Comments on: Stylus vs. Finger

By: Steve A

Steve A — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:59:18 +0000

Did you ever follow up on your comments on granularity? Two years on and with the continued march of touch interfaces and the possibly imminent arrival of an “iPad”, it would be interesting to think through the pros/cons of the finger (always “handy” , not very accurate) and the stylus (familiar for writing, never where you left it, etc…). I’d be interested in others thoughts…

By: todd

todd — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:26:51 +0000

Patrick: As far as I am aware the human finger is the only, um, “substance” the iPhone/iPod touch screen is designed to work with. It does not work with a stylus.

By: patrick vaughan

patrick vaughan — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 01:57:03 +0000

So what substance can be substitued for a finger on the apple Touch screen?

By: Ralph Johnson

Ralph Johnson — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:21:13 +0000

I have a Ipod tough and very large fingers. I also wear gloves in the winter.

I find it extremely difficult to use the touch pad, particularly along the edges when the ipod is in a case. with gloves on, it doesn’t work at all.

Any pencil shaped aluminum or steel object will work as a stylus as long as it has a flat end, and is the size of a pencil or larger. You can even use the flat end of a AAA battery. Its a good idea to put a piece of tape over the end to avoid scratching the glass. This keeps oily smudges off the screen as well.

I can write a e-mail much more quickly using the stylus. IMO, the built-in text completer is useless to me, it guesses the wrong word 90% of the time.

By: Konstantin Kalinin

Konstantin Kalinin — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:46:01 +0000

You know, you can have on your Pocet PC the same contact management experience as on iPhone with FunContact VITO Technology has recently released. You can find it here: http://iWindowsMobile.com/contact-manager.html
With FunContact you can throw away the stylus altogether. Contact list is scrolled easily with fingers, you can do everything with fingers actually.

Look out for more software with iPhone like interface at http://iWindowsMobile.com

By: Randy Smith

Randy Smith — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:37:53 +0000

I have to say that I can enter text far more quicky on my iPod touch than with a stylus on a PDA..either in keyboard or Handwriting recognition mode. Using my cellphone to write is so much of a pain I don’t do it unless I really need to. It also makes you wonder why a cellphone without a qwerty keyboard should have an IM client on it. The person on the other end would have to watch text appear ONE………….WORD……………AT………..A…………..TIME.

Since I have gotten used to the iPod Touch I really like the way it works for inputing text.