Former engineer says hardware keyboard was "seriously considered" for original iPhone

10. sgtdisturbed47 posted on 28 Apr 2012, 15:55 2

Jobs would never have let it happen. The idea was to be as keyless as possible. Having a keyboard would have negated 90% of the overall design that changed the landscape of smartphones permanently.

13. CellularNinja posted on 29 Apr 2012, 06:38 0

I read the bio and what Isaacson said went along with Job's personality. I can't see him every wanting something as trivial as a built in keyboard being on his beautiful phone. He loved the idea of doing everything with the fingertip. (remember, he said no to the stylus)

7. HugeTroller (banned) posted on 28 Apr 2012, 05:14 0

the bottom 40s, blackberry LOL

9. Lucas777 posted on 28 Apr 2012, 15:31 0

cant go one article without citing apple vs android eh? but i agree, im glad they did not as personally i like virtual keyboards a lot better.. some people might not, but i would say the majority is fine with virtual keyboards

11. remixfa posted on 28 Apr 2012, 17:26 1

it took a lot for me to get away from a physical keyboard. some things are just easier.. especially from a hack/programming perspective.
What I would have liked to see was for them to invent some sort of better keyboard than what is offered. Not sure what.. just something better. I really thought RIM was onto something with the Pezio tech in the storms and was hoping that would be developed into something cool.. but alas, that didnt happen.

12. Lucas777 posted on 28 Apr 2012, 17:43 0

i agree the screen on the storm was decent just for a virtual keyboard, but i hated it for everything else... if they could find a way to only activate it when typing then that would be cool

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8. ivanko34 posted on 28 Apr 2012, 05:31 8

and apple will patent it even if it existed b4