OK button ?).

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

that could be reading to much into a single line on engadget.

maemo do have auto-login, on saved networks. that is, as long as your not using offline mode on diablo (one thing i would love to see nokia fix before abandoning the existing tablets for the new breed and fremantle).

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Wow, that is nice. Apple just demolished more than half of the iPhone's problems, and the touch now has freaking bluetooth! Good job Apple, maybe I will buy an iPhone for college...

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Yes. My pet bug with that one is the IM going online after discovering a saved connection even when you set availability to offline. Ugh. Had to switch to pidgin for that single reason :(

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Issue with copy/paste was that the apps run in sandboxes.

Ah yes, run to catch a train and the thing keeps playing new numbers :D

Easy WiFi/Devicescape.

While some of these features can be considered basic, Maemo 5 will also get some features which can be considered basic. One thing is sure: users anticipate these features.

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

and it happens again
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/24/w...rd-theres-a-j/

Re: IPhone: *Thumbs up* for Apple
 

Exactly. I've iphoned colleagues who laugh to my E71 and N810 hardware keyboards stating that "hardware keyboards are past, and will disappear in the near future".
Now, give them an external BT keyboard and they'll use it only in the secret area of their bathrooms.