Apple’s being Apple, and it drives me nuts
I want a wider iPhone. I’m not good at fitting my thumbs onto the iPhone when I’m typing in portrait mode. Those little keys can use bigger targets to his while typing. Oh, and when you turn the phone into landscape, there’s about an inch of text you can see. That doesn’t help. Despite all the icons and tapping and wiz bang in iOS, typing is still kinda important.
This is where Apple drive me nuts. Their reason to not make the phone wider? Because it should fit in your hand and be usable with a thumb. Now, I’m a gadget lover and I palmed a 5” Galaxy Note for a month. I never found it too big for my hands. Sure, I have large hands, but so do many people using an iPhone.
The bigger problem is that Apple’s is not being consistent. That’s why I’m mad. Apple’s being Apple. If my thumb can’t reach across to touch icons on a wider phone (which it can), then it sure as hell won’t be able to reach up and touch anything on the top of the phone! As is, my thumb can barely reach the top of the iPhone 4S when I’m holding it as Apple suggests… You’re going to add an inch up there? How will I touch that email icon I’ll have on the top row of my desktop?
I don’t know who made this diagram, but it’s pretty much perfect:
I’m saying I can reach, though, I’m just baffled by Apple’s double standard. It’s the same thing the used to say when pumping up their PowerPC chips before moving over to Intel’s. They used to say their own chips were twice as fast as equivalent PCs with Intel. When they switched to intel, they bragged about how their computers would now be two times faster as they were. Can’t have it both ways.
Sometimes Apple gets it right, like Retina display. It makes sense, it educates the consumer. But, ”we know how far a thumb can reach sideways, and it’s less than it can reach upwards” is horse shit. The reason Apple didn’t make this phones wider is changing that would really inconvenience the developers who have build 500,000 apps for iOS. Extending the screen one way and maintaining it a Retina display = X amount of work. Two ways = 4X amount of work.
So, be honest, Apple. You’re helping out the developers who helped you out. You say we need a bigger phone, but just longer, not wider?
Oh, and if you find “typing refuge” in turning the phone landscape? Good luck on the iPhone 5. I’m sure Apple knows how hard you’ll have to stretch to hit those center keys [T G V Y H or B]. Apparently, that stretching sideways across the massive candybar shape is ok, but not across the width of the phone in portrait mode.
And, in portrait mode, you’ll still only have that tiny inch of text to type in…
OOOOOH, AND: You know how you’re in the habit of tapping the top of the screen to jump to the top of a web page or twitter feed or ANYTHING? Forget that.
