Landscape Email Apps - Is Apple Easing Up on Rejection Policy?

[xerxes2008]

coming to Mail?

Another thought about whether Apple will ever include landscape mode in Mail:

I can tell you as a developer that it would be trivially easy for Apple to implement this feature at any time. The fact that they haven't suggests to me that it's a design decision. And you know how stubborn they get about their design decisions....

Just a thought. (disclaimer: as some here know, I wrote one of these landscape email programs)

--pat

 

[happydude]

here's hoping podcaster can have another crack at it!!!

 

[magi.sys]

It's good to know that this is possible.
Now if someone would make an GPG message composer that sends to Mail app would be great.

 

[adrchn]

I just purchased this app as it makes it easier and faster for me to compose an email in landscape mode. Very easy to use, but it just sucks that APPLE can't integrate this into their existing mail. I guess this extra step is the only viable way at the moment, and for .99 cents its a steal.

btw. I would also like to see auto cap in the subject line.

 

[kdarling]

So instead of vertically scrolling through your music, you'd rather have half your screen taken up by a clickwheel just so you can move your finger in a circle?

As someone pointed out, it could be an overlaid transparent clickwheel, and thus not lose any screen space. (As for using up screen space, that's a great argument for a physical keyboard.)

The iPhone fingertip scrolling is only good for minimal amounts of data.

When you're reading a PDF document, or trying to navigate a tall web page (forums), or go anywhere within a decent sized piece of data... then it just cries out for some quick but accurate scrolling mechanism.

Bear in mind that the UI was not designed from the beginning to be finger-scrolled. That was something that came along partway through development because it looked cool. Unforunately they threw out the baby with the bath water. They should've kept an alternative scrolling method. That's what I do with handheld touch apps on other devices.

 

[kineticpast]

No, when PLAYING music, I would like a clickwheel so I can track around a song, or switch between tracking and ratings, like every other iPod. I'm fine with scrolling to choose, but if I want to rewind a podcast, I have to hold down the REW button like I'm using a Zune.

I'm sure I'm misinterpreting your post, but just in case:
You're aware that when on the Now Playing screen (in portrait) that if you tap on the album artwork you get a scrub bar (and repeat, Genius playlist and shuffle buttons, and lyrics if you added them in iTunes) and rating stars are above the track listing on the back of the album art (again only in portrait)?

So still single taps to access all those features. A scroll wheel would still be more accurate for scrubbing through long podcasts though, though the scrub bar would be faster.

 

[tweaks]

Another thought about whether Apple will ever include landscape mode in Mail:

I can tell you as a developer that it would be trivially easy for Apple to implement this feature at any time. The fact that they haven't suggests to me that it's a design decision. And you know how stubborn they get about their design decisions....

Just a thought. (disclaimer: as some here know, I wrote one of these landscape email programs)

--pat

I just bought your app as I like the thought that went into your app and the fact that you are a member of macrumors. Keep up the good work.

FYI for the moderators. I believe that the intent of the coders of the apps in store is to listen to the posters of macrumors. Could we somehow implement something that would make it easier for both worlds to communicate with another? Just a random thought.

I really appreciate a coder that is willing to help within the community.

 

[Lextar]

Unfortunately WideMail has a very bad rating in the German iTunes store as the app doesn't work when the message contains German umlauts (ä, ö, ü, ß). Should be easy to fix though.

 

[dam0dred]

Great, now where's my landscape texting program.

 

[sneeks]

A friend of mine bought this app today and quite often his replies will contain only the text "(null)" and nothing else. What is he doing wrong?

 

[xerxes2008]

bug

This is Pat, the developer of Wide Email.

Is your friend including any accented characters or non-Western characters in his emails? There's a bug right now that makes the program trip over these characters, but I'm fixing it in the next update, which is coming soon and will be free.

Have him/her try sending an email without any of those characters and see if it works.

--pat

 

[sneeks]

Many thanks for the reply, I have passed the details onto him.

 

[nyctravis]

I was trying to decide which one to buy, and noticed the active participation from pat, the developer of wide email. Made my decision for me, as it was great to see you so actively involved. Looking forward to using it!

 

[TalkAboutApple]

Am I the only that hates typing in landscape mode? The keys are too far apart and it slows me down a lot. They used to use a phrase "mouse miles" as a defense of getting people to use keyboard shortcuts so I guess this could be considered as adding "thumb miles."

Also, it's not like I've got itty-bitty thumbs either so idk...

I guess it's good for those who want I just think it's easier to get used to the portrait layout and you'll end up typing much faster that way.

Bingo. Landscape typing is for those that don't really "get" the way the touchscreen works, or don't trust it enough.

 

[fbmore]

Mail+: iphone web app let's you write in landscape mode

This is not as good as the other apps but it's a web app and it's free

Write emails using your iphone's "landscape mode" keyboard:
http://www.mailpls.com

Enjoy!

 

[TheColdest22]

money hungry

here is what I think and I could be echoing someone else so if I am lemme know..anyways, what if apple just for whatver reason hasnt gotten around to implementing it yet so rather then waste their time doing it they let a developer allow it to be put in the app store therefore people get landscape mail and they make a profit..rather than putting it in an update where there wouldnt be a profit for them..just my thoughts

 

[Mac About Town]

Another thought about whether Apple will ever include landscape mode in Mail:

I can tell you as a developer that it would be trivially easy for Apple to implement this feature at any time. The fact that they haven't suggests to me that it's a design decision. And you know how stubborn they get about their design decisions....

Just a thought. (disclaimer: as some here know, I wrote one of these landscape email programs)

--pat

Jeff here, author of Sideways. I agree with Pat here. If you look at the current UI of Mail, you have the To/From/Subject lines and then the body. With the device held sideways, the body would most likely not be visible which would provide a poor user experience (as Pat indicates); there just isn't enough room to scroll through that amount of data easily.

jeffrey.w.lynch

 

[Mac About Town]

Unfortunately WideMail has a very bad rating in the German iTunes store as the app doesn't work when the message contains German umlauts (ä, ö, ü, ß). Should be easy to fix though.

FWIW, Sideways v1.0 handles these without issue.

<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=289146621&mt=8>

jeffrey.w.lynch

 

[xerxes2008]

congrats

FWIW, Sideways v1.0 handles these without issue.

Nicely done Jeff ... I was apparently a little too English-centric in my beta testing. Congrats on the release and for catching that bug.

--pat (developer of Wide Email)

 

[Mac About Town]

Nicely done Jeff ... I was apparently a little too English-centric in my beta testing. Congrats on the release and for catching that bug.

--pat (developer of Wide Email)

Congrats to you (and the other developers) as well.

I submitted my v1.0 on August 22nd. I sure hope our updates don't take 6+ weeks! That was the longest 6 weeks for me, but in the end, looks to be worth it.

Cheers,
jeffrey.w.lynch

 

[sneeks]

A friend of mine bought this app today and quite often his replies will contain only the text "(null)" and nothing else. What is he doing wrong?

Having now bought and used this app myself I can now see that using the British £ character is a cause of the 'null' email problem.

 

[steamed.hams]

It's not allowed evidently according to the rules of the SDK.

I'm not a developer, so I don't know if there are any workarounds...perhaps our resident expert Pat knows better.

Considering most of my iphone time is spent texting, I would easily pay $20+ for landscape texting. It's a shame that's its not available due to the SDK...

 

[kironin]

This is the question:

Why didn't Apple implement this into all the standard apps (SMS,Email,etc) and why haven't they added it yet?

Great question!

I am wondering that myself.

 

[kironin]

question for developers

To pat (developer of Wide Email) and Jeffrey (developer of Sideways), or any developer that may know,

A question I have been wondering about for sometime. Would it be easy or hard to make a program like yours with an option in the settings for alternate non-Qwerty layouts ?

I don't touch type in Qwerty and it seems nuts to me that I have to revert to Qwerty on a virtual keyboard. Even a Mac comes with the option to use Dvorak. I don't touch type in Dvorak. I touch type in Colemak (http://colemak.com/).

Some people on here have talked about thumb miles, and that's really the silliness of inefficiency of the Qwerty design creeping in to affect other decisions like Apple not using the Landscape mode built in.

Dvorak might take more thought because of the more prominent placement of punctuation that appear on the numeric keyboard of the current setup, but Colemak is a slam dunk because the numeric keyboard doesn't change at all and the letter keyboard is just rearranged to a far more efficient layout but easily translatable for a former to Qwerty user to grok,
QWFPGJLUY
ARSTDHNEIO
ZXCVBKM

It should fit nicely with the widest row being the middle row. OR have the top two rows line up with the exact same number of 10 keys by having a special key on the right top that can be set to what the user wants. (for example, a caps lock key, or word delete key, or a select key, or favorite punction key, etc.)

70% of English words can be made with just the middle row. Colemak employs finger rolls, so for thumbs ST, AR, RA, NE, EI, IE, IO, etc.
Having a wider keyboard would lead to advantages in this regard.

Of course for those that like and use Dvorak, more hand alternation would translate to more thumb alternation, but the problem here is having wider 10 key bottom row. That would require putting the Upcase and Back Delete keys on the top row for the layout to fit. For some that might be fine.
PYFGCRL
AOEUIDHTNS
QJKXBMWVZ

Why not have these two alternatives ? The question is how hard or easy has Apple made it to do this ?

Afterall, this is one of the advantages of a virtual keyboard over a real keyboard. Honestly, it would be ideal if you could rearrange the keys in any order you prefer in the same method you rearrange Apps now. Why not!!!!

 

[Kwill]

This is the question:

Why didn't Apple implement this into all the standard apps (SMS,Email,etc) and why haven't they added it yet?

If copy+paste is not a priority, keyboard orientation must be really on the back burner.