On-Demand Largeness

I guess the above title sounds suspiciously like the spam that litters your, and my, inbox. With all the excitement about Apple's new iPhone it's hard not to be pumped as well. However as I clicked through the online demo on Apple's site, my first feeling was that it was doing too much for my own tastes. For me the high point of the demo was their solution to managing the task of typing on a small device.

The advantage of law1 is to reap the benefits of smallness in portability and perception of simplicity. But as anyone that daily types on little devices knows, it can get a bit tiring. I was wondering how Apple had resolved the problem of mating a touchscreen with a QWERTY keyboard and was happy to see their hover-expandbehavior for the keys. Each key can remain small and within an orderly grid at first glance, then by hovering your finger the on-screen key is made bigger so that you can see it better. It's a fairly simple idea and probably not brand new, but definitely a step forward in the awkward task of typing on a tiny virtual keyboard. Now let me see if I can find the teeny Publish button on this here blog system ...