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JaySoul

macrumors 68030
Jan 30, 2008
2,629
2,865
Dictation absolutely rocks, gets it right 90% of the time.

But I do have a wonderful English accent, which obviously helps.
 

weing

macrumors regular
Apr 20, 2007
164
0
this is one thing Tim does not understand about common people... I know so many executives in my company (director and above, like VP, SVP, EVP) who can do 80% of what they do writing short emails. After all, at their level they pretty much attend meetings and ask questions and review things and provide feedback over vast quantities of projects/issues. An iPad works fine for that. In fact, I often see my VP coming to office with only her iPad. But come on, the people who actually work on the deliverable (individual contributors like me), we spend hours going through Business Object or Eclipse or Excel or Word or Toad or Salesforce.com or Oracle ERP tools, trust me we NEED OUR KEYBOARD.

THIS times a hundred billion zillion!
 

Mainsail

macrumors 68020
Sep 19, 2010
2,346
3,112
I don't think this is really about virtual keyboards vs physical keyboards, or relative typing speeds.

What is really interesting to me is that mobile devices are changing the way we work and get things done. In the past, people took meeting notes with pencile and paper. If they wanted to refer to a document, they would print hard copy to take to meetings. Email, calendaring and contacts were completely handled by desktops and laptops. Internet searches for reference materials required a full sized computer. Outlines and rough drafts of proposals were handwritten or typed on desktops. But now, folks can do all of this stuff and more on their mobile devices...so, a higher percentage of workers productive time is spent using devices with virtual keyboards.

This doesn't mean computers with physical keyboards are no longer needed, it just means that folks are doing more of their routine tasks with other devices, so when it is time to do the heavy lifting on a full computer, most of the back office and preparatory work were completed whilst mobile.

For Cook, this percentage split is 80/20. For others, it might be 50/50....and so on. But nobody can deny that an ever increasing percentage of routine work is being done on mobile devices using virtual keyboards.
 

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
On physical keyboards, there's a reason why the F and J keys have bumps...

To answer your question, Joesegh, why should I be always looking at the screen? No offence to my next question, I'm guessing you must be pretty young?

Touch typing for secretaries came about because they would do data entry from paper based documents into a typewritter/computer. So you're not looking at the screen or the typewriter's piece of paper, you're looking at your source. Since I also Touch type, I can look at someone and talk to them while typing out an e-mail or whatever because I neither need to look at my screen or the keyboard to know what I'm typing and if I make mistakes, I know without seeing it from the way I felt myself stumble in my finger movement.

You can't really expect the younger generation to know this or have any use for this though as these days, text entry is done through copy/pasting or scanning, not direct typing and people don't look at each other anymore, they talk via SMS or Facebook.
 

shaunv

macrumors newbie
Dec 3, 2012
1
0
London
When I type: hahahaha on my iPhone, i usually get HABANERO.

This is obviously because you don't write hahahaha often, so autocorrect hasn't learnt ur writing patterns, it adapts to how you write.. choosing a random word isn't a fair test.
 

wovel

macrumors 68000
Mar 15, 2010
1,839
161
America(s)!
That's a lie.

I would love to see Tim Cook typing a 14 pages paper with the iPad, and at the end if he is still smiling, maybe I will believe it.

iPad cannot simulate the responsiveness that a physical keyboard provides with. In particular the keys of a keyboard are not only aimed at augmenting the response when typing but also slow down the action of pressing something by absorbing the impact; something that an iPad screen cannot do since the screen is rigid.
So no... I don't believe that crap (unless he doesn't type and then only dictates) because after a few minutes using a touch screen you get very tired...


I have done nearly that. It is slower sure, but not as bad as people make it out to be. I use a Das Keyboard on the desktop and I love mechanical keyboards. I prefer using a real keyboard. However, I am not always in a situation where that is feasible. I suspect most people find the virtual keyboard fine for their every day use. I have typed 1000 word messages on my iPhone and 10,000 word papers on the iPad. Neither is ideal, but it is certainly doable.

I type the longer document when something came up while I was on vacation. I will toss a bluetooth keyboard in my bag next time (just in case), but I would not say it was frustrating.
 

JoeRito

macrumors 6502a
Apr 12, 2012
505
155
New England, USA
Most business users appreciate and need the tactile feedback of a physical keyboard... virtual keyboards are not ready for business use yet.
 

aperry

macrumors 6502a
Jul 12, 2008
600
33
Here's the problem with autocorrect: Even if it's correct 75% of the time (which I believe is optimistic), it takes too much time to correct the remaining 25% on the iPad/iPhone. Furthermore, everyone I know (including myself) make many more typos on the touch keyboard. God forbid you have to use the magnifying glass to change/add/remove a couple of characters. If you don't use laser-guided precision then half the time it'll change position when you release your finger, and for some reason Apple has declared jihad on the arrow keys so you're forced to fiddle with the magnifying glass again and again. There's a reason why entire websites exist just for the comedic value of the iOS autocorrect feature.

Honestly, I get such a kick out of people who argue that things like this are somehow more efficient. The lack of an accessible file system is another great example. No, we shouldn't need dozens of apps just to manage different file types and print a freekin photo.
 

Liquorpuki

macrumors 68020
Jun 18, 2009
2,286
8
City of Angels
You do realize that most people are equally 'confounded' by a physical keyboard when they first start using it? It takes about the same level of practice to be come proficient with the virtual keyboard as it did to become proficient with a physical one. (Slightly less if you're already familiar with the basic QWERTY layout.)

People could learn to use a stenotype for word processing if they really want to. That says more about the proficiency of the human brain than it says about what the best tool for the job is.

Tap typing = regular typing minus tactile feedback. I take away one of your senses, how is that better? Apple also owns a patent for tactile feedback on a touchscreen - that either means they're patent hoarding or are aware of the virtual keyboard's deficiencies

But I'll concede. If people want to tap type for the rest of their life, who am I to stop them
 

joesegh

macrumors 6502
Jun 17, 2009
338
157
From the responses I've got from my original message, there's a lot of people who don't understand touch typing... which is why for a lot of people current virtual keyboards aren't going to replace physical.

You can be looking at other content and still typing very accurately because you know where you fingers are on the keyboard and can feel if you've made a mistake. You don't need to be looking at the screen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing

On physical keyboards, there's a reason why the F and J keys have bumps...

To answer your question, Joesegh, why should I be always looking at the screen? No offence to my next question, I'm guessing you must be pretty young?

I'm not that young. Implying that I am does make you sound old, though.

I know what touch typing is, and I even do it myself. I just don't know why, in this day and age, you are transposing documents from paper to computer (the only real use case I can think of where touch typing without at least glancing at the screen makes sense). When I'm typing on my iPad, I'm doing e-mail, chat, a bit of word processing, and web form filling. Don't really need to spend tons of time while I'm typing looking at other things. Sure, physical keyboards are great and a lot faster in general, but I don't think it's impossible to do serious typing on an iPad, because I do it regularly.

Well, traditionally, one looks at the form/document that's getting text input into it. *I know most kids these days look at the keyboard to see what they are pressing, but that's just bad typing. *I know they did away with lessons in cursive at many public schools; they should've replaced them with lessons in touch typing.
You mistook what I meant (look at screen != look at on-screen keyboard).


Most business users appreciate and need the tactile feedback of a physical keyboard... virtual keyboards are not ready for business use yet.
Sounds vaguely reminiscent of the BlackBerry fanboys who thought Android and iOS were not serious enough or "ready for business". We know how that one turned out.
 
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topmounter

macrumors 68030
Jun 18, 2009
2,606
973
FEMA Region VIII
You guys complaining about the auto correct do realise you can train/tweak it, yeah?

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/101147/6-ways-to-improve-your-iphones-autocorrect/

----------



That would be over 90% of the population then.


And a potential niche market of 10% or less is essentially "dead", really.

I'm not saying we're there yet - simply that most people don't care for keyboards.

LOL... I hope you didn't damage your rectum when you pulled out that "over 90% of the population" BS :rolleyes:
 

aperry

macrumors 6502a
Jul 12, 2008
600
33
Cook makes what, over $300 million per year? And the work year is about 2,000 hours? So he's effectively compensated at something in the neighborhood of $150,000/hour. Wow, imagine how much money goes down the drain due to his insistence on using an inefficient tool. Probably in the tens of millions over the course of a year. Get over it and use an Air!
 

jvmxtra

macrumors 65816
Sep 21, 2010
1,245
3
To me, whatever Tim cook says does not matter too much. When Job said something, it would seem like that's where the trend is going from bottom of the heart. When Tim says it, because he wants to sell the ipad... I don't know.. this guy.. Look what's happening in china.. Apple is getting killed.. do something dude.
 

tigress666

macrumors 68040
Apr 14, 2010
3,288
17
Washington State
I think people are not using autocorrect correctly. It makes typing so easy.

I try my best to TRUST autocorrect and I can type like a BEAST on my iPhone and iPad. :)

I agree here. I think part of the problem is auto correct isn't going to be good at first for you because it learns how you type. If you try it a small bit and decide it sux and turn it off, it will always suck. You have to let it get used to how you type. It amazes me now how good my autocorrect is at figuring out what I was trying to type when I type something like dpmtj (and then it predicts something <- I was trying to simulate the bad typing I do sometimes as right now I'm on my computer with a real keyboard).

Still, I agree with others that as some one who can touch type I still can type far better on the keyboard than on the ipad or iphone and I'd rather write anything long with a keyboard. One nice thing about the screen keyboard of the ipad/iphone is that I'm wordy and it encourages me to find shorter ways of saying things or not over elaborating like I tend to do.
 

John.B

macrumors 601
Jan 15, 2008
4,193
705
Holocene Epoch
Can someone source at what time in the interview Tim Cook actually says, "I've Given Up Physical Keyboards"? Because I don't remember hearing him say that.
 

Jalopybox

macrumors 6502a
Nov 13, 2012
699
5
"Where" is a noun??

Grammar_Police_by_Rysis.jpg
 

fsck-y dingo

macrumors 65816
Jun 14, 2009
1,008
0
Is that a lot?

No it's not. But, when submitting a 500 word post the typical response tends to be tl;dr, "I didn't read all that but," "Nice wall of text", etc. Maybe this is where the world is headed. I can imagine a future where professors ask students to summarize lessons in 140 characters or less. Sad, isn't it?
 
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