[HN Gopher] Show HN: iPhone 2005 weird "Blob Keyboard" simulator
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: iPhone 2005 weird "Blob Keyboard" simulator
Hi HN, I teach tech design history, and one of the key stories I
cover is the development of the original iPhone keyboard by Ken
Kocienda. Reading about it in his book "Creative Selection" is
great, but I wanted my students (and now you!) to actually _feel_
this step in the process. So, I built a web simulator of the "Blob
Keyboard", Kocienda's very first attempt at a touchscreen keyboard
that actually works, from September 2005: Try the Blob Keyboard:
https://juliendorra.github.io/blob-keyboard-simulator/blob-k... -
Tap for the middle letter - Swipe left or right for the side
letters More on the github repo:
https://github.com/juliendorra/blob-keyboard-simulator The Blob
Keyboard prototype emerged during a UX crisis for iPhone team
(their software keyboard just didn't work at all, fingers being too
big, and the Newton failure loomed over them), highlighting how
innovation is rarely a straight path. It was developed on a
tethered touchscreen display codenamed "Wallaby". To make this
simulator as authentic as possible, I referenced images from
Kocienda's book and even got direct feedback and guidance from Ken
Kocienda himself on Bluesky. What to expect (or... what not to
expect): This is a reconstruction of a very early prototype with
limitations reflecting that specific moment. The goal was to test
first if typing with accuracy was even possible, as all the rest
was moot if it failed! It's NOT QWERTY: They were still hoping to
get us out of QWERTY, but then familiarity won. No Backspace: You
can't delete. No Cursor Movement: The text field is just a simple
display. No Caps or Numbers: Only lowercase letters. No Smooth
Animations: Keys just "pop" instantly when pressed. Kocienda noted
that your eye fills in the gaps, giving a sense of movement. Best
Experience: While it works with a mouse/trackpad on desktop, it's
designed for touchscreens to better replicate the original Wallaby
hardware interaction. Use it on your phone! This project aims to
provide a tangible glimpse into a turning point moment in iPhone
development and the iterative nature of design. It's like stepping
back in time and trying out that early demo on Kocienda's desk. I
would love to hear your reactions and thoughts on experiencing this
piece of UI history! What other significant prototype do you wish
you could experience?
Author : juliendorra
Score : 71 points
Date : 2025-04-05 18:20 UTC (4 hours ago)
| DerJacques wrote:
| This is really cool! What a neat little exploration.
|
| I didn't know about the history of the iOS keyboard, and this was
| a great insight.
| juliendorra wrote:
| Check the repo for more infos, and be sure to read at least the
| interview with Ken Kocienda, and maybe his book!
| smitelli wrote:
| The thing I found interesting in trying to type out a single test
| sentence is how many of the letters were reachable with just a
| tap. It wasn't until I really studied the layout closely that I
| noticed that it wasn't in true alphabetical order. Oddly
| intuitive, although I would probably despise using it long-term.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The most common English letters are found at the top of the
| triad, and some only have punctuation as the other option -that
| makes for easy navigation
| juliendorra wrote:
| Right, I noticed that too! (especially typing in english, might
| be different in other languages)
|
| That's why it's totally different to learn about an UX and
| actually experiment it, we can notice these things.
|
| But, all in all, I think you would probably get used to it long
| term!
|
| The QWERTY layout was just a fluke, not the super optimized
| layout we retcon it to be.
|
| Even its designer later designed different layouts! But the
| particular typewriter it was designed for had a big commercial
| success, so there was marketing convergence. It's of course
| wholly unadapted to typing on glass!
| gfiorav wrote:
| Spent maybe 3 min with it and got the hang of it. I thought no
| qwerty was going to be a deal breaker but I think I could get
| "fluent" with it in a day or two.
|
| The worst parts are: no upper case and the fact that there's no
| connection between what you typed and the keyboard once you
| submit.
| juliendorra wrote:
| Yeah, the goal of this particular prototype was to try and find
| a way to make typing letters actually possible! The iPhone team
| at this moment was in real trouble, as the naively 1-to-1
| keyboard was absolutely unusable!
|
| They stopped the whole 15 developers iPhone OS team and asked
| all developers to only build keyboard prototypes until they all
| would have something worth of a demo. As far as I know it's
| unheard of in the history of OS development!
|
| Ken Kocienda was not in charge of the keyboard at all
| originally, he stumbled upon one working solution, and that's
| really what I found interesting in this prototype: it's a step
| in the iterative process.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Does the book discuss capacitive vs resistive touchscreens?
|
| At the time you basically had two choices for touchscreens:
| resistive or capacitive. Resistive was "obviously" the way to go
| because it was far more accurate. Choosing capacitive was
| inspired -- when used with stubby fingers the accuracy problem
| was moot, and it allowed multi-touch.
|
| Just before the iPhone came out I was fairly confident I knew
| what the future was. It was now possible to create a phone with
| the horsepower to run a real web browsers. 800x600 pixel screens
| were available which would display normal web pages nicely, and a
| resistive touch screen with a stylus would make them useful.
|
| Then the iPhone came out. 320x480 screen meant normal web pages
| wouldn't display properly, inaccurate touchscreen meant tap
| targets needed to be increased massively. Why would anybody buy
| an iPhone which didn't allow you to install apps, and the web was
| unusable because it required rewriting every page since existing
| pages were unusable. Instead you could buy a phone which allowed
| you to install apps and which allowed you to usably access the
| web. Obviously the iPhone would be a failure. :)
| juliendorra wrote:
| Yes, the book explains how everything started from the
| capacitive touchscreen. The initial idea (2004-2005) was to
| build a Mac tablet computer based on touch screens. Bas Ording
| designed all the interactions we know, rubber band and inertial
| scrolling, the home screen... for a mac tablet!
|
| So really the capacitive screen drove the interactions. Input
| first, just like the mouse on Macintosh or the stylus on
| Newton, everything then flows from there.
|
| On the web browser, I disagree with you (sorry!), the killer
| app of the iPhone was that Safari was the same Safari, with the
| same capacity and rendering, than on desktop.
|
| It was completely new. Yes, you had to double tap on complex,
| non responsive websites, but every single (non-flash) site
| would render the same.
|
| My 640x480 HTC Universal with a plastic keyboard felt
| antiquated compared to the 320x480 iPhone, especially starting
| with the 3GS
| Lammy wrote:
| > The initial idea (2004-2005) was to build a Mac tablet
| computer based on touch screens.
|
| There was lots of speculation about this starting in 2002
| when "Inkwell" handwriting recognition showed up in Mac OS X
| Jagwire:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkwell_(Macintosh)
|
| https://www.macworld.com/article/155597/wacom.html
|
| https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mac-
| os-x/0596004605/ch0...
|
| And related patent filings go as far back as 2000:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US7564995B1/en
| mikestew wrote:
| _320x480 screen meant normal web pages wouldn 't display
| properly_
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by that. The whole point of the demo
| was it rendered the New York Times website just as it rendered
| in desktop Safari. In contrast to, say, Windows Mobile which
| would butcher the rendering. If the touch targets were too
| small, well, through the wonders of multitouch, pinch to zoom
| in.
|
| _the web was unusable because it required rewriting every page
| since existing pages were unusable_
|
| You're remembering a much different iPhone than I am. Are you
| sure not confusing it with WinMo 5/6? Because then we'd be in
| some agreement.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It rendered just fine on the sharp Zaurus or the Nokia phone
| sized Linux tablets, and was a much more pleasant experience
| than the iPhone pinch and zoom and pan and scroll.
|
| But but on any mainstream phones. The phone I reference
| didn't exist. It could have and should have. If it did,
| perhaps Nokia would have survived.
| wil421 wrote:
| When I saw the first iPhone commercial I knew it was the future
| immediately. Pinch to zoom and all the pleasures of a touch
| screen. Plus a web browser comparable to a desktop but with
| mobile usability.
|
| The web experience and usability of the original windows phone
| and blackberries was terrible. Nokia had a Swiss Army knife
| that didn't sell or translate well to the iPhone/Android
| future.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Well to be fair, people did demand you be able to install apps
| and this feature was added shortly after.
|
| I guess phones getting new features via updates was fairly
| uncommon at the time though.
| endofreach wrote:
| Wow, i always think "i wish there was a demo" of each iterative
| step on these kind of design journeys. And especially the iOS
| keyboard, as i thought a lot about it. Awesome that you made
| this.
|
| I really like their idea to make the touch keyboard work well by
| increasing the (invisible) "padding" area for the key most likely
| to be typed next. So obvious in hindsight but demos like your's
| show part of the journey.
|
| There are rumors that in the beginning they tried the ipod wheel
| as the user input interface.
|
| While working on my device, that idea is super motivating. I know
| where i am headed and have done a lot of work and really got
| something very, very interesting already. But a few parts are yet
| not clear at all. But, i am definitely further than our
| "clickwheel" stage. Not yet at the "secret padding" stage for
| some input ideas, but still.
|
| In case you are free and interested to loosely talk about ideas
| or feedback you have for a very novel device (and interface),
| please let me know how to reach out. Just because you made this
| demo, i feel we'd get a long & i can learn a lot from you. And
| this might be a very interesting challenge for someone like you.
| Anyway, great work!
| juliendorra wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, the blob keyboard opened the way to the idea of
| decoupling what the user see and what the software keyboard
| takes into account.
|
| Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn! I'd be happy to chat
| ano-ther wrote:
| Cool. And nicely implemented.
|
| Having texted with T9 this didn't feel too alien. Just the accept
| button slowing me down.
| dvdkon wrote:
| Thanks for making this! I hadn't even heard of this keyboard
| layout prototype until now.
|
| I have a few friends that use gesture-based keyboards similar to
| this, and I myself use gestures to type diacritics and
| punctuation. So this idea is still alive after almost two
| decades, just not mainstream.
| werecat wrote:
| Neat prototype. While the key layout is unfamiliar, I could
| definitely get used to this. The layout reminds me of old cell
| phone typing, where each number had a set of letters associated
| with it and you had to press multiple times to get the letter you
| wanted. I wonder if testers at the time got confused trying to
| type like that.
| Ntrails wrote:
| Yeah i had the same vibes and could definitely see a refined
| version of that being very quick to type on
| collingreen wrote:
| This is cool! Thanks for building it and sharing it. I think
| phone keyboards are simultaneously amazing that they work at all
| and also still need huge improvements. There was a moment in the
| early mobile app explosion where we had some cool experimental
| keyboards but they mostly fizzled out, were acquired and shut
| down, or didn't reach their potential (looking at you, keymunk).
| I still think about this space all the time but, like password
| managers, it requires such a vast amount of trust I think it's a
| hard business to get into.
|
| Was hoping the LLM boom would help us get sane autocorrect to
| help bridge the gap but so far that hasn't happened either.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| This is excellent and I appreciate your work. I love seeing
| prototype interface, and this one has real promise. I immediately
| found myself thinking about alternative layouts, particularly
| adaptive ones with common letter-pairs appearing radially.
| kace91 wrote:
| Isn't this basically just t9 from the physical keyboard era? I
| was very used to it as a teenager.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-05 23:00 UTC)