#FF00AA

In his July column, Bruce Tognazzini wrote:

As the user presses down on the “D” key, for example, a bigger image of the “D” key in a dialog balloon, as in a comic, appears just above the finger.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the balloon can only be made to display once the user had committed to the letter, thus acting to announce errors, rather than prevent them.

(If I’m somehow wrong about this, please let me know.)

Today, the paragraph has been changed:

If users are hovering over the wrong key, they can slide their finger left or right while still maintaining contact until the desired key appears.

Followed by a semi-valid explanation of why that’s wrong, mostly based around the fact that he’s offended he didn’t realize that by himself. I already wrote that I was astonished some of the iPhone’s functionalities were so unintuitive anyway.

How come did I notice the change? Well, I’m one of those who did click his contact link to let him know (I happened to read his column just minutes after I blogged about the feature). And if I weren’t, how would I know about it? Why, I wouldn’t, because there’s no mention whatsoever of reader input — or of the column being updated at all, for that matter.

Now, there’s a chance that he might have noticed by himself before he had an opportunity to read his e-mail, and change the writeup. But it’s hard to tell, since there’s no mention of the update itself, or that he was ever wrong about that (ah, hubris). And, even if he had stumbled onto it himself, you don’t write “let me know if I’m wrong,” then silently fix your column with no mention whatsoever of receiving mail about it.

(For the record, I didn’t expect to be credited personally — I’m sure I wasn’t the only one pointing that out to him.)