iPhone gets a decent keyboard Developers have managed to hack together a Human Interface driver for the iPhone, allowing any Bluetooth keyboard to be used on jailbroken iPhones. The software doesn't work in all applications, but does connect most applications to the kind of travel keyboard which is making laptops redundant, even if it can't do copy and …
"give me the laser keyboard"
Exactly my thoughts. I hope Jobs will either take that concept and use it himself (barf, it'll be an iLaser, I guess) or enable a decent stack in the iPhone so this sort of stuff can just be done. It's ridiculous to have a phone which is both forward in functionality as well as backwards.
What's more, they could use this as a testbed for doing the same in the iTablet or whatever it's called, which I expect to cause a bit of havoc in the me-too market of eBook readers. I'm not an Apple fan (still have PCs) and I dislike Jobs-the-dictator as much as I like Ballmer-the-Gates-proxy-dictator, but for my purposes they have simply hit the mark better than the competition - which is why they get my hard earned cash..
This post has been deleted by its author
Apple's blatant disregard for bluetooth standards is typical of them. After a shaky start, bluetooth was getting to the point where it just worked, even across multiple types of device. Why not just support proper bluetooth stuff (file exchange, HIDs etc) like EVERY OTHER PHONE.
Yesterday there were what, 3 iPhone and 1 Apple stories on the first page, and today another iPhone story, is the register a convert to the jobsian way or something and trying to force apple upon us so we defect from PC's and crackberries? Does any other phone or company get the coverage on this website that apple and the iphone is getting?
You sound like one of those people who won't go and see Avatar because everyone else has told you how good it is, but they can't possibly know what they are talking about cos you know everything, and it doesn't look that good in the preview...
iPhone gets coverage because its freakin' amazing compared to any other phone, Apple get the coverage because their software is freakin' amazing compared to Windows PC software...
Usually I'd say don't believe the hype, but with Avatar, iPhone and Apple, believe it...
(Note to Editor: We need an Avatar blue alien icon...)
I liked it because it represents new myths and constructs while celebrating old ones. The portal is real for every astral head that travels between zero and one. The universe is expanding faster than the speed of light. That is a fact. So it can't be infinite, right? Well, the poly verse does go on forever.
Our death is but one glimpse into the chorus of this. We have to expand to be a sovereign universe. krmoss
I prefer technical articles to the glamor articles which pass for news these days.
Technical articles are good, satirical entertainment is good, unfortunately I have to put up with the rest. The register used to stand out as a unique news source, but now I read it mostly as a matter of habit.
Richard posts, "Whatever next? HD camcorder and external display?"
The iPhone already has an external display adapter. It plugs into the doc adapter.
The Bluetooth keyboard with a doc display adapter makes it a portable media center!
A little silver apple Bluetooth keyboards on an iPhone would be perfect with a Bluetooth mouse.
Apple's handicapping of the HID interface is a barrier to art and science. Just think with two iPhones attached to a builder's helmet you could have a wrap-around augmented reality set-up to replace the laptop-backpack in this rig http://flickr.com/photos/57005975@N00/2901858344
Coat: off to the patent office ...
Coming soon to an Apple Store near you: iDentures. The problem with keyboards is all those damn keys, it is inelegant. Now which part of the human anatomy has lots of knobs that generally are not used for anything except during short intervals when a keyboard wouldn't be used anyhow?
Yep, teeth. The new iDentures will fit into your mouth and be connected via Bluetooth to the iPhone. Each "tooth" resonates at a unique frequency picked up via a downloadable iApp for what I assure you is a mere pittance. All one need do is tap a tooth with a tongue...doesn't even have to be your own. Those with wisdom teeth gain an extra 4 characters and eligible for the Steve Jobs Effervescent Glow Club. Plus there is the cool retro-look you'll gain by appearing as a 13 year old with braces.
Thanks for the humor in this article, even if it wasn't intended as such. It absolutely made my day!
"even if it can't do copy and paste just yet"
"it'll even underline spelling mistakes in red, which is surely what computers are for"
(I think my good old Model M will live after one more dishwasher ride...)
that jobs thinks he knows what everyone wants or needs. Unfortunately in this he is mistaken.
People should be free to connect or install whatever they want into Apple products, after all the ownership has been transferred from Jobs to the purchaser. I have a non-Apple smartphone product and I have added a keyboard and other goodies.
Another reason id that Apple refuses to honour the terms of its warranty which is serious when you consider that batteries are blowing up and catching fire.
Korean companies honour their warranties to the letter and even beyond.
They're selling loads of them, they really don't care if a minority of geeks don't buy them. Your average consumer just wants the device to work, they don't care whether it's an open platform or not. They're telly or PVR isn't an open platform, so they don't expect their phone to.
Geeks just don't get it.
I sometimes have bad days where everything I type is wrong, but a lot of the time it's very quick to use the iPhone keyboard. In fact I often wonder if once you're proficient with it, it would be faster to use than say the physical keyboard on the Pre, because you only need a feather touch to activate each key on the iPhone. The auto-correction is what makes the iPhone keyboard work so well. It is very good at working out what mangled set of letters you've entered are meant to be. It took me a while to get used to it, as it felt backwards compared to the way Windows Mobile did it, but now that I'm used to it, I do have to grudgingly admit his Jobsness got it right.
That said, I'd really like to see Apple improve the auto-correction on the iPhone even more. It can identify mistyped letters but it can't identify mis-ordered letters. A simple example would be "the". If I typed "yhe" it would correct that to "the" automatically. But if I typed "teh" it wouldn't fix that. Accidentally double tapping a letter as "thhe" isn't auto-corrected either. It would be really great if they could look into that for future firmware updates. I'm sure the horsepower and memory is available, it's just a case of doing the hard work coding it! :)
Sadly, Google Android also ignores this important standard. It would be a big differentiator, IMHO. Happily, 3rd party solutions are becoming available for android as well:
http://www.mymobilegear.com/showthread.php?p=11488#post11488
Personally I LOVED being able to take notes for a days worth of meetings, without having to worry about battery life or lugging around a laptop + A/C. If I have a long document to write, or want to emails/letters to family/friends in a coffee shop, it's so much faster and easier to pull a phone and keyboard out of my coat pocket than to set up a laptop. Is it for everyone? No. But wtf, pda keyboards have been around for 10y. To not support them is idiotic.
Got it working using the iMac bluetooth keyboard, nice demo, but still waiting for the completed App which will let you use it in other applications. Will be good if someone works out how to use a bluetooth mouse to replicate the touch screen movements, then all I'd need is the £250 mini projector, and I'd have a Micro iMac...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
