Back to the Future with iPhone Typing

Reading a review of Documents To Go, a Microsoft Office-compatible document creater/reader app for the iPhone (as well as many other PDAs/smartphones) made me think of the old “laptops” that first appeared in the early 80’s. When typing on the iPhone in landscape mode you only get a few lines of text remaining visible, and Documents To Go exacerbates this further with additional menu bars that take up more vertical real estate (though they can be invisible-ized when not needed).

Here’s a screenshot from the MacWorld review. As you can see, there are only 3 lines of text visible (perhaps 5 with the menu bar off):

Here’s what the old Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 looked like, perhaps the world’s first true laptop computer from 1983:

Two and a half decades later and we’re back where we started…

If you’re just typing a quick message then such a letterboxed view is perhaps acceptable, but for working properly on a multi-page Word doc it’s just horrible. I would sometimes use my old Palm Tungsten T3 (which had one of the larger Palm screens) along with a fold-up keyboard, and it actually wasn’t too bad. But that’s my minimum for a tolerable experience when writing anything even moderately lengthy.

I have to admit that I find myself less and less enamored of the forced compromise that the iPhone creates between keyboard and content by placing both on the same screen. I don’t find any of the permutations satisfactory for what I need. Obviously I’m in a minority however, as most people love their iPhones according to one recent very small-scale survey.

Computer Museum

I stumbled across a rather good computer museum while in Paris, at the top of the Grande Arche of all places. It had a great collection of vintage gear. Here are a few of the more interesting images of some classic computing paraphenalia. You can see the whole gallery here.

The Apple IIc, designed by frog design, where I work, back in the day

A rather interesting leather-wrapped one designed to mimic a briefcase, for the high-powered executive looking to lug around 20 pounds of gear

Ah, the Sinclair ZX81, which I learned to program in BASIC on. Very cheap, very slow, very little memory (1 kilobyte of RAM, no hard drive), but actually quite innovative in many ways.

The “Trash 80” from Radio Shack. Back when Radio Shack was a computing super-power…

No idea what these buttons do, but they look cool

A recreated “typical” teenage computer geek bedroom, circa 1982

I’m not sure that “Environment of exploitation” means the same thing in French as it does in English, but it is humorously apropos for Microsoft

A Cray Super Computer in stylish green vinyl. When it’s cold in the winter, you can sit on its warming bench.

Lastly, some switches on an old piece of equipment