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Palm Kills Off Graffiti
Ed writes "PalmSource, the company that makes the Palm OS, has decided to stop using Graffiti for text input in all future versions of its operating system. Instead, it will switch to using a version of CIC's Jot recognition system, which will be called Graffiti 2. PalmSource was forced to make this move after losing a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Xerox. Jot is already used by the Pocket PC operating system.
You can read more about it on Brighthand."
I expect that someone will come up with a hack or add-on application that mimics graffiti for future PalmOS machines, just the same way you can install alternate handwriting recognition systems for today's. So folks who're so well-trained in graffiti that it shows up in household notes they write probably won't have to worry too much about the Palm of the future.
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It seems to me that PocketPC attracts many people by the fact that it uses normal handwriting recognition instead of a "weird" Graffiti format. Most non-geek people are attracted by the fact that they do not need to learn a new way to write on this device.
I just hope that the "new" graffiti is easier on non-geeks...
RickTheWizKid
Stupid Muggle technology...
Apple thought it was so important to have real handwrighting recognition in the Newton, for example, that it was willing to adopt the technology before it was ready. Conventional wisdom said that ordinary users wouldn't want to learn a funny way of writing.
Boy was Conventional Wisdom wrong! It was FUN to learn grafitti. When I first got my Palm, I couldn't wait to learn it, so I can be "in the club" like everyone else. I ran their practice app, and got good at it within an hour.
Jot's probably not too different; maybe they can put in a "Graffity Compatibility mode" now that Palm's paying the royalties.
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There's nothing dumber for them to do. If you're going to make people think about a completely new user interface, they're going to think about migrating to PocketPC devices, as well.
maybe people have different opinions. Slashdot isn't made out of people who think the same way everyone else does, or else that'd be boring. With the exception of liking technology, the slashdot community is diverse and sometimes friendly.
PS If you're remotley sly, see what else i wrote.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
I was actually starting to like Graffiti.
Any chance anyone will ever resurrect the Newton's handwriting recognition engine? It was actually starting to get good near the end, before Jobs killed it.
Well, hey, if I got used to the Newton and Graffiti, I should be able to get used to something else...
I mean, it doesn't matter HOW you write the text, im sure some people write in uni-strokes as it is with a pen and paper without even knowing what it is.. How could Xerox patent a writing STYLE? Can I patent the way I make a capital P? Absurd!
If I understood the article, Xerox has a patent on the very idea of a recognition system that uses just one stroke per character.
This sounds to me like another bogus patent. If something is very easy to re-invent independently, it shouldn't be patentable. I thought patents were supposed to be non-obvious.
Hmmm. We want to recognize letters. Our big problem is that it's hard to tell which stroke belongs to which character. Hey... many characters are only one stroke; why not make a simplified alphabet so they ALL are only one stroke?
I mean, it's a little bit more complicated than using XOR to draw a cursor, but not that much.
P.S. Xerox may score a few bucks from this, but that is all they can manage. Palm doesn't really need Graffiti anymore.
When the PalmPilot first came out, it really did need Graffiti; handwriting recognition on an 8 MHz CPU with a tiny amount of RAM needs all the help it can get. Now, with much more computing power in the latest Palm devices, a trainable system that adapts to the user's writing is probably the right thing.
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USB port and ship it with a roll-up keyboard. having to learn a new way of writing just for a product to work is asinine.
contrary to some people's belief, knowing graffiti doesn't elevate you into an exclusive club. it simply means that you're willing to put up with corporate work-around solutions instead of demanding something that actually fits your needs.
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Did you learn to type to use the computer?
Whenever humans have to train themselves to adapt to a computer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H UI, this is an example of poor design
Ah yes, the failure of the pen and keyboard. Some of of the silliest inventions.
One would think that by now someone could make a device that read minds--but apparently that is hard.
(And probably not desirable anyway. "Computer: I wanted a spreadsheet not a girl spreading on the sheets. I don't care what I was thinking this is my office! )
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
You're forgetting history. Until recently, computers didn't have the processing power to understand arbitrary input (and a computers attempts to still aren't perfect.) Dispite this, people who wanted the computer now instead of later adapted.
Sure, true handwriting recognition was adequete and available when the Palm first came out. But it was also processor intensive. Certainly more demanding than the puny 16 Mhz processor in the Palm. To support handwriting recognition would have required a faster processor and thus, a shorter battery life. In fact, about the time of my first Palm, Microsoft's PocketPCs had handwriting recognition. Of course, they were surprisingly warm to the touch when running and measured their battery lifespan in hours. The Palms of the era generated no noticable heat and measured their lifespan in weeks! As someone who easily forgets to buy new batteries (or recharge my newer PalmOS device), I appreciate this.
Yes, ideally my computer would perfectly understand my handwriting without any training period. However there will need to be a balance between price, battery life, heat, and ease of input for the forseeable future. For many people (including the millions of Palm users), Palm achieved the best balance available at the time.
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By reading the Federal Circuit opinion that reversed the district court's summary judgment, it seems that the key issue that prevents Jot from infringing is that it "does not allow for 'definitive recognition' of symbols immediately upon pen lift by the user." Certain letters and symbols in Jot -- 'T,' 'X,' the question mark, and so on -- require multiple strokes to create the character. The actual shapes of the characters are not part of the patent, so there's no problem with Jot and Xerox's Unistroke sharing swooshes.
This leads one to wonder why the Graffiti 'X' doesn't allow Graffiti to escape infringement -- the appellate court opinion quotes the district court as citing accented characters in this sense, but not Graffiti's two-stroke 'X.' If I had to make a wild guess, I'd assume this was proffered by Palm in district court and refuted by Xerox on the grounds that the first slash in the 'X' is actually the stroke to enter extended mode, and thus the 'X' is still technically a unistroke character. If Palm had simply reversed the direction of the strokes so that the first stroke wasn't extended mode, then they might have been immunized. Of such tiny errors are great patent cases decided.
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Competing PDAs (usually running Windows CE) have offered handwriting recognition and keyboards for a long time. Dispite this, Palm's with Graffiti dominated the PDA market for a long time. Those people who were willing to pay for PDA chose the optino that provided a smaller form facter, longer battery life, and in many cases a lower price. While they may not want Graffiti, they're clearly willing to live with it.
Of course, as technology advances, handwriting recognition or usable keyboards may become an option. But such devices are still larger and have a shorted battery life at the moment. Palm's market share has certainly started to slide, but it's not a dead yet.
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Umm how exactly is a Palm going to do realtime handwriting recognition? It's not, a P4 can't do a very good job of it so a couple Mhz Dragonball doesn't stand a chance. There is a reason that the Palm uses graffiti and that is that the driving force of the Palm was simplicity and long battery life. I don't think I'll ever get a Palm past my IIIxe because I don't need a color screen, mp3 player or any other "cute" feature, I need an electronic organizer with meeting reminders and I don't want to recharge it twice a day, I want to change out the batteries once a month at the most, which is exactly what my Palm does for me.
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Your argument assumes that writing by hand is some sort of natural act. It isn't. You had to learn it. Just because you learned how to do that before you learned how to type or write graffiti doesn't mean that hand-writing is superior.
Is printing superior to scripting? No, scripting is much faster, but you had to learn that too. Typing is much faster than writing by hand. If repetitive-stress disorders are a problem now, think of what they'd be if everyone was trying to write out things on tablets for data entry.
The problem most usability "experts" have is that they think it's never a good idea to learn a new interface. That is not universally true. While it is a bad idea to break interface concepts that are common (like red=stop, green=go), it doesn't mean every new interface is bad. When farm tractors were first introduced, several models had the operator driving the same way they drove a team of horses. The steering mechanism was designed to mimic the old horse-drawn equipment. While this method was familiar, it wasn't superior to the car-style interface that it now used.
I disagree.
I used to work in the computer voice recognition field, building command and control systems for the Macintosh. One thing we noticed was that when the computer misrecognized a word, the user never blamed themselves for poor pronunciation. They always blamed the computer for poor recognition. And why not? After all, you learn to speak at an early age and other humans can understand you under a wide variety of conditions, so why can't the computer?
Contrast this to entering data by the keyboard. If the user types slowly or makes a typo, the user perceives it to be her fault, not the computer. This is a critical distinction.
The genius of Graffiti is this: by forcing the user to adapt to an unnatural style of handwriting, the user blames himself for misrecognized letters. Palm not recognizing your R's? Better fire up Giraffe and practice some more!
This led to a much better PERCEIVED user experience, regardless of the Palm's text recognition error rate.
I had a PocketPC (Nino) before switching to Palm. The relatively restrictive "graffiti" and the piss-poor application integration were my only complaints against the otherwise superior Palm (Vx). Oh, wait, it was those things, and the fact that the Palm has a permanent writing area, instead of the much more clever virtual one.
Point being, hacking up Jot to do Graffiti would be a step backwards in my opinion.
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Did you learn to type to use the computer?
Just like we all learned to type, on a QWERTY keyboard, which was designed to slow typists down so they didn't jam the early mechanical typewriters. Yet another example of designing for the machine and not the human. I'd say you've proven his point quite nicely.
___
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Its not exactly cheap to fight anything against a major corporation like Xerox. While Palm may be a fairly large company, I think Xerox is larger. It was probably cheaper to license this then fight for Graffiti. It also sounds like this is a bit better, so Palm may have already been considering it. So, it probably is a financial decision I'd presume.
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I've owned several Palms, over the last 5 years. I love graffitti, it's quick and easy for me now.
For Xmas, my bud got me a Dell Axim for a present. One of the first things I figured out, was how to put it in "Block Recognizer" mode, so that it understands Grafitti.
Now Palm's moving away from Grafitti, basically leaving all of their existing customer base wtih their best upgrade option for the future, being to move to the competitions products, since it better suits their ingrained habits.
Seems like a disastrous decision to me.
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I'm seeing a lot of reactions along the lines of " Graffiti kicked ass! This sucks!" and responses saying "Graffiti sucks! Newton's better 'cause it can read real handwriting!" and so on. To me, this is all irrelevant because the best input option is neither: it's the keyboard. A lot of people seem to think that handwriting is better because it's more "natural", but they're overlooking a century of experience that tells us that people can be much faster with input using a keyboard. Trying to get a machine to understand handwriting is a cool idea, but why would you bother with that when you can just enter charachters manually, with much better accuracy and speed?
I recently got a Handspring Treo for christmas, and I'm already used to the controls - I didn't have to waste time teaching myself a new writing system, or trying to teach the thing my handwriting style. When I need to enter 'Q', I just press the button that says 'Q'. How much simpler can you get?
I've noticed that a lot of new handhelds (Treo, Blackberry, Hiptop) have integrated keyboards instead of handwriting-recognition. I think this is because the "gimmick" factor of writing on a computer have faded, and people are more concerned about usability now. It's just too bad Palm decided to go to another flaky "writing system" instead of putting a decent keyboard in.
wrong! Tools should be efficient, if that involves some training for the user... fine. Why should you be able to do something you've never done before in a way familiar to you... it's an unfamiliar task, then it's an unfamiliar tool, you will have to learn how to use it.
Should a screwdriver have to use a hammer's interface because the hammer interface is intuitive because it's ALREADY learned? Should the hammer not have a handle and instead use the interface of the pounding rocks that preceded it?
How do you improve tools if you can't optimize the UI for the task and instead have to optimize it to avoid learning. If the learning is costly, at least the cost stops when the learning is accomplished and the result is an efficient tool. If the tool is not optimized for it's purpose, then you continue to pay for that loss of optimization forever, and eventually it will be more costly than having the user learn the task and method at hand.
Of course you should use known metaphors, and use real world tools and metaphors, but in the end we want the best tool, we are tool building. Tools are not automatically bad because they require knowledge or expertise to apply. In fact, the best tools, the most powerful tools, always do involve learning the tool itself. The interface needs to seem convienient once you have learned it, not before so.
I think you are mistaking a marketing imperitive and marketing principle for an engineering principle.
As for Newton's handwriting recognition... it's so unbelievable I think I might have been trolled! Not the Newton's I used...
-pyrrho
It looks like Pocket PC basically copied Grafitti. At least /\ does the expected thing in "block recognition" mode. But now if Palm drops the support, most users will just decide to try a PPC for their next handheld, since they have to learn something new anyway. On the other hand, they will not thing much of paying extra $5 for the Xerox license.