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Michael Magoon's avatar

Interesting. I worked at Microsoft as a UX Designer a few years before the IPhone was released. They were working on a new mobile phone interface with a physical keyboard. I suggested that they could make the screen much bigger if they used an in-screen keyboard.

The usability testers said (and I quote): “We tested that and the users hated it.”

No, they tested a poor implementation of a digital keyboard and users hated it. When customers got their hands on a good implementation, they loved it.

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Adrian Galilea's avatar

While I applaud your vision, and it is true that an in-screen keyboard won. I still hate every single in-screen keyboards :v

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Mark Heyer's avatar

I was at the introduction of the Macintosh at the Boston Computer Society, sitting right behind Woz. Jobs pulled the cover off the Macintosh, and it spelled Hello on the screen in script. The audience melted. In the Q&A, a critic ranted about how Apple could possibly ship a 3 1/2" plastic cased floppy disk instead of the "industry standard" 5 1/2" disk. Jobs pulled the securely packaged floppy out of the Mac and flung it into the audience like a Frisbee. His answer: "That's why!"

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Frank's avatar

Concerning your post on artificial ice: comparing artificial ice to artificial is a non-starter. Artificial ice is the same as natural ice, but artificial meat isn't the same as real meat....

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Frank's avatar

A doubtful track record. They didn't get rid of CD drives but simply externalized them. They wanted to get rid of USB to push their own proprietary connector but have now been forced to use USB-C as a standard (ouch). They didn't get rid of the keyboard but merely introduced a software keyboard. Macintosh and iMacs have been failures overall. Flash was the right call because it was replaced with open standards (to which Apple contributed very little). And inserting active bluetooth pieces into ears is arguably among the dumbest tech innovations out there.

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