C.K. Sample

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Dear DataViz and Quickoffice (link dead; removed) developers:

Have you seen all the recent iPhone OS 3.0 keynotes? They’re pretty amazing. OS 3.0 now supports peripherals that interface with actual applications and a few people who were up on stage at these keynotes demoed some pretty impressive peripherals, like one that takes blood sugar count for people with diabetes. That’s insane.

So, my big question is why hasn’t anyone designed a simple folding keyboard peripheral yet for the iPhone, like all those PDA keyboards that were so popular for so long? I realize that you’re probably limited to making such a device work only with your application and not across the entire device due to Apple restrictions. Please make me a keyboard dock for my iPhone that works with your word processing software and that lets me prop up my iPhone in landscape mode as a screen. If you build such a device and price it reasonably, I will buy it.

I realize you’re not in the hardware game, so might I recommend that you reach out to Belkin, Griffin Technologies, or one of the other leading Apple hardware peripheral makers and partner with them to make this happen?

If you want to design such a device so that it will actually work system wide on the iPhone and iPod touch with any application that uses the software keyboard, but Apple proves to be uncooperative in enabling such an endeavor, I’ll gladly sign multiple online petitions (that Apple will most likely ignore as Apple is wont to do) and talk about it ad nauseum on this blog.

Thanks for your time and attention to this matter. I look forward to seeing what you produce.

Sincerely,

C.K. Sample III

ps—If you’re reading this and you agree, please comment below or retweet this post. If you’re not Dataviz or Quickoffice and you’re designing such a keyboard or you have built such a keyboard, please let me know about it.

Developers: Find out how to submit your iPhone applications to me for review.