TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: That iPhone Has a Keyboard, but It's Not Mechanical

That iPhone Has a Keyboard, but It's Not Mechanical

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:17:19 -0400

By JOHN MARKOFF
The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, June 12 - If there is a billion-dollar gamble
underlying Apple's iPhone, it lies in what this smart cellphone does
not have: a mechanical keyboard.

As the clearest expression yet of the Apple chief executive's spartan
design aesthetic, the iPhone sports only one mechanical button, to
return a user to the home screen. It echoes Steven P. Jobs's decree
two decades ago that a computer mouse should have a single button.
(Most computer mice these days have two.) His argument was that one
button ensured that it would be impossible to push the wrong button.

The keyboard is built into other phones, those designed for
businesspeople as well as those for teenagers. But the lack of a
keyboard could be seen as a clever industrial design solution. It has
permitted the iPhone to have a 3.5-inch screen. A big screen makes the
phone attractive for alternative uses like watching movies and that
could open up new revenue streams for Apple and its partner, AT&T.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/technology/13phone.ready.html?ex=1339387200&en=cb1776bd5e878ba2&ei=5090

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