The first physical keyboard we used with the iPad was an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard (ABK), which we still have on stand-by for when we need to travel light. Most of our physical keyboard use on the iPad today is with the HHKB Pro 2, but before we switched to a quasi-mechanical capacitive switch keyboard, we [...]
We finally received our Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB) Pro 2 that we ordered for our iPad. The idea was to relegate our Apple Wireless Keyboard to only those trips where we need extreme portability and still require a keyboard. The rest of the time, we’d use the HHKB because of its superior tactile feel. As [...]
While people love to talk about how intuitive touch is as an interface method, the cold reality is that for certain applications, legacy input formats still reign supreme. For example, for writing, there is no unseating the keyboard in one format or another, as writing by hand is slow and cumbersome for longform input. 1 [...]
Some have made the case, admittedly admirably, that if Apple were to make a tablet smaller than the iPad, it would come in at 7.85″. Technically this makes sense, but it’s only looking at the issue from a hardware perspective, not from a functional one. Take the iPhone and iPad for instance.1 The two devices [...]
One of the iPad’s greatest strengths is its touch interface, which has proven itself more intuitive than traditional computing mechanisms like the keyboard and mouse. Yet sometimes, physical input mechanisms remain useful, as in long-form writing. In a rather confusing piece praising the iPad’s abstraction-free controls, TUAW’s Erica Sadun digresses to bash keyboard use with [...]