Mike Elgan: How to fix the keyboard crisis

Computerworld - Everything gets better, right? Cheaper. Faster. Smaller. This is especially true for the smallest devices -- cell phones, netbooks and e-book readers.

In the past 10 years, for example, cell phone processors, screens and antennas have undergone radical transformations for the better. Today's phone processors are vastly superior to desktop processors of a decade ago. Cell phone screens back then were ugly, blocky and usually monochrome. And remember pull-out antennas, and those blocky antennas that always stuck out the top of the phones?

But during this time, the innovation in keyboards that was gaining ground so furiously in the '90s somehow vanished. Nowadays, the keyboards available on small devices are pathetically bad compared with the breathtaking wonders of the previous decade.

Declining keyboard usability is especially weird when you consider that people are typing more than ever -- social networking, Twitter, blogging, e-mail. These online megatrends are based entirely on typing with a keyboard. Yet the industry doesn't innovate in this space anymore.

What happened?

The keyboard crisis

Most active mobile professionals own a netbook, carry a smartphone and have other small mobile devices with keyboards, such as e-book readers. Yet on just about every major device on the market in all these categories, the keyboards are hard to use and slow.

The worst offender by far is Apple, with its iPhone.

Let me be clear: I don't have a problem with Apple's decision to devote the entire front of the iPhone to screen real estate. I also have no problem with Apple's on-screen keyboard. I think the company designed and executed it pretty well. My problem is that Apple actively blocks, prevents and bans any other company from building a wireless iPhone-compatible keyboard -- and it hasn't built one itself.

Here is a company known for innovation that is using its considerable power over its ecosystem to guarantee that innovation cannot take place in precisely the area where users are screaming for it. All Apple would have to do is, well, nothing, and a hundred keyboard options would spontaneously emerge. Instead, Apple works hard to make sure no good keyboard is possible for its flagship phone.

The iPhone's competitors fail to impress as well. The Palm Pre has both a physical keyboard and a touch screen, but users generally report that the Pre keyboard isn't as good as those of the old Treos. BlackBerry keyboards have always been pretty good, but they haven't really gotten better or more usable in the past five years. There's a conspicuous lack of improvement in the many phones released by Nokia, LG, Samsung and the rest. Why did cell phone keyboard innovation stop?