551–560 of 693 posts
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iOS has "shake to undo", which isn't perfect, but at least it's something.
You can also do settings->accessibility->touch->back tap and set a single/double tap to send the ‘shake’ gesture.
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"A smartphone is like a computer with a one-button mouse " Not quite. A touchscreen can detect many fingers, that can do many gestures. The problem is, exept zooming (pinching with 2 fingers) and moving around (swiping with 2 fingers) the potential is pretty much unused.
I have trouble imagining that more than 2-3 fingers can be realistically used for input at once. For one, you normally have to use one hand to hold the phone, which uses up 3-4 fingers. And to enable frequent multi-touch gestures you'd have to hover your hand awkwardly over the phone, which is fine for the occasional pinch-to-zoom but not if you have to do it all the time.
Intuitive (like swiping and pinching) is none of it though and it can only be useful once muscle memory kicks in. So I guess this is the reason, we do not have a global standard for anything advanced multitouch.
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> This is a hardware problem, not a software problem. This is a UI validation problem. Apple proved in 2007 that you can port tons of applications over to the smartphone. They had to invent their own language for interactions though ("pinch-to-zoom" etc) and it took them two weeks of focus with all their software development staff involved to fix keyboards on capacitive touch. It may not be possible to reach the same…
Do you really think Apple invented pinch-to-zoom? CMU Sensor Lab had it back in ’85. Steve Jobs coincidentally visited soon after and later claimed to have patented the technology for the iPhone. That was shown not to be true in the big Apple vs. Samsung patent case. References available upon request.
People produce less text with more errors in more time on mobile. I actively avoid having to type anything on mobile. If I have my laptop open, I'll use whatsapp or signal on that. I often wait replying on either of those until I get my laptop. Just way less frustrating to not have to correct >25% of my key presses. If I have to use the mobile keyboard, I'll often just send a message with typos, no capitals, and skip…
I find that typing on a phone (iPhone or Android) these days is substantially easier than typing on an iPad because of swipe. It's still nowhere as efficient as a keyboard in the hands of a skilled typist, but I can often produce text fast enough that it isn't worth getting out my laptop. On an iPad it's far worse, because I actually do have to use the bad QWERTY touchscreen key-by-key. What I keep hoping for as far…
My biggest problem in editing on mobile is changing a text selection (for example a long URL or long text paragraphs) that don't fit on screen at once. Once I have to scroll (vertically or, even worse, horizontally) in addition to moving the selection handles the UX is just terrible.
I don't know about IPhone but on Android its simply impossible to Paste text between two words. You can't paste text into cursor position you can only replace selected text with Pasted text. Thats my main biggest issue. Also, why the fuck there no Copy/Paste buttons on mobile keyboard??
No advanced keyboard seems to have a setting to not force an automatic blank after each and every swiped word, no advanced keyboard beyond the original Swype that was abandoned a long time ago. Some have elaborate workarounds for fixing blanks before punctuation, but none seem to allow to leave space bar operation to me. I use a lot of composite words (hello from Germany) and the forced blanks are just infuriating. So I use anancient keyboard that was abandoned at some point between flappybird (composite word!) and 2048 or earlier and can only hope that Android keeps doing acceptable backward compatibility...
While the bigger screen is indeed a step in the right direction, most of the shortcomings from smaller screens are still here. Text input, as described by this post is just as silly on a phablet like it is on an iphone. I even went as far, as purchasing a logitech mobile keyboard (with a tablet/phone slot) so that I can reply to something longer than a short sentence.
For me its obvious, that without a physical keyboard, the phone will remain a device to scroll up and down and will not replace a pc, no matter how big the screen is.
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I find that typing on a phone (iPhone or Android) these days is substantially easier than typing on an iPad because of swipe. It's still nowhere as efficient as a keyboard in the hands of a skilled typist, but I can often produce text fast enough that it isn't worth getting out my laptop. On an iPad it's far worse, because I actually do have to use the bad QWERTY touchscreen key-by-key. What I keep hoping for as far…
Swipe is terrible and i dont know how people even use it
There are two caveats, though. Firstly, I type differently when using swipe. As it favors words from the dictionary, my texts sound less spoken and more written. And secondly, having backspace delete the whole word is a critical feature to avoiding annoyance. If none of the predictions are correct, I just tap backspace and then type the word like I usually would. This, combined with the rarity of those hiccups makes swipe typing quicker than regular typing to me.
It also helps with relaxing my wrists as I can also hold the phone with one hand and swipe with the middle finger of my other in a gesture like holding a pen, but without the pen.
Maybe there's actually a third aspect; screen and hand size. I haven't owned any big phones, my iphone 13 mini is the biggest phone I ever owned, but I do have large hands, so swipe typing with a single thumb is not very difficult. Your experience might be different depending on your anatomy and device.
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They are better for taking photographs simply because they're smaller, but for every other aspect of photo viewing, management, and editing, they are worse. They have a tiny screen, insufficient local storage and compute, and no keyboard or mouse. They're not better music players. Sound quality can be identical because phones support USB DACs, but again, everything else is worse. On a real computer I can easily searc…
I think they are also great for photo viewing, because they are easy to show to others. As the saying goes the best camera you have is the one you have with you. Same reason I listed them as the best music players - I don't want to carry around a laptop to hear tunes. And while some audiphiles claim that they can hear a difference, I have never seen evidence that this is the case.
For playing music when I'm at work, etc., my phone sounds MUCH better than my laptop that's sitting at home.
Also, even if we really did compare apples to apples, I'm not sure how the sound hardware on a laptop is going to be any better than that on a phone.
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I find that typing on a phone (iPhone or Android) these days is substantially easier than typing on an iPad because of swipe. It's still nowhere as efficient as a keyboard in the hands of a skilled typist, but I can often produce text fast enough that it isn't worth getting out my laptop. On an iPad it's far worse, because I actually do have to use the bad QWERTY touchscreen key-by-key. What I keep hoping for as far…
Swipe is terrible and i dont know how people even use it
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Do you really think Apple invented pinch-to-zoom? CMU Sensor Lab had it back in ’85. Steve Jobs coincidentally visited soon after and later claimed to have patented the technology for the iPhone. That was shown not to be true in the big Apple vs. Samsung patent case. References available upon request.
Not to imply any specific doubts—I’m aware of the narratives—but if you have references, I’m interested! Request, request.
The Untold History of Multitouch (p14 in pdf) - https://www.cs.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/TheLink_Summer201...