Filed under: Humor, Software, Freeware, iPhone
Dial your iPhone with Bakelite
Anyone who is as ancient as me will remember when "dialing" a phone meant putting your finger into a little circular hole in a rotary dial, dragging it to a small metal stop, then pulling your finger out of the hole to dial that number. Rotary dial phones disappeared in the 1970s, but now MildMannered Industries is bringing back the fun with Bakelite 1.0 for iPhone.As the screenshot indicates, Bakelite provides a rotary dial interface for dialing phone numbers. It even has a feature those old dial phones didn't have -- the ability to delete the last number if you mis-dialed it.
Bakelite isn't very practical, but it's fun! The price is right, too. Bakelite is available from the App Store (click opens iTunes) for free.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Owen said 1:27PM on 9-18-2008
Poorly implemented. The dial 'feels' slow and unresponsive. Doesn't seem to follow your finger that well. Nice idea and could be quite good with a small bit of tweaking.
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LD said 1:36PM on 9-18-2008
Meh, I prefer the original Rotary Dialer.
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Robot Kitten Face said 1:36PM on 9-18-2008
That's pretty cool. When I was a kid I was always afraid my finger would get stuck in the dial. No problem with that here : )
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ianlive said 1:38PM on 9-18-2008
My parents still have an old rotary phone relegated to the basement. These things were a pain in the arse to use (especially 9's and 0's !!) but nostalgia got the best of me and I downloaded the app. I have to say it's weak. Props for the idea but it comes off wrong in my opinion and feel way to digitised. My two cents.
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caleb said 1:49PM on 9-18-2008
Pain in the ass maybe, but as a kid I always dialed using the 0 hole and just rotated it as far as need for the number I wanted.
brian said 1:44PM on 9-18-2008
+1 for RotaryDialer (1 word). Totally useless but fun--just the thing to show older family members when you're showing off your phone. :-) A recent update added sound. RD was made with a photo instead of an illustration and looks a lot better. Was free, is now $.99.
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Yosi said 1:49PM on 9-18-2008
Here in Germany it got from EVERYONE only 1 star at the App Store Reviews. Reasons:
'' Bad grafik, poor animation, Sound=Joke, Better use alternatives like Rotary Dialer and Retro Phone, Why apple let them put such an App there? ''
Well, they all said the same...
Greetings from Munich, Germany
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Brad said 1:57PM on 9-18-2008
Doesn't this duplicate the functionality of the phone app? When's the real reason for Podcaster getting refused going to come out?
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Michael Sternberg said 2:19PM on 9-18-2008
I vote for RotaryDialer as well - hands down the better of the two.
Also, in Bakelite, the letter assignment is incorrect. There is
no "Z" on a period-correct US dial -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Rotarydial.JPG
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misterrios said 4:01AM on 9-19-2008
Maybe they left the "Z" in so that you could SMS with the rotary dial in a future update?
Michael Sternberg said 4:11AM on 9-19-2008
Umm - how exactly would you text from a rotary dial, say, a "B" (which is present here), or "Q" (which is not)?
Let's face it - this is a gimmick, though with no style to speak of, unlike "RotaryDialer", which takes the idea and executes it much better.
LuminousNerd said 2:27PM on 9-18-2008
This is a complete rip off of an app that has been in the App Store since day one.
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Luna Lovegood said 3:00PM on 9-18-2008
"...remember when 'dialing' a phone meant putting your finger into a little circular hole in a rotary dial, dragging it to a small metal stop, then pulling your finger out of the hole to dial that number.
This explanation goes way over my head.
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Doug said 3:11PM on 9-18-2008
The creator just realized that the way of the Zune Phone is the way of the future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRKIDdIaFyE
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Jeremy said 3:25PM on 9-18-2008
Another small correction to the article. ..
Rotary dial phones did not "dissapear(ed) in the 1970's." At least not in North America. The first non-rotary phones *appeared* in the (later) 1970's, but they were far from common in most areas. Rotary dial phones were still around in large numbers in the early 80's also.
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Jeremy said 11:35AM on 9-20-2008
I have a rotary dial phone right on my desk here. I found it on eBay a while back. I don't even have a touch-tone phone plugged into my landline. So they haven't disappeared yet.
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dubious said 7:54PM on 9-29-2008
Even if this one is poorly done, the idea itself seems very cool to me.
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