gadgetration

[adularia]

Dear fuckwit:
Yes, you have an iPhone. I can see that, and hear it too. How nice for you.

The clickety-clack of your "keys" is driving me FUCKING CRAZY, two rows behind you. Your $599 chromed plastic brick of noise pollution is still noise pollution. It is severely harshing my enjoyment of chapter 16 of A Pattern Language, which, curiously enough

Comments

[adularia]

Yes, quite a few of them.

I'm trying to come up with a nice UX-y justification for the profusion of event noises on both the Sidekick and the iPhone. All of the other phones I've played with belong to other people, who have the sense to turn them off.

I suppose it might give you a bit of sensory feedback on whether your keystrokes are registering, as it's pretty tricky to learn the optimal typing rhythm, but that only needs to be the barest sound audible in your environment. By default, it's loud enough to hear across a bus, or across a loud 12-person table at a restaurant. In my professional opinion, that's less "affordance" and more "status wank."

[randomdreams]

There's a rapidly expanding market for portable EMP generators with directional antennae...

[stolen_tea]

Possibly the iPhone touch sounds come from the iPod interface? They built in a special speaker specifically to make noise when you used the dial. :)

Oooh, you're reading A Pattern Language! That's so cool; it's on my reading list, and it's come up several times in the last few weeks, when talking with various people in the job search. :)

[adularia]

You're probably right about the iPhone noise... it sounds similar to the iPod click, and that occurred to me in writing my comment to arjache. For both the iPhone and iPod, it makes some sense, since you're trying to select a discrete item using an analog and highly finicky interface.

And yeah, I'm enjoying APL (and The Timeless Way of Building). I think three or four people recommended them to me, too, before I got round to picking them up.

[finatronics]

wouldn't it be nice if they encoded the actual letters being typed into that clicky sound... it wouldn't be at all hard to do in the higher-frequency (ultrasonic?) components of the mostly-white-noise clicking sound, and it would certainly be impossible to hear... but with the right mic and software we'd have no problem reading everyone's iPhone messages from 12+ feet away ;)

who knows, maybe there's a code can be entered externally to send messages via similar clicky noises... or a virus to allow 'em to do so... or...