TouchType - Landscape Email Composition for the iPhone
Wed, Oct 8, 2008
My third iPhone application launched last night on the iTunes App Store. Touch Type is an app I wrote to enable the use of Apple’s wider landscape keyboard for drafting email messages on the iPhone.
If anyone has support questions or otherwise would like to contact me, feel free to drop me a line at support@thisistech.com.
Thanks to everyone who has sent feedback. Excerpt from the TechCrunch review below:
by Michael Arrington on October 8, 2008
For whatever reason, Apple decided not to allow “landscape mode” on iPhone email. If you want to turn the phone when the web browser is open and get the larger keyboard that makes two thumb typing realistic, no problem. But the email app is portrait only.
Now a new iPhone application called TouchType (iTunes link
) fixes the problem. Open the application and you get a landscape mode keypad. type an email, hit the send button and it auto-populates the email application. Type in the email addresses and you’re all set.
The application, which costs $.99, comes from the same developer, Mike Schneider, who created Direct Line (easy phone tree navigation) and Private-I (loJack for your iPhone). I like how this guy thinks.
I’m adding this to my must have iPhone apps list.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Hi:
I purchased your TouchType ap this morning and it works awesme. Thanks fo rcoming up with htis.
My question is will you be coming up with a way to use this or with another ap the ability to use lanscape for SMS texting?
That would be aweosme. I am sure a lot of people want this.
Thanks again,
Cary
October 8th, 2008 at 11:26 am
I love this idea, but my question is: is there any way to impliment this into sms texting as well as email?
October 8th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I wish there was. For now we can initiate SMS messages to a specific number from within an app, but there is no way to pass the body of the message into the SMS message. The SMS url protocol is not actually documented, so there may be a way to do it eventually, but I spent a bunch of time trying and I wasn’t able to crack that one.
I am glad you are enjoying the program. Thanks for the feedback.
–Mike
October 8th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I purchased the app as well and it rocks. My one question, though, is how do use it to REPLY to an email, not just to originate a new one?
Thanks. Keep up the great development.
-brent
October 8th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
This could really be a KILLER app, if you’d add the ability to have customizable signature lines attached to the end of the messages. The ability to have different email signatures is probably one of the biggest “missing links” on the iPhone. I know a LOT of people use it for work and personal, especially with exchange support.
I’d pay $10 easily if I could attach different signatures to the emails I compose with this!
Thanks
Mike Douglass last blog post..Ride Withe the Wolves
October 8th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Mike, thanks for the feedback. Signature’s would be a nice addition, and would be fairly simple to implement. I have a version of TouchType that allows the user to save snippets of text and reuse them, but I haven’t submitted it to Apple yet. It has been about 2 months since I originally submitted the app to Apple, so I didn’t think it was ever going to hit the store. I will submit the update today, and hopefully you will have the functionality you are looking for within a couple weeks.
–Mike Schneider
October 8th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Brent,
Here is how you reply to a message using TouchType. It is a little tricky, but is the only way to make it work on the existing iPhone framework:
First in Apple’s mail program, hit reply to the message that you want to reply to. Once the Mail program shows you the screen to type your reply, hit the home button (the one under the screen) and then launch TouchType.
Once in TouchType, write your message and hit send. Your message will be inserted into the Reply message that you started in Apple’s Mail program.
The one catch is that if you have multiple email accounts on your iPhone, you need to specify which one you want the reply to come from. This seems to get reset when switching between the applications.
Thanks for the comment. I am glad you like the app.
–Mike Schneider
October 8th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Haven’t purchased this yet, because it does not do this for text messaging. This would be great for SMS texting. The email sigs would be a great addition as well… Keeping my eye on this one.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I’d really like to be able to save the text written in your program into a note.
Any chance of that being added to an upcoming edition?
October 8th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Hi Tara,
Yes. In the next version I plan to implement a double tap to go to notes. Tap send once for email. Twice for notes.
–Mike
October 8th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I purchased this app and really like it. The only problem is once I’m typing past the forth line the suggested word is hidden. You also can’t scroll the text to move up and down to reveal the suggested word. Any chance either of these issue will be addressed in future updates.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Hi Mike
Thanks for this great opportunity to use my “fat” fingers too for email writing.
But obviously there is a big problem with diacritical marks, like Germans Ü Ä Ös or spanisch é or what ever.
My iPhone is a German one and those diacritical marks are never shown on the screen altough I can select them while typing. But if I choose Spanish, all diacritical marks are displayd in the text box.
As soon I hit the “return to email” button the program crashes.
I am not the only one, same several reports I red on the German iTunes Store.
Hope you can fix it. (Please soon)
Best regrads and thank you for your time.
Rudi
October 8th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Hi Rudi,
I didn’t realize people in Germany were having problems with the app. The text data is sent via a URL to the Mail application, so I will look into stripping out whatever the offending characters are before the text is sent to the Mail App. If it can’t be fixed, I will figure out a way to send you your money back.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
–Mike
October 9th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Hello !
Thank you very much for TouchType !
But, why TouchType not work also with “Notes” ????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Try again for TouchType 2.0…
Best regards.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Hey Mike!
Terrific app you have created!
Just one question. Will you expand the program and introduce international keyboards like German and Swedish? I hate to have to long-press certain buttons to be able to access the Swedish letters and would gladly pay a couple of bucks for an app that took care of that problem. Pity though that Apple gets a piece of the cake even though they were too lazy to incorporate this function from the very beginning. Kudos to you as a programmer anyway! Keep up the good work!
Best wishes from Sweden
October 9th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Hi Mike,
Good idea, but a AZERTY keyboard for France would be better over here, International Keyboards would be a clever evolution.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Hey just bought this app, quite like it. Just curious, how long did it took for Apple to review your app?
October 9th, 2008 at 8:13 am
@appl.crox
My other apps only took about 2 weeks to be reviewed, but TouchType took about 2 months.
October 9th, 2008 at 11:39 am
What about the Subject line? I see that the competing application “Wide Email” includes a Subject: field that you can fill in and I presume it gets transferred to that field in the Mail application.
Please add this.
Thanks!
October 9th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I would like to second BradB’s comment on losing sight of the auto-corrected word after a few lines of text are written. This really threw me off. Otherwise, this a good step in the right direction. Thanks
October 10th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Hi, Mike!
I’m a marketing rep and send emails from the field several times a day. Saw the review on BoyGenius and bought TouchType. Even my aging brain figured it out. Brilliant!
As previous posters said, SMS, Subject Lines and Signatures would be appreciated. What I would really like in an update is the ability to switch between different email services from the TT screen. If I’m sending a personal email, I pick (or default) to my Yahoo! mail, but when I need to send one to the boss, there’s a pulldown or button so I can pick my company email that’s already set up with MS Exchange Server. Would that be hard to implement?
I’d pay a bit more for a ‘Pro’ edition that had that feature.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Hi Mike,
I have tried to use Korean. After push button to send email, the program crashes. Could you fix this problem? Thanks.
October 11th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Hi Mike,
I just purchased the TouchType app for my iphone. However, when I launch it, the keyboard remains is a portrait orientation and not landscape. I do not see any settings in the app or in iphone’s General Settings to change to landscape. What can I do?
Thanks!
B
October 11th, 2008 at 3:44 am
Hi Mike,
Congrats for this great app’ that I’ve bought… I happen to do emails in 3 languages (English, French and Spanish)… And as other people noticed, with accented languages (French and Spanish hence), the app’ crashes… We can’t put the accents… Any plan to make it compatible in the next version?
Of course, like everyone, we’d be hugely delighted to see it working with SMS also (and ready to pay 5 times the current price!!)
Cheers
Ben
October 11th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Hi, I’ve just purchased the app and it does not handle international characters!
If i try to submit a text containing any of the last characters in the swedish alphabet
the app just crashes.
I hope you find a way to fix this. Apart from this, it is a great app (that shouldn’t have to be developed since it is a scandal that apple haven’t implemented landscape in their own app.)
Thanks!
Magnus
October 11th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Hi, Mike:
I bought TouchType, Sideways, WideEmals and tested all. Yours is ahead advacned. Good job, howerver, as already reported above by Korean, we, Japanese , when send test back to email, it crashes. I presume there might be a bug for 2 digit charachter handlings.
Hope you fix them soonest possible. Other functions well worth for the price.
Mike
October 11th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Thanks to everyone that has posted feedback.
@Belinda, I am not sure what would be causing your view not to rotate to the landscape mode. It might be a problem with your phone’s accelerometer. I would recommend rebooting the iPhone by holding down the home button (under the screen) and the on/off button (on the top of the phone) at the same time for a couple seconds. This should ask you if you want to turn off your phone. Turn it off and then on, and I am guessing it will solve your problem. Please let me know if it doesn’t work and we can keep trying.
@Mike and Magnus, Yesterday we solved the international character issue and a free update will go live once Apple has a chance to review and approve the new version. Sorry for the inconvenience.
–Mike
Mike Schneiders last blog post..TouchType - Updates and Beta Opportunities
October 11th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Hello, I’m French and your app is cool but there is a very problem for us, because we use somme accent on aour “e” “a” or “ç” and with those letters, your app doesn’t work! It backs you to iPhone menu!!! Too bad, because your app looks very useful.
Something to do ? I hope.
Thanks.
Aurel
October 11th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Also on the italian iTunes store there are comments, that accented letters (à, è, é, ì, ò, ù) crash the program, so I’m waiting for this to be fixed before buying
in any case, it would be great if accented letters were present on the keyboard as on my real one
having to rely on auto-correction or some cumbersome and slow method to insert accented letters is really annoying, and a landscape keyboard really is the opportunity to get this one right!
cheers
October 12th, 2008 at 3:15 am
Génial !
J’attends la version française avec impatience.
jm
October 12th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Unfortunately, I am experiencing severe problems with the application on my 16GB iPhone 3G: More often than not, the text typed is NOT transfered to the mail application and is simply lost. I thus find myself not daring to type text using the app until this problem is resolved: Too many times have I had to retype the entire mail…
Intermediate solution suggestion is to always save whatever text was in the editor and not simply discarding it, so that it can be retrieved the next time the app is loaded…
October 12th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the feedback. The next update for TouchType will have better handling of non-standard characters. We have identified the cause of the crash you experienced and the new version will be free and will solve the problem.
If you are interested in beta testing the update, shoot me an email at beta@thisistech.com, and I will try to get you an advanced copy. I am still working out the details of the beta program, but expect to have more information by the end of this week.
Thanks,
Mike
October 13th, 2008 at 5:41 am
Hi Mike,
I did try rebooting several times and no luck. The keyboard is still displaying portrait. However, the iPod functionality of my iphone does display graphics in landscape orientation if that is an indicator that my iphone can display in landscape.
Any other suggestions?
Thanks!
B
October 13th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Can not access contacts list through Touch Type application. It would be nice to have access without having to navigate back to the default screen. Thanks for your attention.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Hi. I need such an application but I cannot see the diffrences between your app and widemail. Could you explain ?
Regards Jorge
October 14th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Hi,
it worked fine for a few days. Then it stopped turning to landscape and doesn’t transfer to mail.app anymore.
Any ideas what to do. I’m on a 16GB iPhone 3G.
Thomas
Thomass last blog post..Bank Crisis
October 14th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I am not sure what would be causing a problem with the rotate to landscape mode. There is an update pending with Apple that solve some other bugs. International characters were causing problems originally. When the update is released, it will replace the original installation on your device. If there was a problem with how the application originally installed itself on your iPhone, the new version hopefully will not have a similar problem.
In response to Jorge’s question about the difference between TouchType and Wide Mail, the application serve a similar function. I haven’t used Wide Mail, but it looks very similar to Touch Type. Without speaking for the developer of Wide Mail, I would say the biggest difference for the buyer is going to be updates. I have a big update to TouchType that will expand its functionality beyond the current feature set. I can’t say what the improvement will be, but I think people are going to like it. If you buy Wide Mail, you might find yourself buying TouchType later to get the benefit of the new feature set.
Hope this helps. While I am pleased that everyone has been so active with their comments, please do not hesitate to contact me directly with support questions. The email address for support is support@thisistech.com.
Thanks,
Mike
October 16th, 2008 at 2:39 am
Mike, you say “The next update for TouchType will have better handling of non-standard characters”.
éèë etc, are standard characters encoded on 7bit. In SMS they have no problems at all.
The non-standard latin characters are actually, if I’m right, only the ones with a circumflex and a cedilla like êô or ç which need to be encoded in the 8-bit character set.
So please release a bug fix.
I lost a long email yesterday in the train. Once TouchType brought me back to the iPhone menu, I thought the phone needed a reboot.
After that, I took my courage and wrote the mail back again.
Still, lost in limbo somehwere. Nothing transfered to the mail application. Not even retained in TouchType once you get back to it.
For now, besides English only messages, this is totally useless.
Thanks
October 16th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Nothing transfered to the mail application.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Thanks for this great app. I can type now with lightning speed! Only niggle is the fact that when you reply, as you say, it uses the default mail account which if you don’t spot can be a problem. Other than that though it pretty much meets my requirements. One suggestion is to put a note about how to reply to emails on the app store info as it isn’t obvious although the info is here. Anyway thanks!
October 17th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Any information when the update will be available? I just purchased - how when I know when the update is available? Will there be an additional charge.
Thanks for the app - I have big thumbs!!
October 18th, 2008 at 6:35 am
The app dosen´t work with swedish letters!
October 19th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Thank you for a great app.
I too had problems with my message (actually it was a reply) disappearing into the ether and had to try 2 more times before I was successful (one of those was after a crash and miraculously, my text reappeared on the TouchType screen. It was a rather involved response and after having so much trouble with it the first time, I think I’ll hold off using it again. Looking forward to your update.
One thing tho’ — havingr successfully sending the message (hitting SEND first in TouchType and then again once back in Mail), the icon indicating that I’ve replied to the message doesn’t appeared next to it in the list of messages. Do you think that a fix could be included in a future update? Seem to be succumbing to Old-Tumer’s quick and I’d hate having to keep checking my Sent Mail file to make sure that I’d replied to someone.
October 26th, 2008 at 9:29 am
This is a great app. The landscape keyboard (or lack there of) was the only reason I have not bought an iPhone before. I was waiting for the Storm, but am happy to say I am headed to the apple store today to buy an iPhone.
Thanks for this great app. you single handedly crushed Blackberry’s main argument for typing e-mails
Mike
October 30th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I lost all of my saved text snippets! I created about 6 and then the first time I used the spell checker I noticed they were all gone. This might be difficult for you to fix.
Your spell checker I won’t use again because you have no option to NOT spell check a word. I had a mis-spelled word but your list of selections didn’t have the correct spelling - I didn’t how to “Esc” from the list so I have to select a word (knowing it was wrong) just to exit the spell check. Please add an “Esc” selection.
October 30th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Hi Ralph,
Sorry to hear about the lost saved text. I am not sure what would cause the problem you had. Did you uninstall or reinstall the program. Spell check alone shouldn’t have any effect on your saved text. If you hit the “Load” button it should cycle through all of your saved text items.
On the skipping words issue, if you tap the top row of the suggestions it will keep the original word and move on. The next version of TouchType will have video instructions, so I am hoping it will be easier for people to figure out then.
Thanks for the feedback.
–Mike
Mike Schneiders last blog post..John Cook’s New Site (TechFlash)
November 16th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Hello Mike !
Great app, indeed.
Some questions: why is the text I am writing in blue? (not a reply)
In the i menu, what is the thing where we have to put name and password?
It will be SO GREAT if it was possible to save more than one text only, and after choose the one we want to use. To be more precise, I would love to use it as a text editor, and have some texts to write with it. Like textdit but for iPod touch !
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Had touch type. Works great. Upgraded to iPhone 2.2 software yesterday. My touch type will not go into the landscape mode. Anybody else have this problem
December 26th, 2008 at 3:54 am
Sync Issue.
Hi Michael,
Tried sync with my iPhone 3G today but it wouldn’t sync as saying it is not compatible with my iPhone. I have the paid application.
Cheers
Marcus