iPad with a Keyboard

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1

News that an iPad version of Scrivener is in the works has me thinking of getting an iPad–perhaps an iPad 2 when the post iPad 3 discounts are available. But I also know I don’t want to type on the beast’s screen and I keep looking longingly at the Apple Bluetooth keyboard I bought last year refurbished just because I liked the look and price. The two would make a perfect match.

Last week I discovered that InCase has a clever case for that Apple keyboard that doubles as a stand up holder for an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. You can find their specs on it here:

goincase.com/products/detail/ori … on-cl57934

And the best review I’ve seen thus far here:

the-gadgeteer.com/2011/08/13/inc … on-review/

If you’re looking for way to turn an iPad into a laptop, this might be the way to go. The only thing I’ve not been able to determine from any of the reviews is whether it literally makes an iPad with an Apple keyboard into a laptop, meaning you can use it in your lap as well as on a desktop. If anyone knows, please enlighten us.

If you do decide to get one, take care. You can get them direct from the maker or from Apple for $30 (yeah, a bit pricey for something intended to protect a $70 keyboard). Amazon is being a bit devious about this product. They’ve got an older model of this same design for $25 with no warning that’s what you’re getting. I’m not sure what the difference between the two is. Amazon is also selling the new model from a scalper (Princeton Quality) for the grossly inflated price of $59.99, so beware of that.

The best price I’ve been able to find for the new model is from someone I’ve never heard of, ShopLiker for $26.10. But take care. If they charge shipping, full list with free shipping might be cheaper.

shopliker.com/incase-black-o … 167-0.html

One final note. I’m not sure how long this other deal will last. But someone is selling a Verizon case for iPads on eBay for $3.99. Verizon is probably dumping their inventory in anticipation of the iPad 3.

Given the great price, I got one on speculation and it came quickly. It seems well made, with a leather back and nylon front. It’s not that protective and doesn’t have a handle or carrying strap. But inside a pack, it should provide enough protection, including from scratching, and it won’t take up that much space. Here’s the link:

ebay.com/itm/Leather-Tablet- … 0823179216

Feel free to post your own iPad with keyboard solutions here.

Now where do I sign up to beta test Scrivener for the iPad?

–Michael W. Perry, Seattle

2

I would think balance would be a problem when using it off of a flat surface. If you’ve never held an iPad, it’s probably a lot heavier than you would imagine. There is a lot of battery and glass in it, and I don’t think a keyboard would sufficiently counterweight it on a non-level soft surface like a lap. I’ve never really tried though. I did get the dock with my iPad, which in no way works on anything but a desk. It’s just not designed for that. The InCase solution might be better because it can afford a broader base. The Dock is designed so that the weight of the iPad itself provides the support by vectoring it all down into a small rectangle that the keyboard is then affixed to. Part of the problem is that the keyboard only solves the text entry side of things. You still need to point and tap on the screen quite a lot, so that only makes the balance situation worse.

I think a few people on the forum have tried this configuration though, so hopefully they chime in. Druid?

3

mmm the incase origami looks quite nice… although its quite cheap, the price bumps up when you add a wireless keyboard to it as well… :frowning: (I’d probably not want to take the wireless keyboard from the main iMac)…

From the reviews it looks like it works well on your lap (which is possibly the place I’d use it most) in landscape orientation, but isn’t too steady if the iPad is in portrait mode…

Added to the amazon wishlist for christmas… just in case…

4

In my view, the beauty of the iPad is that you can comfortably write with its virtual keyboard when you are away from a table. Since you want to write on your laps, I guess that this is that kind of scenario. So, my hint is to get acquainted with the virtual keyboard, and use whatever keyboard you like the most only when back at home. Having the physical keyboard separated from the display (the iPad itself) will let you position then in the most comfortable way.

Paolo
(written on my iPad…)

5

To Paulo’s comment, if you are going to lug an iPad in a case with a keyboard, why not just get an air?

The price tag will be nearly equivalent once you get done tricking out the iPad, and the extra power of the air would come in handy. Size wise you are in the same territory.

Feel free to ignore me completely. I am still whining about the glossy screen on my my MPB 13.

6

At least it isn’t covered in fingerprints. :slight_smile:

7

Since everyone in the world seems to think that you have to touch the screen to point at something “on the internet” … AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!

8

Ha. Design studios are the worst. Huge, gorgeous screens everywhere, and all of them covered in emphatic fingerprints where some art director felt the need to rub fingers on the glass to demonstrate a design flaw or appreciate a piece they like. I think they are still revelling in the fact that the sketch doesn’t smudge when they do that.

9

Or they are dumber than bricks.

Call it as you see it.

10

Thanks for the suggestions. Amber may be right. An iPad in the lap may be a bit more wiggly than I’d like, although that’s also why I don’t literally lap top my laptops either. I opt for a table when I can.

I agree that the MacBook Air is quite nifty. I’ve deliberately avoided going to my local Apple store to look at one, knowing it would be very tempting.

The problem’s that apart from a couple of pounds in weight, it’s really no nicer for writing than my aging white MacBook with a SSD. And if I opt for the 11" model, it has just 5 hours battery life, while I’m still getting about 4 hours on my MacBook. My hunch is that with next year’s MBA, we’ll see a sea change in power consumption, with battery life well past 10-hours and perhaps Retina displays without a price penalty. Also, if I got a MBA, it wouldn’t be low end. I’d definitely want more memory and might want a larger SSD. That’d push the $999 price to beyond $1200, and with a cut back in hours in my other job, that’s more than I could justify right now.

In short, I’ve gone back and forth on this, but in the end I like writing with Scrivener on my old MacBook so much, I see little need to change. And that contrasts with the fact that I will absolutely have to upgrade my desktop this year. I run heavy apps on it like InDesign and Photoshop and with Lion, it’s become a slug. And I can’t add more RAM. It’s already maxed out.

In contrast, the iPad does offer the ability to do things I can’t do well with a laptop, particularly reading in a comfy chair. Even more important was Scrivener coming to the iPad as a killer app. That turns an iPad into a serious tool. And if I began to do ebooks for the iBookstore, an iPad would let me look at them.

There are substantial cost differences, in my case, between an iPad and a MBA. I already have an Apple Bluetooth keyboard picked up last year cheaply as a refurb from OWC. It’s been sitting around unused and making me feel guilty. This would let me use it. That’s about $70 saved. I also already have cases and bags, picked up for a pittance at Goodwill.

I keep looking at the rumors for the new iPad and shaking my head. If the new model has four times the pixel count and about twice the speed, along with a few other tweaks, and if Apple continues to sell the low-end model for $500, then the price of the current iPad is going to have to come way, way down, either as something Apple still sells or in refurb. My guess is that it must be in the $300-350 range to still be marketable, with the later low enough to give Amazon headaches. (Of course, if Apple doesn’t do that, I’m in a bind. I don’t want to spend $500 for an iPad, but if the choice is between an iPad 2 at $400 and an iPad 3 with twice the horsepower at $500, I’ll be in a terrible bind.)

Do the math, and that’s about $350 to add an iPad to my gadgetry versus over $1200 with taxes for a MBA. If my situation were different, particularly if I didn’t need a desktop upgrade this year, I might make a different choice.

Also, I failed to mention that the $3.99 for the Verizon iPad case includes shipping from Brooklyn, NY to U.S. addresses. Since shipping is perhaps half that price, I can only explain the low price for what is actually a well-made $30-40 case as a tax write off. Verizon needed to dump their inventory to get some tax loss benefits, so it sold them to an eBay retailer for a pittance just to get the proper paperwork.

Boeing used to do something like that when it had a Seattle surplus store. Some outside contracts required them to account for every expense, so they couldn’t use existing tools in their inventory. They had to buy the tools new and then sell them afterward at a heavy discount, so the ‘cost’ could be established. The physical store is no more, but I believe they still sell online here:

active.boeing.com/assocproducts … /Index.cfm

That’s sad. Some of the stuff they sold was really interesting to look at even if I didn’t buy that much. And it looks like they’re not selling as much online as that old surplus store or in as convenient a quantity. A lot of stuff at the store sold for its price as scrap. You can’t do that when packaging and shipping is involved.

–Mike Perry

11

I use the origami incase with an Apple bluetooth keyboard and it works quite well. You do need to use it on a table but it beats the virtual keyboard hands (fingers?) down. I use it with Notebooks to which I sync Scrivener, although I occassionaly get sync conflicts so I’m looking forward to an iPad version of Scriv. :smiley:

12

Can’t resist an invitation to comment from Lord Vader himself. :laughing:

That new origami case looks very good for hooking together an iPad and wireless keyboard. I can’t tell how much protection it adds to either when traveling, though. Most of my use of the Pad occurs on trips, so I bought the Incase Travel Kit Plus.

It’s a hinged case with padded zipper pockets for Pad, keyboard, and all other accessories and cables. When all zipped up, it makes a package that fits in a briefcase or suitcase and leaves room for other stuff.

After extracting Pad and keyboard, I rest the Pad in a 69-cent business card holder from Office Depot. I have found the Apple wireless keyboard to be the best one for use with tablet or desktop machines.

goincase.com/products/detail/tra … us-cl57513

13

I also like the look of the combined keyboard/case by Zagg, except they are quite expensive and I don’t think they do a QWERTY keyboard.

ebay.co.uk/itm/ZAGG-iPad-2-F … 5423wt_689

14

Now what I’d like is something similar to the keyboard & business card holder idea, but with a foldable keyboard that draws power from the device (iPod/iPhone for even better portability). I don’t want to have to charge my keyboard, or keep running batteries through it (and thus have extra weight simply for independently powering something that otherwise should require extremely little power from the main device). Anyone know of something that fits that bill?

15

Jaysen,

Sorry for not being clear, but I don’t support the idea of going around with the iPad and a keyboard. On the contrary, I suggest that typing on the glass of the iPad when on the road is perfectly fine for me. A keyboard would be used only at home, if needed.

I absolutely agree that an Air would be much more comfotable if you need a keyboard while on the road. The luxury of having the full version of Scrivener would be invaluable. But if you decide you like the utter Zen-simplicity of the iPad, an iPad without a keyboard would be extremely practical and easy to carry around.

(Incidentally: I think Apple has some very big troubles realizing they are selling to an International audience; the autocorrection feature only works on a single language - the one the iPad is set to - without an option to choose, or the ability to understand; what about the vast majority of users, having to deal with at least their native language and English or Chinese? I’m tired of seeing my sagacity being replaced with spaghetti!)

(EDIT: I discovered a workaround to make the autocorrect work in more languages. In the Settings, you must add a keyboard layout corresponding to the language you want to write in. The globe icon will appear in the virtual keyboard, then you will be able to select an alternative keyboard layout, and the corresponding autocorrect language with it. So, at the moment I’m cycling between Italian, Ancient Polytonic Greek, and English; it seems to work fine.)

Paolo

16

That’s what I understood you to say. I think my bad english should be rephrase to be

And my apologies for not spelling your name correctly. If you consider that my name is a travesty …

17

Hi Jaysen,

My first name is (more or less) never spelt correctly by native English speakers, who are probably more accustomed to the name Paul. To compensate for this, in Italy my last name is (more or less) never spelt correctly…

Cheers, Paulo… er, Paolo

18

I’ll add another reason why, at least at present, I’m foregoing getting one of the new (soon) MacBook Airs and continuing to use my perfectly functional 4+ year old MacBook. It’s more than the fact there’s not $1200 worth on enhancements with the MBA. It’s a CPU chip from Intel called Haswell that should be making its way into MBAs the middle of next year. Google if you’d like to know more.

What matters is that it’s not so much that it will be more powerful than the current Sandy Bridge chips or the soon-out Ivy Bridge chips. Even the Core 2 Duo of chip in my MacBook is plenty powerful for writing. It’s that Haswell will probably be the answer to a market demand for low power consumption chips that’s been around for several years. Some have estimated that MBA-like laptops with Haswell chips will be able to get a 20+ hour battery life.

It makes little sense to replace my MacBook with a MBA to save 2 pounds. Most of the time when I go off to write I’m lugging a 20-pound pack anyway. Nor does make sense to replace my SSD-euipped MacBook with a measured 4.5-hour battery life with a 11-inch MBA with a rated life of 5 hours. But it does make sense to buy a new laptop to get 15-20 hours of battery life. Once the battery life exceeds the time you or I normally stay awake, the life’s essentially infinite. It can recharge while we sleep.

And yes, I know this is a game I play with myself and my frugal budget. I keep coming up with tech changes that my next gadget must have to avoid spending money now. It’s the flip side of those who always have to have the latest and greatest.

And for what it’s worth, I’m still undecided if, after the iPad 3’s release, I’ll get a hopefully heavily discounted iPad 2 or go with the iPad 3. It might be worth an added $100 to get an iPad with another year of usefulness.

On the other hand, the management at Apple is very shrewd. Their move into the K-12 market makes little sense if the base iPad is going to remain at $500. Those who’ve run the numbers are already pointing out that a $15 etextbook, good only for one student-year, actually costs more than a $75 printed textbook that can be passed along for six years. Toss even a just-below $500 iPad cost into the equation, and it makes little financial sense for schools to go to iPads. And that suggest that Apple has plans for a $300-350 iPad in the works. That’s most likely to be the continuation of the 16-gig model of the iPad 2. A $300 iPad 2 might be a better, even in the long run, than a $500 iPad 3.

We’ll see in a little over a week when rumors say Apple will be announcing the next iPad. I’ve already acquired, via Goodwill and various online discounters, most of what I’ll need to carry an iPad writing platform about and it’s amazing how much smaller it is than my black Swiss Gear laptop pack. If nothing else, my back would appreciate the change, particularly when Scrivener for the iPad comes out, covered with magic pixie dust.

–Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien, Seattle

19

Yeah, I don’t really understand what Apple expects of K-12 with textbooks. They’ve never understood that market from a hardware standpoint. An iPad is not the right tool for the job; neither is a $300 hypothetical one. You need somone like AlphaSmart designing this digital textbook. It needs to be rugged plastic, light so as to not be a weaponised textbook, and something you can hurl at a brick wall without breaking it. And it needs to be cheap, so that when they are lost/stolen/flushed/engraved they can be replaced without a committee meeting. Apple should just stick to what they know, the luxury market. They do that well, and their expertise in the luxury market makes no sense in the classroom. I don’t think the market is ready for everything Apple wants to push as being “good” for textbooks anyway. Full-colour animated touchscreen stuff, whether that even has a role in a textbook to begin with, can’t be cheaply delivered yet.

20

Amber is right. Marvelous as it is, an iPad is ill-suited for kids, particularly in comparison with what Alphasmart sells. The right device has to be drop-able at least four feet onto concrete. It has to survive being crushed in a backpack with no protective case.

Personally, I can’t understand why Apple hasn’t brought out a ruggedized, peanut-butter proof version for kids, perhaps based on the internals of the original iPad. Priced low enough, they’d sell millions of them. I know a couple who have an iPad that’s been totally taken over by their three daughters.

And yes, it is true that kids love these gadget. I work with kids 12-24 months at my church. This past Sunday, one little girl was sad, so I pulled out my iPhone to let her play with a fish in a pond app. In a flash, every kid around me converged on it. They know what it is and that it’s fun. I quickly hid it. One toy won’t work with five kids. If I’d shown them an iPad, I’d have probably been mobbed. And these are kids less than two!

I’m also skeptical of the practicality of glitzy, effect-filled textbooks. They’re costly to produce, which is probably why the major textbook companies, who advised Apple on their recent move, like them. But their suitability for most topics is limited and best filled by specialized apps:

  1. Planet and stars apps for Astronomy. I love those. For the first time, thanks to Planets on my iPhone, I’m starting to get a mental picture of the sky that is useful. I never got that from paper charts.

  2. Math equation graphing. Learn to visualize math.

  3. Newtonian physics demonstrations. Bouncing balls, swinging pendulums etc.

But it makes no sense to stick those inside ebooks as gimmicks. Powerful, broader purpose apps make more sense. Apps inside books just make the books bloated.

Sadly, I think that within schools there are people who shouldn’t be teaching, either because they have no talent for teaching or because they’ve not been taught the necessary skills. A great teacher can work wonders with just a blackboard. I had physics teachers who were like that. A mediocre teacher keeps hoping something will come along to make up for his inadequacies. And today, that mostly means something glitzy and high-tech.

And not to be a spoilsport, but many, many topics simply don’t have enough people interested in studying them to justify expensive study tools. To learn them, you have to be able to handle black words on white paper without getting bored. And keep in mind that isn’t a hard taste to acquire. For generations, kids have grown up learning of adventure through books such as Treasure Island.

I’m also amused when I see kids about 10-14 typing away industriously, if slowly, with one or two fingers on those on-screen keyboards. I’d have probably done the same before I learned to touch type but it is a less than optimal solution. That’s why my interest in Scrivener on the iPad starts with “first get a real keyboard.” With a real keyboard, I think a word and it appears–although sometimes as a sound-alike word. With my iPhone, I have to think a letter at a time and make sure I hit it right. There’s no way I want to write a 80,000 word novel that way.

[b]I still shake my head in astonishment that Tolkien wrote the 600,000 words of The Lord of the Rings, first in pencil, then in pen over the penciled text, then by one-finger-typing it himself twice. In the grim poverty of the UK after WWII and with sky high taxes on his The Hobbit royalties, he couldn’t afford a professional typist.

We should never forget how good we have it.[/b]