Is Apple Training Us For Touch?
Friend and fellow user experience blogger, Nikolas Laufer-Edel's latest article Leopard rethinks the OS, but this cat still has some spots to show brings up a very interesting idea:
Is Apple teaching its users to be competent with low profile keyboards to get them ready for touch screen technology on the desktop?
Pictured above is the latest Apple keyboard in all of its low profile goodness. Its the best keyboard I have used to date. I love the way it feels as I type and of course it looks great on the desk (which is very important!).
So, is the new apple low profile keyboards teaching me to type on with less physical tactile feedback in hopes that I will make an easy transition to a touch-screen version of a Mac? I sure hope so!
As a new user to the iPhone, typing was a big issue for me. I was unsure wether I was going to be able to type as fast on a touch-screen QWERTY as I would on a smaller hardware QWERTY and wondered if the UI would be able to make up for lack of tactile feel that is implicit in hardware keys.
The answer was yes. Through the use of auditory and visual feedback the iPhone allowed me to quickly adapt to the non-hardware keyboard. I now believe that I am a faster typer on the touch-screen iPhone than I ever was on any other mobile devices.
Multi-touch technology is the future of computing and will totally revolutionizing the way we interact with digital artifacts. Hardware input devices will lose out to the on-screen direct manipulation of objects. Is Apple going to be the ones who take it to the masses?
