A Small iOS 4 on iPad Annoyance
No, this is not about what you might think: I’m not gonna bitch about the bloody screen orientation lock switch (i’ve done so already). Instead i’m going to complain about the german language onscreen keyboard in iOS 4 on iPad.
You see, in iOS 3.2 on iPad the overlay for inserting diacritical marks with the onscreen keyboard looked like this:
In iOS 4 on iPad the overlay for inserting diacritical marks looks like this:
Notice the difference? No, i’m not talking about the extra character or the fact that the overlay has expanded to two rows. What i’m trying to get at is that in iOS 3, the ΓΌ was preselected by default and in iOS 4, the u is preselected by default.
Admittedly this behavior is consistent with the overlay for diacritical marks on the english-language onscreen keyboard, where the u is preselected by default as well:
It’s also consistent with the overlay on german-language iPhone onscreen keyboards (where it has been this way since at least iPhone OS 2, probably earlier):
Nonetheless, i’ve always been a huge fan of the different overlay design on the iPad as opposed to the iPhone. When i tap-hold on a vowel on the onscreen keyboard, i almost always want to insert an umlaut, so preselecting that character made a lot of sense. Instead of tap-holding, waiting for the overlay to pop up, moving your finger to the desired character and releasing the finger from the screen, it was sufficient to tap-hold, wait for the overlay to pop up and simply release the finger in place. This might not sound like much of a difference when described like this, but in practice i’m pretty sure this behavior is at least twice as fast. Of course this issue is at least as much about frustration as efficiency. With the current implementation i’m always slightly irritated when entering umlauts.
I really hope Apple will reconsider this design decision not just on the iPad, but on the iPhone as well. Unfortunately i’m not sure if they’re expending the same amount of diligence for localizations as for their english language distribution…
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