LA Times staffer Michelle Quinn has a bone to pick with the iPhone — or would if her fingernails didn’t keep getting in the way. Therein lies her grief: The iPhone is just not fingernail-friendly, which poses a problem for women (and I suppose certain men, come to that) with long fingernails can’t properly touch the screen. That just will not stand, thinks Quinn, and Newport Beacher Erica Watson-Currie, who has clearly just had a drawn-out tiff with both her photographer and her interior designer on the same day that her purse puppy ran away, agrees wholeheartedly. “Considering ergonomics and user studies indicating men and women use their fingers and nails differently, why does Apple persist in this misogyny?” said Watson-Currie, a 39-year-old consultant, lecturer, and apparently drama major in a comment left on the LA Times’ online article about the 3G launch.
She believes that Apple should offer a compatible stylus as a free pack-in with the iPhone just on general principle. That’s probably not such a bad idea, and had it not come from the betaloned, blood-red fingers of a shrill, entitled misandrist with transferrence issues, I might even be tempted to back her up. (After all, who else but a drama queen with man issues would call Apple misogynist simply for choosing to use a capacitive touchscreen instead of a resistive one as if it were a deliberate backhand to the fairer sex?)
The article goes on to spread the issue to those with pudgy fingers, who would also have trouble touching the smallish virtual keys — as though the same people would have no trouble whatsoever mashing on a real Treo or Blackberry keyboard. Somehow though, it’s all discriminatory, which suggests, if we were to use the industrial design standards of these people as a baseline minimum, that all mobile phones should be at least four inches wide, sport resistive touchscreens, feature UIs with sizable icons that can easily be skewered with a nail, and have keys large and comfortable enough to type on with a pair of bratwursts.
Look, we’re not dealing with the disabled here. Long nails and pudgy fingers are not handicaps and both of them require that you do certain things just a little bit differently — including how you shop for a mobile device. If this or that device has keys that are too small or a screen you have trouble stabbing with your fingernail, may I humbly suggest you move on to the next device in the pantheon of mobiles? Perhaps one which has features that, I don’t know, cater to your particular requirements? Because no matter how much you wish the device you did end up buying would work with your relevant physical attributes, it isn’t going to bend to your mighty will no matter how hard you stamp your foot, so may I make the bold suggestion that just maybe you made a bad purchase?
No, I suppose that would make me a misogynist. But for what it’s worth I do think a pack-in stylus could come in handy for certain tasks.
