My coworker Jack expressed a thought about the iPad that I have had myself a few times over the past few days. While it’s a great too, and does many things well, it is a bit on the large IDE to be one’s constant companion. It would be awesome if Apple released something in between the iPad and the iPhone. Something paperback-sized. Something that would fit in cargo shorts.
I also have a few gripes about the onscreen keyboard. Typing on it isn’t a problem, per se. The thing is the keys that it’s missing.
The worst omission is the apostrophe key. You have to go into a submenu to get that. If you are used to touch-typing, you will find yourself hitting Return a lot when you mean to use an apostrophe. Your alternatives are to learn to type without them (and hope that the autocorreect does the right thing, not always possible with English’s homophones), or press a button to make the keyboard switch to “symbol mode.” That’s quite annoying.
The other problem is that there are no number keys on the main keypad, even in portrait orientation where there is plenty of room to have them.
I’d rather have a smaller visible arrea above the keyboard and have number keys and an onscreen apostrophe.
Maybe the idea is to sell more Bluetooth keyboards…
If someone comes up with a decent iPad case having an integrated Bluetooth keyboard, even if the keyboard is largely rubbish, it will sell like Ames.
