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Apple Losing Touchscreen War
An anonymous reader writes "While Apple's iPhone may be the first device most people call to mind when they think of a touch interface mobile, the 3G device is still lagging behind in the touchscreen shifting stakes — it's getting a sound thrashing from Moto and Samsung, who've cornered the Asian market where touchscreens are popular for their ability to let users input Asian languages without all that fiddly Qwerty nonsense."
Steve Jobs is not a human with a reality distortion field, Steve Jobs is a reality distortion field with a human body inside.
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Hopefully before that day comes, Apple will start making tablets again --- I really need a replacement for my Newton MessagePad and my Fujitsu Stylistic is just too big to travel w/ me constantly as the MP did (and my Sony PRS-505 ebook reader does --- something that size, w/ pen input would be perfect).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Apple Fanbois, attack!
"All the other handset vendors - including Apple - are essentially niche players," ABI Research noted.
For some background, I'm in IT and I work almost exclusively on Microsoft products and groan all you want but I'm a fan of theirs. I recently wanted to buy a smart phone. Mostly, something that was good at general web surfing, reading email and more. I saw my friends' iPhones and it was exactly what I was looking for but I have a natural anti-Apple bias so I didn't get one.
Then I started a search for a phone that met the requirements I have that didn't have an Apple on the back of it. Last Friday, I eliminated the final contender (AT&T Tilt) and gave up and bought an iPhone 3G.
It's not perfect, but it is amazingly good. I've yet to see a Windows Mobile device come close to it. The Samsung Omnia and Nokia Tube mentioned in the article don't appear to be available and to be honest, I didn't realize the other Windows Mobile devices sucked until I held them in my hand.
Does anyone know of a Windows Mobile device that matches the iPhone in web surfing? I'd love to hear about it.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I was under the impression that it did, and that it even used its predictive-text system with the pictogram-style input ?
Add that to the question: "What the hell has Apple got to "lose" regarding touch-screens anyway?" and it looks to me like someone wanted some hits, and Apple is a good brand-name to use to get them....
Simon the cynic.
Physicists get Hadrons!
For those of us with fingers larger than pencil points, QWERTY is just a waste of precious real estate.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This article fails to address anything meaningful. It has no facts, no helpful statistics, and no meaningful analysis. The real questions are:
1. What are the touch screen statistics in the United States? What share does Apple hold domestically?
2. Is there some reason why Apple is not competing in the international market? Is Apple having their lunch eaten by companies that are "household names" in Asia, or is the product inferrior? What is Apple's penetration in those markets over the past year?
3. How do these numbers change if were to include things like Black Berrys and other "smart" phone without touch screens?
4. Why are 80 percent of touch screen phones marketed in Asia? Why aren't the touch screens being created for the Asian market showing up here? I find it hard to believe that ease of displaying Asian fonts is the only reason. Is there some lack of American infrastructure? Lack of interest from American consumers?
As someone who loves bleeding edge technology, I'm frustrated by the lack of options in the US and find the whole international marketing strategy wonderfully interesting. But this article is a slow boat of fail because it lacks any analysis or insight.
If Motorola and Samsung have the market sewn up, essentially, what are they doing it with? This is the first time I had even heard Motorola *had* a touch screen phone.
Also, why aren't they sold in the US, then? I read about Motorola wanting to spin off their phone division, all the problems they've had, then I'm told they have these phones that I might be interested in (I don't have AT&T so no iPhone for me) but don't seem to be available.
My wife and I are excruciatingly unhappy owners of Samsung Glydes. The touch screens are nothing short of possessed.
* The screens randomly accept commands, often registering touches inches away from the actual contact
* The screens often refuse to acknowledge any contact whatsoever
* Worst of all, they're prone to poltergeist behaviors. While placed on a conference table in a meeting, for example, mine started self-executing commands. After much laughter, the assistant director of a government agency who happened to be in the room received a call from my phone (much to the delight of the attendees).
While that example was humorous, the phone has executed deletes of several important contacts, downloaded software, and refused to accept commands to answer important incoming phone calls.
Several trips to Verizon, including software updates and replacements, have failed to resolve the issues.
Perhaps Moto is a threat to Apple, but claiming that Samsung's touch screens are a threat is an absurd claim at best.
Anybody can build a touch screen that lets you poke at big static buttons, or lets you try to fatfinger a virtual keyboard. Only Apple has the FingerWorks patents to do high-quality, high-usability multitouch gestures.
Disclaimer: I've been using a FingerWorks TouchStream keyboard for more than five years, so I'm a big fan of the technology. I've also been a Mac user since 1985 or so. But when Apple bought FingerWorks, they completely shut down all sales and support, leaving the existing user base swinging in the breeze, so I'm a bit... conflicted.
The iPhone does have Chinese input.
Moreover, the article isn't really news at all. The iPhone was just released in most of these markets and isn't officially in China yet anyway. However, being here in Hong Kong (or even in the mainland) you see the iphone everywhere. So just give it time.
Plus, who ever heard of a "touchscreen war"?
That would ROCK. They could just slap a touchscreen on top of the bottom clamshell of a Macbook air.
It would be perfect for college students taking notes and reading e-textbooks and a myriad of other applications.
Somewhat offtopic, and forgive me for being ignorant, by why havent tablets caught on? I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it Just Worked(tm). Most of the "tablets" out there are just laptops with flippable screens == too much complexity and too many fragile moving parts.
I usually can't stand Macs but if Apple were the first to do a simple, elegant, full-screened "iClipboard", I'd be all over it.
Forget the iPhone, it's UI is way too goddamned slow for a mobile device.
TFA says a big reason why it is lagging overall is because Moto and Samsung holds 80% of the touchscreen market in Asia. Considering that Apple has not even RELEASED the iPhone in CHINA, Korea and Vietnam to name a few countries it seems obvious why. Also, it was just released (like a month or two ago?) in places like INDIA, Singapre, etc.
On the contrary, seeing the crazy lengths people will go to here to GET an iPhone (I'm in Vietnam) I'm sure that that percentage will change. It is amazing to see, in a country where the per capita income is about $1K (CIA world factbook), lots of people carrying iPhones (a hacked iPhone is about $700 here). I was just in a cab and surprised to see the driver who probably makes less than $10/day using one (but maybe he "found" it from some unlucky person leaving it in the cab). The demand is so high that many telephone shops will have "iPhone" as the most prominent sign on their shops even though no-one in the entire country is an authorized reseller. Sorry but it is still a big big status symbol here.
Somewhat offtopic, and forgive me for being ignorant, by why havent tablets caught on? I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it Just Worked(tm).
Looks like you just answered your own question there...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
I was under the impression that it did, and that it even used its predictive-text system with the pictogram-style input ?
Yeah as of iPhone OS 2.0 it has a rather robust input system. Apple wasn't targeting the international market before the 2.0 OS.
The AC that submitted this obviously doesn't know that the iPhone isn't limited to only QWERTY input and the referenced article makes no statement on that is why Samsung and Moto are currently more popular. Looks like a little bit of trolling going on...
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/keyboard.html
I got the impression that they were referring to the other phone manufacturers having captured the market well before apple even entered it. Just my $.02
There are "slates", which are only the screen and a stylus, but text input is very annoying. Think of the amount of text you might enter in a single day, or just even in a single slashdot post. Would you rather write it with a stylus or type it?
Jean-Francois Im's blog
I'm surprised that you bought an iPhone based on requirements. Not that they aren't important or that the iPhone doesn't satisfy them but most people (like me) think the user interface is the most compelling reason to use an Apple product and are willing to let a few technical spec's fall through.
Still I'm happy you made the right choice! :)
A while ago I decided it was time to replace my trusty old Harmony remote, as some of the buttons don't work very well, etc.
I decided to get the then-brand-new Harmony One, which features a touch-screen where the older Harmony remotes have six or eight buttons around an LCD.
I returned it a week later. I just couldn't handle not having a tactile response. I don't want to have to LOOK at the remote in order to use it, and there's just no way to feel your way around with a touch screen.
I do have an iPod Touch, and that's a major problem I have with it. Try using an iPod Touch while it's in your pocket while listening to music. Yeah, you can find the On button, but it takes a lot of practice to actually sue the slider without looking, and then just try skipping a track. Heck, it's easy to mis-press the thing when you're looking right at it.
I love the form-factor of an iPod Touch/iPhone as an information-display device, and the eye-candy is beautiful, but I'd prefer tactile over touch-screen anytime.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I think his question is "Why hasn't it caught on on the manufacturing side to make a tablet that Just Worked(tm)?"
Thank God for evolution.
Not even remotely comparable figures. iPhones aren't even being sold in places like CHINA, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. They've only been selling in some other countries for a month or two (Singapore, India).
So if the iPhone has 20% of the OVERALL Asian market, it must be COMPLETELY DOMINATING the few (1?) market it's been in for any length of time: Japan.
Time to buy more Apple Stock.
I think this post sums up the term "fanboi" nicely.
Thank God for evolution.
Which brings up an interesting question. Up until now Western languages have had a huge advantage for computers since keyboards can have one button per letter because of the small alphabet and context-free characters. It is really easy and fast to input characters to form words using dedicated buttons.
Now with accurate, sensitive touch screens, will word-based writing systems like Chinese actually be better suited now for writing?
I only have experience with Japanese, but even on the iPhone you get a Japanese keyboard, not QWERTY.
Most Japanese phones use a standard numeric keypad to enter Japanese text, first in Hiragana and then into Kanji in the same way as computers do. The article poster clearly has no idea what they are talking about.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"I think this post sums up the term "fanboi" nicely."
No, it really didn't... I don't know what "specs" we're talking about being missed here, but a good interface is crucial for many people...
like Myron Krueger said: "If people were going to use computers all day, everyday, the design of such machines was not solely a technical problem-- it was also an aesthetic one. A lousy interface would mean a lousy life."
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
They have caught on in niche markets. Last two times I went for surgery at a relatively brand new place all the nurses had tablets. Those 100 forms you had to fill out authorizing surgery were all digital. You could read through them and sign at the bottom.
All the XRay machines at their office are digital. Everything gets dumped into a central server. When I went into the consult rooms the doctors walked in with tablets and reviewed the xrays right there, no more having to hand off the big negatives.
Doctors wrote prescriptions on the pad and they printed off out front.
But as others have pointed out, I wouldn't have wanted to post this note on slashdot using a stylus.
The Nokia internet tablets are promising, but not beefy enough on memory. Give me a model with 512 megs of memory instead of 128, and then I'll take it seriously.
I am keeping my eyes on them regardless, since Nokia bought out Trolltech/QT and KDE 4 packages are now available for them.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
"I think this post sums up the term "fanboi" nicely."
No, it really didn't... I don't know what "specs" we're talking about being missed here, but a good interface is crucial for many people...
like Myron Krueger said: "If people were going to use computers all day, everyday, the design of such machines was not solely a technical problem-- it was also an aesthetic one. A lousy interface would mean a lousy life."
Dude, this is Slashdot. Here, "advanced user interface" means you're using xterm-color.
#DeleteChrome
Not that I think I'll change anyone's mind but really think about what makes a product, ANY product useful nowadays. Is it the raw specs? Do you buy your car based solely (or even primarily) on how many horsepower it has or its MPG? No, things like comfort and handling and responsiveness matter greatly. Possibly even safety could be considered a part of the "user interface", we could all literally tie ourselves in to the seat using rope but a seat belt is much more convenient (and likely to be used).
This doesn't even go into such things like styling or "image" (which is why you might buy a BMW over say a Chevy) and which, I'll happily admit, is a reason why I like Apple products. (Even services are very dependent on "the user interface" how is Disneyland different from Coney Island? Note: I used to design theme parks). So, if you want the maximum price to performance and are willing to suffer (great?) inconvenience, build your computer from scratch and install your own OS on it. That's what Bill had in mind, he thought we could all be nerds. I value my time more highly so I'll let Apple do the work.
Personally I think the iPhone looks very nice in functionality but there is no way in hell I'd "legally" buy one with subscription for the insane prices they are charging. Half a thousand dollars or so sure, but no subscription.
You might want to look into buying an iPod Touch then.
After just using a Windows Mobile phone during a two week international (outside US) trip, I can assure you that the iPhone is far and away the best phone out there. The Windows Mobile phone was simply atrocious. It was worse than having no phone at all. It was a nightmare.
I also note that not all touchscreens are the same. Apple's is simply more sensitive and accurate. Others, like on the Windows Mobile devices, seem to be plastic-y and non-sensitive. Is there a technical difference? Is it simply glass v. plastic? Or is there a difference on how the touch sensitivity works?
I've had my Ipaq for many years... since long before the iphone, it does everything the iphone does, plus adds GPS, MS Office, etc., and stereo bluetooth. No, the screen doesn't shift when you turn it.
I think the troll scoring on the op is out of line, since this is a relative comment that should remind people that the iphone didn't start it...
Anything you say will be held against you.
My biggest issue with writing on touch screens is the lack of friction/traction. Since a stylus on touch screen is real smooth, I have a harder time controlling my writing as opposed to when I use a pen or pencil on a piece of paper.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
I doubt you could ever write Japanese faster than you could type English. Nihongo might be 3 characters, but look at how fancy they are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nihongo.svg
The kanji is a little faster, but ni-ho-n-go is still 13 strokes.
Get the nifty felt-type like nib from Wacom and put that in your stylus for a more paper-like experience (if you have a glass screen on your tablet).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Actually, there's a nifty add-on for Word which allows one to use proofreading marks as editing gestures which makes corrections very fast and natural in feeling.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
It was HP, not Apple that started the touch screen. So Apple has nothing to lose really. And Moto and Samsung rock! Apple is just hype.
Dude, nobody's claiming Apple invented the touchscreen.
But the article is misleading because once you've used an iPhone, all other touchscreen interfaces seem downright primitive.
in Japanese, the word "Japanese" is "Ni-hon-go" 3 'characters' (but I believe there's rules when joining these characters together) vs the English "J-a-p-a-n-e-s-e". I'm not sure how many Japanese characters there are though, since they get joined together to define a word (1 character can be 2 syllables).
There are 1945 jouyou kanji, which are required to be known to achieve a normal level of litteracy.
Why we haven't already developed input (we may have, but a Japanese co-worker used an English keyboard and through key tricks typed in her native language that way) that uses the syllables from eastern languages is beyond me. The speed and efficiency would be nice, although we sort of already do type in words "WTF" "LOL" "BRB".
The way it works is that you type each of the sounds that represent the word(ni, ho, n and go in your example), then you convert these sounds to kanji. Sometimes the conversion requires no choice from the user, and sometimes it does(such as ki, which could mean tree, spirit, etc.)
I believe a similar system is used for Chinese.
Remember though that predictive analysis can be used, in the same way that predictive text analysis can be used to enter words on cellphones. For example, when using handwritten input, potential characters can be filtered based on the type of strokes that have been written so far, as there is a certain stroke order for characters. There is also a potential for predictive analysis, as multiple-character words are fixed combinations. For example, if I write hana(flower), perhaps the next character will be ya(shop, thus turning the word into florist) or bi(fire, thus turning the word into fireworks).
But the real question is... which eastern language is the best suited for word input?
Good question. :P
Jean-Francois Im's blog
Then don't buy a fucking smart phone, get a normal phone. It ain't rocket science.
The bigger question is which shift is likely to be more important. Is the big shift going to be to generic touchscreens which are slight modifications of the current mouse programming interface or to multitouch which is an attempt at a basic reorganization of the human computer interface?
In the article they say: "Such devices are popular in the region for their ability to allow users to input Asian language characters with a stylus". A stylus driven touchscreen is inherently NOT multitouch. Multitouch is a niche market compared to touchscreens in general but it is also distinct from it. The article is about Newton era technology which is not the technology which drives the iPhone and iPod touch.
Secondly, the iPhone hasn't even been released in China, but is still a huge status symbol, and the upper-end electronics areas will prominently show iPhones for sale. When it does get released in China, it's sure to have Chinese-language writing support.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Japanese for "no" is iie (pronounced e-a).
1 whole extra syllable? They have shorter words for our longer words too (no examples off top of my head). "A-na-ta-wa" is "you", BUT the you is normally implied in speaking, and never said, so technically they dropped a syllable from the sentence.
All languages have shorter words for our longer words, and vice versa. Like questioned above, which has the best trade off, especially when writing full words.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
Frankly, who gives a flip which was the first!
What I'm interested in, is which device does it best, and I think it's pretty damn obvious which the winner is.
Moving parts yes, but fragile? What's fragile is a tablet screen without a flippable laptop keyboard protecting it during transport/storage/etc. Don't think of it as a laptop with a flippable touchscreen; think of it as a tablet PC with a built-in protective cover that doubles as a keyboard.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Dunno, I just started college and I got a tablet, along with 5 other friends, and here I regularly see a ton of tablets. They are catching on, it's just that until recently there haven't been many affordable tablets. But now HP's got the awesome tx2000/2500 series for under a grand USD, which is really nice. Also, the slate style tablets w/o flippable screens would suck for stuff like writing this comment. I don't see what's so complex about spinning the screen around. Everyone who sees it is pretty impressed, even a die-hard Mac user I know. Swiveling screens are actually useful beyond just converting to a tablet too, eg. if you're working on something and you want to show someone in front of you.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Yes, that's pretty much it.
I thought I would hate the iPhone, I only got one to be able to better support my customers, who were buying them like crazy.
I love it. Of course, I jailbroke it within half an hour of getting it, and it tethers and runs Netatalk - but it really is as good as the hype.
Actually, cellphones work like that already. In a recent trip to Japan (less than 4 months ago) everyone I knew used predictive input exactly like that.
And it wasn't the fancy phones. I bought the cheapest one at 100USD from au by KDDI and had that feature. Also, mine doesn't have predictive input for romajii (roman characters), and I have no idea if the fancier ones do.
The point is, it was very easy for my friends (as they told me) to input text very quickly.
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The iPhone already allows you to enter Asian languages with a finger:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/tips/
Basics -> International Keyboards -> scroll down to the bottom.
Okay, here's how hit works:
Yes, you could type in hiragana/katakana, but I know exactly no one who does. I don't know why. I thought I was being a lazy gaijin by typing in Roman characters, but then I found out that only a few serious secretaries or whatnot actually use the kana keyboard, which is unfortunate, I think, because it about doubles the number of keystrokes required, but whatever. I don't have to learn a new keyboard to type in Japanese.
So let's type "Nihongo" in a Japanese word processor, on a computer:
1) Type "n" -- "n" shows up on the screen /ni/. This is the sound, not the kanji.
/ho/
/n/, and "g" shows up
/go/.
2) Type "i" -- The "n" disappears and is changed to the hiragana character for the sound
3) Type "h" -- "h" shows up.
4) Type "o" -- changes to the character for
5) Type "n" -- "n" shows up
6) Type "g" -- The previous "n" changes to the character for
7) Type "o" -- The "g" disappears and turns into the character for
Now, all of this is underlined. That means it's not really set yet. So we hit space bar.
The characters for the sounds /ni-ho-n-go/ change to the kanji for the word that means Japanese language, as that is the most likely candidate for that string of sounds. If there were some other word with the same reading (I can't think of any) that I used frequently, that would be the computer's first guess.
If we need a different kanji, we hit the space bar again. If it's still not right, we hit it again and a little menu comes up that we can select from.
This is how it has worked for at least 10 years; before that, I don't know.
You actually don't have to convert to kanji after every word. If you just keep typing, it'll start converting behind you, to the most likely kanji. I find this dangerous, however, because you don't pay as much attention and you end up with gibberish sometimes. I tend to do a whole phrase at a time before hitting spacebar.
For cellphones, Japanese is already a lot easier to input than English. --So much so that my gaijin friends and I usually text in Japanese. Because the syllabary is organized by leading consonant and then following vowel (i.e. "ka" "ki" "ku" "ke" "ko"), you just tap that key until you get the sound you want (the "2" key for the /k/ sounds) and it starts predicting right away. Not just words, but entire phrases.
If, for example, I tap "1" twice for /i/, it comes up with the sentence "Ima doko," which means "where are you now?" --A very common thing to text to someone you're meeting.
I don't know how it works for Chinese, but I suspect it is similar. I am very suspicious about the claims of the summary that Asians, presumably with their wacky writing systems, need many keys for their impenetrable Oriental scribblings. But all I really know well is Japanese, and we do fine over here with QWERTY, and even handle the number pad as an input device better than alphabetic languages.