6 ms·

Truth be told, none of this was wrong. In 2023 the following is still true of iPhone: the keyboard is shit (physical beats glass any day). The durability is shi

Truth be told, none of this was wrong. In 2023 the following is still true of iPhone: the keyboard is shit (physical beats glass any day). The durability is shit. The battery life is shit, comparatively, but this was worked around by making the phone much larger and the battery not user-replacable. As it turns out, none of this was important as a decaying society, in a sort of dystopian positive feedback loop, placed far more importance on the ecosystem of mind-numbing, venture capital-backed social media tools as opposed to the efficient use of email and text messaging.

bishnu 3y ago
What about blackberries made them unsuitable for social media apps?
- wannacboatmovie 3y ago
  The lack of emphasis on video. The iPhone is a portable movie studio that occasionally can send messages or make phone calls (poorly). If social media was still largely text based, BB would be a more efficient device. Unfortunately, it has morphed into a shallow, rich media platform. What gets attention: TikTok dreck, Britney Spears and her wild Instagram videos, not elegant prose. We as a society can't look away from the trainwreck.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    I don't disagree, but still it's weird to me. I don't think I've ever sent anyone a video on my phone, I've hardly even recorded any. And I'm usually annoyed when I receive one. And I don't use social media at all. I suppose I'm the weird one.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    It's hard to imagine a more text heavy social media site than HN, but even here I'd rather have a touchscreen. I don't spend the majority of my time typing, I spend it reading with the occasional comment here and there. An adequate writing experience in exchange for a better reading experience is exactly the right tradeoff to make for almost every use case.
  - tempest_ 3y ago
    It is now but the first iphone only had a 2MP camera and did not even have 3g. Personally I think Swype and they keyboards like it is what did it in. The people here think they could type fast with a blackberry/ physical keyboard but I bet if they went back they would find the couldnt keep up with basic swype gestures.
MattRix 3y ago
“physical beats glass any day” evidence required
- loganc2342 3y ago
  Personally I think they’re correct…for typing. For any other use case, I would much, much rather have the extra screen space that a keyboard would require to be removed. Regardless, if I need to do a lot of typing, I’d rather use a computer.
  - Intralexical 3y ago
    > For any other use case, I would much, much rather have the extra screen space that a keyboard would require to be removed. I think Blackberry eventually hit the right formula with the Priv: Big full-body screen (including touch keyboard) most of the time, pkb to slide out when you really want to write something down. I'd say the same for the Keyone too, actually— Most phones are too tall to hold in one hand and read/use comfortably anyway, and having that slim keyboard along the bottom is really nice. It's just a shame they did it about five years too late, and then didn't do very much else right about the phones. Slider Pkb+Stock-ish Android would have been great to see more of.
- rajamaka 3y ago
  Does the lack of people using peripheral glass touchscreen keyboards on their PCs / laptops instead of physical keyboards count as evidence?
  - MattRix 3y ago
    For typing without looking at the keyboard, of course physical is better. However once you’re already looking right near the keybord like on a phone, the advantages diminish. The main thing about a screen under glass is all the other stuff you can do with it. Changing the keyboard for emojis and different languages, or just getting rid of it entirely to free up screen real estate etc.
- Keirmot 3y ago
function_seven 3y ago
I also miss my old Blackberry's keyboard. A lot. It's far and away my biggest gripe with what smartphones have become. And I had this gripe the first day I switched to an Android (and later to an iPhone). But I knew there was no going back. Everything else that was improved about the iPhone made up for that one huge drawback. People didn't rush to replace their Blackberries because "society is decaying". Or because of social media. They did so because the phone was tremendously more useful day-to-day. It was the first phone to have the real internet on it. Not some WAP bullshit, or stripped down mobile versions of sites, but real sites. And you could take and tweak photos on it much better than whatever was out there at the time. The built-in storage was huge. You could ditch your iPod and just use the phone. It was much faster, had a huge (at the time) screen, etc. It had multi-touch! Sounds like a quant feature now, but nothing else had that at the time. (Or, had some glitchy half-baked version of it that was more frustration than magic). It was, objectively speaking, a more capable device than the BBs. Except for typing. Then they just kept iterating on that design, quadrupling the resolution, the storage, the network speeds went 100x, and so on. Improvements coming every year that would effectively strand Blackberry in the past. Now in 2023? Literally the only thing I still miss is a physical keyboard. But I'm not so sure I'd actually choose a device with one, and give up the form factor that enables so much other stuff. I just don't write emails on the damn thing. Had Blackberry been able to stick around, they'd also have VC-backed social media tools and fart sound apps. Those weren't the differentiator between the two. I had the Facebook app on my Blackberry back in the day. So long as mobile data speeds increased, whatever form factor existed would get video support and all the other stuff you bemoan. The improvements in mobile networks enabled all of that, not the device form factor.
- wenc 3y ago
  I miss that Blackberry keyboard too -- I used to write long emails on that thing. But I'm told by folks younger than me that no one reads emails these days. It's all text or messaging, meaning much shorter messages, meaning an on-screen keyboard is more than up to the task. But it's not. I had high hopes for the Transformer model autocorrect in iOS 17 but a few days in I'm still backspacing a lot. The world has moved on though. I love my iPhone and wouldn't go back to a phone with a physical keyboard given a choice. I can only look back with nostalgia at what once was, perhaps never to be again.

bishnu 3y ago

What about blackberries made them unsuitable for social media apps?

wannacboatmovie 3y ago
The lack of emphasis on video. The iPhone is a portable movie studio that occasionally can send messages or make phone calls (poorly). If social media was still largely text based, BB would be a more efficient device. Unfortunately, it has morphed into a shallow, rich media platform. What gets attention: TikTok dreck, Britney Spears and her wild Instagram videos, not elegant prose. We as a society can't look away from the trainwreck.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I don't disagree, but still it's weird to me. I don't think I've ever sent anyone a video on my phone, I've hardly even recorded any. And I'm usually annoyed when I receive one. And I don't use social media at all. I suppose I'm the weird one.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  It's hard to imagine a more text heavy social media site than HN, but even here I'd rather have a touchscreen. I don't spend the majority of my time typing, I spend it reading with the occasional comment here and there. An adequate writing experience in exchange for a better reading experience is exactly the right tradeoff to make for almost every use case.
- tempest_ 3y ago
  It is now but the first iphone only had a 2MP camera and did not even have 3g. Personally I think Swype and they keyboards like it is what did it in. The people here think they could type fast with a blackberry/ physical keyboard but I bet if they went back they would find the couldnt keep up with basic swype gestures.

MattRix 3y ago

“physical beats glass any day” evidence required

loganc2342 3y ago
Personally I think they’re correct…for typing. For any other use case, I would much, much rather have the extra screen space that a keyboard would require to be removed. Regardless, if I need to do a lot of typing, I’d rather use a computer.
- Intralexical 3y ago
  > For any other use case, I would much, much rather have the extra screen space that a keyboard would require to be removed. I think Blackberry eventually hit the right formula with the Priv: Big full-body screen (including touch keyboard) most of the time, pkb to slide out when you really want to write something down. I'd say the same for the Keyone too, actually— Most phones are too tall to hold in one hand and read/use comfortably anyway, and having that slim keyboard along the bottom is really nice. It's just a shame they did it about five years too late, and then didn't do very much else right about the phones. Slider Pkb+Stock-ish Android would have been great to see more of.
rajamaka 3y ago
Does the lack of people using peripheral glass touchscreen keyboards on their PCs / laptops instead of physical keyboards count as evidence?
- MattRix 3y ago
  For typing without looking at the keyboard, of course physical is better. However once you’re already looking right near the keybord like on a phone, the advantages diminish. The main thing about a screen under glass is all the other stuff you can do with it. Changing the keyboard for emojis and different languages, or just getting rid of it entirely to free up screen real estate etc.
Keirmot 3y ago

function_seven 3y ago

I also miss my old Blackberry's keyboard. A lot. It's far and away my biggest gripe with what smartphones have become. And I had this gripe the first day I switched to an Android (and later to an iPhone). But I knew there was no going back. Everything else that was improved about the iPhone made up for that one huge drawback. People didn't rush to replace their Blackberries because "society is decaying". Or because of social media. They did so because the phone was tremendously more useful day-to-day. It was the first phone to have the real internet on it. Not some WAP bullshit, or stripped down mobile versions of sites, but real sites. And you could take and tweak photos on it much better than whatever was out there at the time. The built-in storage was huge. You could ditch your iPod and just use the phone. It was much faster, had a huge (at the time) screen, etc. It had multi-touch! Sounds like a quant feature now, but nothing else had that at the time. (Or, had some glitchy half-baked version of it that was more frustration than magic). It was, objectively speaking, a more capable device than the BBs. Except for typing. Then they just kept iterating on that design, quadrupling the resolution, the storage, the network speeds went 100x, and so on. Improvements coming every year that would effectively strand Blackberry in the past. Now in 2023? Literally the only thing I still miss is a physical keyboard. But I'm not so sure I'd actually choose a device with one, and give up the form factor that enables so much other stuff. I just don't write emails on the damn thing. Had Blackberry been able to stick around, they'd also have VC-backed social media tools and fart sound apps. Those weren't the differentiator between the two. I had the Facebook app on my Blackberry back in the day. So long as mobile data speeds increased, whatever form factor existed would get video support and all the other stuff you bemoan. The improvements in mobile networks enabled all of that, not the device form factor.

wenc 3y ago
I miss that Blackberry keyboard too -- I used to write long emails on that thing. But I'm told by folks younger than me that no one reads emails these days. It's all text or messaging, meaning much shorter messages, meaning an on-screen keyboard is more than up to the task. But it's not. I had high hopes for the Transformer model autocorrect in iOS 17 but a few days in I'm still backspacing a lot. The world has moved on though. I love my iPhone and wouldn't go back to a phone with a physical keyboard given a choice. I can only look back with nostalgia at what once was, perhaps never to be again.