Watching someone flick through TV channels is a lot like being a passenger in a car crash. The feeling that you’re being steered towards impending doom — be it an old episode of Friends or an oak tree — is itchy and unpleasant.
It doesn’t even matter if they’re good at it; I find it just as frustrating to watch someone struggling with an unfamiliar remote as it is to watch a teen channel surf while texting. There’s just something uncomfortable about watching other people use computers.
Hell is watching friends use computers
My latest bugbear came to light shortly after reading a tweet from mpjoyn, foretelling a dark future where PCs invade our lounges:
“Living room pcs will be big, but only as touchscreens for each family member. Hell is watching someone else control a GUI.”
What a relief! I’m not the only one who sighs inside when someone takes out a phone to show me something. They might be innocently navigating to YouTube, but a thousand small annoyances soon bubble to the surface as tiny questions that would seem both elitist and asinine to ask of them:
- Why did you double tap the Safari app icon?
- Why did you type the full URL instead of the auto suggestion?
- Why did you type ‘.-c-o-m’ instead of the ‘.com’ button?
- Why are you showing me a video of a cat taking a dump in its owner’s lavatory?
- Why are you laughing?
- Have you no shame?
Today I decided to chill out about it. Partly because I’ve realised that everyone uses interfaces differently, and that your way isn’t any less valid than mine. For all I know, the way I’m doing it — the ‘I spend more time with user interfaces than I do with other people’ way — is wrong. But, mainly, the reason I’ve decided to relax about watching other people use computers is because I’ve found something worse.
Something worse
If you think that watching someone use a computer interface is hell, try listening to them do it. For six hours. On a train. When you can’t even see the device they’re using.
I now count myself among the world’s most familiar with the soft clacking sound that the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard makes when you type on it. You know, the sound that’s on by default. The one that I turn off as the first thing I do when I get a new phone, out of respect for myself and all mankind.
iPhone keyboard tasting notes
After six hours of hearing it, I now do an excellent impression of that sound. If I’m ever tasked to annoy someone without reaching for my phone, I’ll be fine. I’m familiar with every subtle nuance: not too harsh, like an old typewriter, but not too soft, either, like the new Apple keyboards. The ones that feel like typing on stale marshmallows.
‘Ta - ta - ta’ goes the iPhone, with each triplet of taps. ‘Ta - ta - ta,’ like a tommy gun blowing bubbles. The sound has an attack that implies a definite action has been taken, with a soft finish that speaks of the action’s relative insignificance. ‘Ta - ta - ta’, it goes again, like the world’s snootiest librarian practising mild reproofs in an empty concert hall. Well, after six hours of hearing the sound, it can ‘ta - ta - ta - ta’ right off.
Please, kill your keyboard sound
Some must find it comforting to hear an audio alert for each key press. I’m not certain why. Perhaps to reassure themselves that they have, in fact, successfully reached their iPhone’s keyboard and not, for example, poked themselves in the thigh or otherwise missed altogether.
Indeed, whichever merry chap at Apple decided that the keyboard clacks should be on by default must have thought similarly: ‘People aren’t used to software keyboards,’ he surmised. ‘They’ll want it to feel close to something they’re used to. Something like a real keyboard.’ Perfectly reasonable so far. ‘Keyboards make clacking noises when you type on them. Maybe the software one should too. I can’t see any problems with that.’
Of course, the sound is both subtle and reassuring for anyone typing on the device who lacks the hand-eye coordination to pick their own nose. But should everyone around them have to suffer the dreaded ‘ta - ta - tas’, a technological cha-cha so often magnified by 12 or 13 devices in the same carriage on a morning commute, where even ‘quiet coaches’ are anything but? Must we all wear headphones just to avoid it? It doesn’t seem fair.
So here’s how to turn them off. It’s very simple:
On your home screen, find and tap the Settings app. (One tap is all you need, but you can double tap if you like. I’m OK with that now.):
Tap ‘Sounds’:
Scroll to the bottom and toggle the ‘Keyboard Clicks’ switch to OFF.
Receive my eternal thanks.
