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To me it’s more like “I’m not going to bother to proofread and correct this because it would take me an extra 30 seconds and I’m currently on the go with no time to spare but wanted to make sure I could respond to you as soon as I could.”

I’ve never had anyone complain to me about a phone typo, though some of them have been hilarious and have brought some laughter… :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skaw/4799479965/

Matt, the irony is that you didn’t proofread the first sentence of the previous post. Just a note, not a shot.

So true. I’ve become an expert in figuring out what my wife really means when she sends me something, because sometimes the words she uses don’t fit the context at all…

Well, 3.5 years ago it meant “I have an iPhone and you have a wimpy BlackBerry”... but now it means it probably has errors.

I actually appreciate it on other peoples emails so I know what to expect from the response.

It’s one the first things I did with my iPhone, take off that stupid thing. “Hey! Look! I have an iPhone!” No thanks.

It’s not just about typos. ‘Sent from my X’ can also provide a reason for a terse reply. Some people take offense at a short one word or one line email otherwise.

Reminds me of getting “INSIGHT: Let’s be honest. “Sent from my…” in my RSS reader – does that mean you’re too lazy to write a title for your blog post? ;-)

There’s possibly such a thing as being too critical…

I changed my signature to “Sent from 1.xxx.xxx.xxx”. It means, “I’m answering email while in transit from one place to another or at the coffee shop, etc. Call me if you want to quickly chat.”

“Sent from my iPhone” is more an indicator that the sender never bothered to craft their own signature, or at the very least turn off the default. The person is spending hundreds of dollars on this device, but isn’t interested in making it their own.

It’s kind of like leaving the dealer’s license plate from on your car.

That’s some funny crap…

I saw the subject line in my RSS reader and I thought the post was going to be what Doug said (“look, I have an iPhone”).

I laughed out loud when I read the actual post.

Generally speaking, if we’re in such a hurry that we have to rattle off “terse” replies or not bother to make sure we didn’t just write a coded message, we might be well off to slow down (or just stop trying to send emails while we’re driving…).

Reminds me of set that Brian Regan did about pop-tarts (watch to the end…)

I’ve crafted my iphone sig to say that it was sent from my iphone, please excuse brevity and typos. So if my wife emails me to say “Do you want to invite Bob and Melissa over for dinner?” and I just say “Yes, call u later about it” she’ll know that it’s not a terse response.

We’ve made ourselves available nearly 100% of the time through connectivity, so the onus is on us to respond as quickly as possible. Sometimes that involves a typo or a short response. Spelling that out to the recipient should buy you a mistake or two in an email to your boss. Not to say that you should say “OMG, tht pres was sooooo awfull, LOLz! Bck in teh offis in 2) “

I personally use the ‘Sent from my iPhone’ signature (or at least a variation of it) to let clients know that they’re so important to me that I’ll even follow-up while I’m out of the office.

I think it also gets you off the hook from writing what should maybe otherwise be a much longer and more detailed email.

I feel like it isn’t an excuse for typos, but if I’m not at my desk, maybe I can’t look up the detail mentioned in the email, so I’m trying to remember off the top of my head. Or, as Jeff, said, it’s a statement about the importance you place on replying to them.

That being, said, I’ve never been accused of being terse and I took that default off my phone soon after getting it. I tend to write a treatise even with my thumbs, so I’ll have plenty of time to explain specifically why I’m guessing at a details or whatever. shrug

To me it always meant I want you to know I’m part of the in group which has an iPhone.

Otherwise it would just say “Sent from my mobile device”.

Having an iPhone is a bit of a status symbol now or form of conspicuous consumption, like putting a Prada logo on the outside of a purse.

@Brandon Adams has it right. “Sent from my iPhone” means “There’s a place you can change that? Who knew?”

But I figure in 5 years it will be a retro chic thing to do, kind of like when NBC touts that their programs are brought to you “in living color.”

Gee whiz. These electronic brains sure are swell.

I got an email last week actually signed “Sent from my iPad. Please excuse brevity and typos.”

My god you are so pretentious!

I kept that signature to indicate that proofreading on a phone is difficult given the limit of the screen and text size. Combined with the peculiar kinds of auto-correction at work for on-screen keyboards, lots of things can slip through.

Then again, people that get upset about typos (not misspellings – typos) are usually jerks.

So my “Insight” is that your attitude kinda stinks. :-)

An overarching point is: Look how easy it is for different people to interpret a simple message differently, be cautious in your assumptions.

im going to make it my sig for all comms from now on to save time.

sent from my iPhone

I think it means “I couldn’t wait to get back to a computer to send you an email.”

I think it means, “probably contains typos because the iPhone keyboard thingie is such a pain in the ass to use, I’d rather look unprofessional and sloppy than go through the torment of screwing around with it”.

Actually, for me it means, “I sent this email from my iPhone and I never bothered to change the default signature.”

I know a guy who added “Sent from my iPhone” to his old Nokia as a sig. We were all amazed too.

This post makes a mountain of a molehill.

Sent from my iPhone

Have been waiting for this subject to come up and I knew it would turn up here.

I think it depends where you are. In the US it probably means just what the blog post is about, letting yourself off correcting mistakes.

I think in smaller countries where these gadgets are a little less accessible (due to relative income or poor supply) then this signature become a badge of honor.

“Sent from my iPhone. I also own a Ferrari”

Mine reads Sent from my mobile device, pleese excuze tyops.

@Reuben: Considering the US is among the 4 largest countries in the world, most countries are indeed smaller.

But I agree that in general “Sent from my iPhone” is just boasting about having an iPhone, which is not a sign of anything anymore in most Western countries. Or, in business contexts, it’s like “Sent from my Blackberry” to show that one is so dedicated that he found a way to reply to email even at 4am while changing nappies.

I’ve left the “Sent from my iPhone” at the bottom of my customized signature.

For me, it was more akin to saying ” Please excuse my brevity”, because I’m the kind of person that’s shocked when I get a seemingly-terse 5-word reply to something I sent. As a recipient, I’ve found that phrase (or similar ones) to be a reassurance that I’m not being brushed off.

That might be my own neuroses, though…

This is the best reason never to change your default signatures on the iPad, and specially on the iPhone. You don’t have to apologize for the inevitable typos, or more commonly the inevitable spell corrector disasters that you really can’t be bothered to undo (specially if you need to type the occasional Spanish email while your main language is English…2-3 words a sentence get munged into some terrible English soundalike).

I always just thought it was a doofy way of saying “look how cool I am. I have an iPhone)

Do you all send emails random people who don’t know you? I email people I know and when I do it from my phone my signature let’s them know that I’m answering them from my phone and that I’m on the go or out somewhere.

I don’t need to tell my friends or clients “look how cool I am”, they already know me and have made that judgement, for better or worse, long ago. If anything this may help to give them a better context for the message.

I changed my iPhone to say “Sent from my Android phone”. I zero your free advertising, and raise you negative advertising.

I know a guy who has that message displayed in French. To me it signals he’s a talentless hack, and he knows it.

To me it means “I’m not so obsessed with myself that I will edit the default signature.”

I hope this does not mean you’re usually dishonest? ;) Splitting hairs…

It indeed means “Look, I’m cool, I ahve an iPhone, or a Blackberry”. ON the other hand, it’s a smart viral thing, like Hotmail did in the early days.

I’m a little tired of people making broad assumptions about why people use iPhone/mobile signatures. It may mean that for some people, but it certainly doesn’t for me. I try to spend the extra 30 seconds to proofread every email I send whether it’s from my Mac or my iPhone.

I use a mobile-specific signature mostly because it sets ~context for the message. There’s a good chance that the message sent from my iPhone won’t be as long as a message I’d send from my Mac. And despite proofreading, it may contain a typo or two simply because they’re easier to miss on a small screen. (These may not be truths for everyone but they’re true for me.) By including “Sent from my iPhone” you can avoid explaining why your message may have seemed a little short or contained the accidental typo without explicitly adding it to your message.

So I say it ~is useful and can be much more than a disclaimer for laziness, which this blog post implies.

Most people would rather have an imperfect response than none at all, or one significantly later. Try not to take it personally.

I’m a little tired of people making broad assumptions about why people use iPhone/mobile signatures.

I feel the same way. This is such a stupid argument, I can’t believe still have it three years later. For one, a lot of people never change the default signature. Or, they leave it because it correctly implies that they’re not at their desk. “Sent from my Blackberry” never inspired the scorn that the parallel message from an iPhone does.

Now why would you guys delete that comment?

Sent from my iphone, when you see that from me, it’s because i havent turned that signature off, and i’m a goof that likes to show off the fact i have one.

I wanted to get back to you as soon as I could. I appreciate you so much that I didn’t want to wait to respond to you from my computer.

So, some of you think that I should replace ‘iphone’ with ‘my mobile device’ in my signature just because it could be considered that I’ve left the default signature unaltered deliberately to show the world that I owe an iPhone?

Do you really realize how ridiculous sounds what you are saying???

@Reuben: You know? In “small” countries we have a nice advantage. We do not suffer from AT&T ;-)

My mobile email signature is ‘Typed by thumb’.

This communicates three things:

1) I’m using my phone to email you! We’re living in the future! 2) Sorry so short 3) Non-sequiters? Blame it on the autospell

In my sister’s case, “sent from my iPhone” really means: ” I didn’t know that I could turn that off.”

Remember, not everyone even knows what an email signature is, much less how to turn one off. Really.

Sent from my iPhone – excuse typos