[NTLK] Using Newton - Simple Pleasures

[Jon Glass]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 3:21 PM, Riccardo Mori <rick at newted.org> wrote:
> quoth Bob Adamson:
>
>>  Are we expected to believe people would rather type on a touch screen than write and have their handwriting recognized and turned into text?
>
> My answer is yes, but wait, here's my theory.
<<snip>>
> So, what happened? Cheaper devices like Palms grew more popular and so did their sad, poor, counter-intuitive HWR method. I believe that many people tend to remember more the Palm's HWR method rather than the Newton's. No wonder they want to get rid of it. After trying to learn Graffiti (I like to know what I'm criticising), hell, I'd rather type on a virtual keyboard like the iPad's (or even the iPhone's!) any time! :)
>

Actually, for me, it's a simple factor of speed. My fastest
handwriting probably took place on my Newton (somewhere shy of 30wpm,
vs 25 wpm on paper). But I type at least that fast on my iPhone or
Treo keyboard. I actually type faster on my iPhone since I learned to
trust its autocorrect ("trust but verify" gets me over 35wpm). As much
as I like writing on my Newton, typing is still much faster for me.
The fact that Apple tuned the Newton's interface to work with just the
stylus (no buttons), and also succeeded with the iPhone, in tuning it
to fingers helps immensely with using either interface. That was the
one great lack on the Palm OS. It always felt like a hybrid between
the keyboard and mouse and tap or touch interface. There were always
barriers. There were none of those on the Newton, and there are none
in the iPhone, IMO. Granted, I think that the Newton approach is more
organic than the iPhone, but I wonder how much of that is just my
perspective, coming from a 10 year-plus user of the Newton interface?

-- 
 -Jon Glass
Krakow, Poland
<jonglass at usa.net>

"I don't believe in philosophies. I believe in fundamentals." --Jack Nicklaus