Nails or Nubs (that is Resistive or Capacitive)...

I’m always amazed by what I learn when I ask a simple question. Recently I was at my fiancé's annual holiday gala, and one of his friend’s mentioned he bought his wife an iPod Touch. So, I asked her, “How do you like your iPod Touch?” She said, “I can’t use it because of my nails.” She lifted her right hand above the table to reveal beautiful long artificial french manicured nails. And she added, “I prefer phones that have a stylus.” And I immediately thought that’s the difference for us between resistive touch (stylus or pressure sensitive) screens or capacitive sensing (finger or conductive) touch screens. Being a diva that prefers short nails and sometimes nubs, this limitation had never crossed my mind. Back at Cal when I first started taking my major requirements (my major was computer science). One of the first things I learned was long nails were going to prevent me from getting out of the computer lab early. I had a study partner that had long artificial nails and I watched her painstakingly (I think it was more painstaking for me to be watching, waiting on her) peck the keys very slowly so she wouldn’t press more than one key, which often happened, when she tried to use the soft part of her finger. She decided computer science wasn’t the right major for her.

Fast forward to now and women with nails have options. At the dinner table, I wondered out loud, mostly in a conversation with her husband since he’s the gadget geek (I think he probably really bought the iPod Touch for himself), is it possible to develop a screen that can switch between capacitive and resistive, finger or stylus. In doing some research, there isn’t an obvious solution, but I’m sure given a significant consumer demand it isn’t impossible to design or approximate. I also discovered you can buy a stylus for the iPhone or iPod Touch. It is called a conductive stylus. Like the human body which is conductive (i.e. we can hold an electric charge, think static electricity), this stylus is designed to hold a charge and act like a finger when used on the screen. Ah! Very cool.

I love learning something new every day. I’m going tell him to get her a conductive stylus for Christmas, she just might enjoy putting some cool apps on her iPod Touch.

GoGadgetGurl!
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