Death of QWERTY
What would Christopher Latham Sholes say about this? Indian mobile phone maker–Lava International Ltd–has created two phones sans QWERTY since “a large segment of mobile users who are not familiar or comfortable with QWERTY or Multi-tap keypads.”
They are talking about folks who have grown up without a computer and rely on their mobile devices for everything. While I find this hard to believe that people would choose ALPHA over QWERTY, it does bring up an interesting point. Does QWERTY still have relevance in our abbreviated lexicon?
Mr. Sholes orgininally developed QWERTY to increase productivity (but not too much) for those on a typewriter. But I wonder if that productivity (or an even stream of productivity) can still be accomplished when folks type things like, “OMG,” “Thx,” and “FML.”
Regardless–this is an interesting move that could (but probably won’t) change how consumers use their mobile keypad.
Interesting. I like QWERTY cuz I'm used to it but I'm sure I could get used to a new keyboard as well. Kind of like the difference between using MACs and PCs. No?
I thought so too. Ryan even mentioned that perhaps the keyboard of the future (that sounds like it's from an 80's scifi flick) would not be either QWERTY or ALPHA, but perhaps something completely different.
I'm even thinking that it could be a mix of emoticons/words that are commonly used, or something that includes characters similar to chinese. But that is thinking really crazy.
Love that you are addressing this. It reminds me of an article I read last year in the WSJ about people calling for the Dvorak (DSK) keyboard option on their cell phones: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12540929849604487...
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