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Comment by mmooss | Hacker News Reader

This could be read as a condemnation of the text input interfaces we've designed; the users are busy and have little choice. Typing on a phone still is awful:

* Very time-consuming, especially for edits/corrections

* Lacks functionality (where is undo? the right/left arrow keys?) and other functionality is very poor (mouse/pointer control)

* Frustrating!

* Consumes attention: I can type on a full keyboard while looking elsewhere - including talking to someone else, though of course all actions suffer. On full keyboards I can type while reading something, to transcribe it, or I can just watch the output. Or just imagine using keyboard-based commands (e.g., Vim) on a smartphone.

I've tried alternative screen keyboards and they are a bit better, but it still sucks a lot.

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Doing anything on a phone is a miserable experience, even compared to using a laptop, which is already a lot worse than a desktop with good input devices. IMO it's shocking how many professionals are willing to tolerate such bad interfaces. Compare how picky professional musicians are about the exact components and setups of their instruments. No amount of convenience should lure you into accepting touch screens.

touch screen phones are a useful compromise. If I'm going to write a lot I want a real keyboard and large monitor with all the features thereof. However often I just need a quick note and I'm not in the office. I would not carry a desktop computer to the airport (I'm old enough to remember the IBM XT luggable computer - built in CRT monitor, not battery: it was portable, but it was a real workout). A laptop is sometimes useful, and it isn't too bad to have one in a backpack, but it is still big and so won't be with you. A phone is the correct size of have in your pocket so you can "do something" while "the refs try to figure out which rule applies to this play".

Phones will always be miserable - but they are the least miserable option in a lot of situations and so I expect people to use them a lot just because the other tools are even worse.

Phones (really, the pocket/handheld form factor) are a necessity and are limited; I agree. We could deliver better text input interfaces for them.

For heavy typers, physical keyboards in candybar phones (.e.g, old Blackberrys, etc.) and landscape-oriented clamshells fix many issues, but those are outre for some reason. Even on-screen UIs could be better. Just arrow keys to move to the cursor precisely would be a signficant improvement.

I think the blackberry I had before the current trend of full touchscreen smartphones was the only cellphone I ever enjoyed using for the device itself.

The first Android phone had a physical keyboard and a little trackball. The rest of the phone was a bit anemic even by the standards of the time but those two features were glorious.

I still hold my uncles HTC dream and my droid 2 and wish for a landscape slider android phone. This is not Atlantis technology! Though it is 20 years old now, so probably there are HN readers here who think of that device with the same alien fascination I have for those who carried around Psion 3s in their college days when I was eating crayons.

Bingo. I have oft opined that the switch to an audiovisual culture was (bandwidth and compute gains notwithstanding) simply due to the piss poor ergonomics of the touch screen.

IRC was a literate culture, owing to its roots in the physical medium of the typewriter. It imposed technical barriers to entry selecting for a minimum of intelligence.

After kneecapping the literate media by destroying this input mechanism with touch screens, the audiovisual media flooded in to fill the vacuum - and brought with it the illiterate masses who now all see themselves as amateur videographers, unencumbered from the previous burdens of needing to "read the fucking manual."

That is a very interesting theory!

>Typing on a phone still is awful

I use a bluetooth keyboard for typing on my phone unless I'm out in the world. The number of people who want to have long-form conversations through a phone interface is shocking to me since it's such an awful experience and there are so, so many available alternatives.

I do that a lot. My phone doesn't have spellcheck though - it assumes I'm using a keyboard with autocorrect.

I'd agree UIs are a sh*tshow but just saying this misses the wide variety of things that can put under "language is usage". Of course, the article itself misses the way the reveals texts between current elites are more equivalent to the grunts of cigar smoking old boys in clubs than to formal business communication. And that's just scratching the surface of the implication of informal business and other language. "Is it laziness or power signaling?" - both in complex layers.

As a side note, I grew up in the era of typewriters and cursive and that "interface" was utterly miserable - composing at the typewriter was considered bad, a fair portion of people couldn't type and typists would/could be hired for various tasks. I was vastly heartened when PCs with word processors became available at the college computer center senior. I think text processing interfaces reach their apex around 2000s (fusing power and usability) but when something gets to certain optimality, it can only go down and that where phones are.

> a fair portion of people couldn't type and typists would/could be hired for various tasks

Was typing harder then than it is now for some reason? Or are you saying that editing now (compared to correcting ink typed onto paper) means you don't need as much skill?

Was typing harder then than it is now for some reason?

Uh, yes it was. A manual typewriter required you to exert enough force on each key to get a metal arm to strike a ribbon and make a mark. Pressing two close enough together in time would cause them to hit each. An electric typewrite required less finger effort but it would send vibrations back to one's fingers. Also, erasing mistakes was a serious pain in the neck. Also you had calculate line-breaks yourself, keep track of the end of each and so-forth. "Cut-and-paste" People did that with scissors and tape but, again, a total pain in the neck.

There was a reason that word processors were hailed as a great innovation.

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