I recently drove a car whose whole control and entertainment system was a gigantic iPad-like thing mounted to the dash. It caused me to have a realisation about the #Ui and #UX of touch screens.

There is no way to touch a touchscreen without it treating that touch as intentional. What I mean is: without taking my eyes off the road, I can grope across the dashboard, find a knob or button—by touching it—without activating any function. Touching the volume button or temperature knob doesn’t DO anything until I do it with more force and intentionality. Not so for a #touchscreen.

My mobile #phone (an #iPhone 13) has no dead space in its face. There’s no part of the phone face I can touch without it assuming I meant to do that and I wanted to activate whatever was under my finger. Old iPhones that had physical home buttons also had dead space to either side: a safe space to hold the phone without DOING anything.

Computer keyboard have little raised pips on the F and J keys so you can find them by touch without looking. I do this all the time. But I don’t type the letters F or J. Touch screens have no such affordances.

I look at the #blackberry keyboard in this photo and I see a raised space bar. It’s an #affordance that lets you orient your fingers, and orient how you hold the phone, without looking.

I miss buttons.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2025/02/15/blackberrys-expired-keyboard-patent/

You remember #Apple scanning all images on your #mobile device?

If you have an #Android #phone, a new app that doesn't appear in your menu has been automatically and silently installed (or soon will be) by #Google. It is called #AndroidSystemSafetyCore and does exactly the same - scan all images on your device as well as all incoming ones (via messaging). The new spin is that it does so "to protect your #privacy".

You can uninstall this app safely via System -> Apps.

https://developers.google.com/android/binary_transparency/google1p/overview