On Jun 17, 2009, at 2:24 AM, Lord Groundhog wrote:
> As I say, I really don't want to be difficult about this, but I'm
> not having
> an easy time of seeing the point, either aesthetically or
> practically. Of
> course I may be wrong, and maybe the world has been waiting for the
> Enzo
> SportsPeople®™ and I just didn't know it.
>
I can't speak for the world, but I'm absolutely serious. The iPhone's
screen is about the same size as my old Palm Tungsten|T3, for which I
had a couple of external keyboards. For a time, Documents to Go on the
Palm was my primary word processor, with Word on my desktop only for
doing formatting. Most of my actual writing was done on PalmOS, either
with a stylus or an external keyboard. A folding keyboard takes up a
little more space than the iPhone itself, but one would certainly fit
into a jacket pocket.
If a seven-year-old PalmOS device (which people on this list are all
too happy to dismiss as useless) can be a laptop replacement, then the
iPhone really is a throwback if it can't be too, especially with a
screen the same size, scads more memory, a modern processor and
comparatively killer connectivity.
And though I may have said "laptop replacement" I really mean "desktop
replacement." I've never found Word or any other desktop GUI word
processor to make a good environment for writing. Docs2Go on the Palm
did. Wordsmith did even better but Docs2Go's synchronization made the
difference. Strip away all that unnecessary junk and just give me a
tiny screen full of text and something to type with and I'll have
writing nirvana. Give me a big screen full of stupid buttons for
making the text go in wavy lines or spirals, and multiple windows all
over the place with email alerts popping up and all that, and I can't
write worth a damn.
Which is not to say that I can write worth a damn anyway, but keeping
it simple keeps me focused and if I'm not a better writer I'm at least
a happier writer. From my perspective that's the same thing. (Anyone
else's perspective may be a different story.)
Steve
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Received on Wed Jun 17 05:59:45 2009
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