The Celtx screenwriting software folks sent me an email announcing V2.0 of their iPhone scriptwriting app (Celtx Script), and while it’s an impressive achievement, I have to ask:
Who’s writing on their iPhone?
So who's writing scripts on their smartphone?
My waterproof/ruggedized Casio Android phone is light years ahead of that ungainly fecal remnant that was the Blackberry Storm (guess who’s never buying another Blackberry anything), but my thumbs are porky and lazy, and if I was forced to write more than 100 words on my smartphone I’d probably just tell the client to find another copywriter.
My wife’s iPhone really isn’t any better.
Tycho Garen focuses his considerable brainpower on mobile productivity and decides app integration is his biggest issue:
If mobile technology is going to replace a general purpose laptop, ever, even in limited situations, we need to figure out how to work in different ways. I know that I am loosing a great deal of time, when I’m using my phone switching between the notes app, the reader, the task list, and the calender. This task switching gets in the way of doing things to a much larger extent than similar behavior does when using a conventional computer. I would even posit that, the cost of context switching is inversely related to the size of the interface.
(Tychoish is a wiki, so you’ll find discussion of his post here.)
After my recent nine-day vacation — where my wife and I left our 15″ laptops at home in favor of an iPad, Nook, smartphones and my 10″ Linux netbook — my perspective is rather different.
I’d suggest mobile devices painfully limit the writer’s ability to input text into the devices in meaningful quantities.
I hear stories of novels created on cell phones and aspiring screenwriters writing spec scripts on their iPhones at lunchtime.
And I’m impressed.
Sorta.
Because I inevitably ask “why not just get a netbook (or even a keyboard-equipped iPad) and, you know… get some writing done?”
I’d contend that shooting and uploading video from my smartphone is faster and easier than answering an email (if that McLuhan guy is right about mediums and messages, that suggests a trend).
So how much content can a writer really create on a smartphone? Will speech-to-text (always just “around the corner”) finally spring fully formed from the next generation of “writer’s smartphones?”
Or are writers chained to full-sized keyboards forever?
Are You a Mobile Content Creator?
I’d love to hear from the Undergrounders about their mobile devices and the kind of content they create on them. (For now, let’s largely ignore social media content; it’s short and we’re looking at professional stuff.)
Me? After nine days in the laptop-free wilderness, I’d suggest I’d whine a lot if I ended up on a desert island with anything less than a netbook (my Linux Starling netbook features a good keyboard — something not true of all the netbooks I’ve tried).
Anything smaller (and iPad and keyboard aren’t really any smaller) feels like a surfer’s tool, not a writer’s.
Your experiences?
Keep writing (on whatever’s handy, I guess), Tom Chandler.
Hey Tom,
I started writing on mobile devices about 10 years ago. That was back when I had a Palm Pilot and an external, fold-up keyboard. Although the screen was very small (my eyes were much better then…) and I had to do a lot of post-writing editing on my computer, I found that the pros outweighed the cons. I loaded up Microsoft Word for Palm, hiked to the nearest coffee shop, and enjoyed my freedom.
Then my Palm Pilot died, and I never replaced it.
Flashforward to two years ago — I got a freelance journalism gig, which meant I had to write and file from sporting events. I didn’t have a laptop at that point, so I bought an HP netbook. I still use it today. Even though it is a “smaller” keyboard (92% of full size, apparently), I can use it no problem. I mean, not as nice as my ergonomic keyboard, but still very usable.
Funny enough, the same can’t be said of my new laptop keyboard. I can’t stand the positioning of the left shift button (the only one I use…) — it’s too far away, so that I either hit the shift lock, or nothing at all. I’m sure I’ll get used to it over time, but ugh, I don’t want to.
Before that, I played with the idea of getting a keyboard for my iPod Touch, but even if they do exist (they didn’t at the time), the screen is likely too small for me now. An iPad would work (with the external keyboard), but if you’re going to spend that much money, why not just get a laptop?
…which I did for my own recent working vacation. Actually, I brought my own ergonomic keyboard as well, so I could enjoy portability *and* comfort. However, I found that using it on the road wasn’t as useful as I had thought — I probably wouldn’t do that again unless we planned to be in essentially one spot for long periods of time rather than constantly moving.
Bottom line — the most important feature for me is the keyboard. Although I don’t mind using the BlackBerry keyboard to key in emails and texts (I can’t stand the iPod Touch’s…), I couldn’t use it to type in a novel, say. It doesn’t have to be a huge keyboard, but it has to be functional. Ergonomic keyboard: great. Netbook keyboard: good. Laptop keyboard: pass…
Screen is second most important, especially for these aging eyes. If I have a chance to use my own monitor before sending out a piece of work, that’s not so bad. But if I’m sending a final product, I need something bigger than an iPod or BlackBerry.
My “Gold Standard”?
If I could design the future, I’d build an ergonomic keyboard (real keys, mind you, not “virtual” keys) that rolls up into a tube, along with a 15″ screen that does the same. The screen would have a mechanism that allows it to go rigid when in use, and would have/attach to some sort of stand so you could use in at a coffee shop table, hotel desk, picnic table, etc.
The computer itself would be about the size of a smartphone — and could operate as such — but also have a USB (or similar) hub for keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc.
The whole thing should fit comfortably in a standard briefcase (though I wouldn’t object to smaller).
~Graham
I just had to tell you how much I loved “ungainly fecal remnant”. A phrase to treasure and work into party conversation.
Graham Strong,
We can make the computer tiny, but haven’t yet escaped the keyboard. As writers, we’re both cursed and lucky; text processing isn’t exactly machine intensive, but it is input intensive, which means I’ll probably not write on anything smaller than my netbook, which is tolerable.
In addition to being irritating, it turns out the Storm was inspirational…
I am definitely with you on not being able to move from a keyboard to writing on a smartphone. My husband and I are both writers and have found it to be very, very difficult to use our iPhone for actual writing. We are a lot quicker on a keyboard and it saves us time (and minimizes frustration). Great post.
Touchscreen keyboards just don’t work for me, but small keyboards do — at least since I started writing using text editors which don’t rely on those awful arrow keys to navigate a document (score one for Emacs, Komodo Edit, Gvim). I suppose that will occupy an upcoming article…
Would you recommend a netbook? They seem easy to carry around, unlike my laptop, but how are those smaller keyboards?
I would, though it’s possible I’m in the minority. I use keyboard commands to navigate a document different from the “cmd-arrow” (the Emacs key bindings), so I can move to a smaller keyboard easier than most.
It’s one of the benefits of using a highly configurable text editor to write.
After mucking around with my netbook, I’m pretty happy with it, though it helps to be cognizant of its limitations (this is not an atomic powered laptop). Where it all gets pretty murky is where you compare tablets with external keyboards against netbooks; which works best for your needs? For me it’s the netbook, but others might prefer the other route…