iPhone "Killer App" - "Smart Error Correction"

Now, its nuts to think that the iPhone is going to for sure without a doubt be a 100% slam dunk success.  But, I tell you – I’ve been doing this for a long time and I have never, I mean never seen this type of buzz and industry readiness about a device.  There are all kinds of folks out there claiming to have specs details and whatnot.  The feature that raises the biggest question about its success is the keypad or lack thereof.  What’s weird is the feature that seems the least talked about and what this device will have that no other QWERT device that I know of does.  Smart Error Correction while typing.... I think that a large part of the success of the iPhone depends on the ability to quickly and accurately enter data into the device.

According to David Pogue of the New York Times

    “Fortunately, you don’t have to be especially precise. Even if you hit the wrong “keys” accidentally, the super-smart software considers adjacent keys — and corrects your typos automatically. If what you actually managed to type is “wrclme,” the software proposes “welcome.” You tap the Space bar to accept the fix. It works beautifully”


Almost like T9 or RIM’s SureType I am under the opinion that the iPhone will have awesome Error Correction.  Meaning that the phone will know there is no word in the English language that is spelled “aspoopklew”  Well I just type “apple” with 2 fingers and the keyboard on my laptop gave me this.  I am under the firm belief that the great people in Cupertino have accounted for mine as well as Steve J’s thumbs and will change “asoopklew” to apple for me.  I had a conversation with a software engineer from Apple at MacWorld Expo on launch day and I asked him about the keypad and I said “ what about mistakes?”  He said, while pointing to Steve Jobs “look at the size of his thumbs - Trust me, it works and its awesome!”  He didn’t say what it was that made it work so well -  but that is most likely what it is.  Something along the lines of a custom word dictionary paired with error correction and spell check is what its going to take to make this the “Killer Device”.  


.....and if it doesn’t and I’m wrong and the keyboard sucks – Well, we’ll just make a real QWERTY Keyboard for the iPhone.