Wednesday 19 June 2013

Touch Typing Nightmare

A new iPad keyboard folio has arrived for review from Belkin.
It is brilliant. Light but strong in aluminium and leather-look plastic. The tablet fits securely in the frame, which can be positioned in one of three angles depending on how you want to use it (typing, watching videos or whatever).
Magnets hold the lid onto the keyboard, also switching the iPad and the Bluetooth keyboard off when you close it, and on when you open it again. Very clever.
It looks good, too.
But...THERE IS ALWAYS BLOODY SOMETHING.
In this case, two things.
The iPad is so securely fixed in the folio you can't get it out again without forcibly springing it out. I fear it is going to break every time I do it. The result is that once the tablet is in the folio it will stay there forever. It becomes a rather heavy, expensive and under-powered netbook.
If I wanted a bloody netbook I would buy one.
So someone please produce a keyboard folio that makes it easy to slip the iPad in and out so you don't lose the tablet experience.
The other bloody thing is that they have messed about with the layout of the keys. The upper and lower lines of letters have been shifted along a bit, presumably to squeeze all of them in to the restricted width available.
Compare the Belkin layout (left) with the layout on an iLuv keyboard folio (below). The B, for example, should be between G and H but it is one along under H and J.
Now this may not make any difference to pathetic hunt'n'peck slowcoaches but I and my fellow graduates of the Sight and Sound School of Typing in Charing Cross Road back in the good old days find this absolutely crippling. Every other word is wrong. It is as bad as predictive text.
There is a nasty trend for this and Belkin is not the only offender.
So, to you iPad accessory makers out there I say: HANDS OFF QUERTY. LEAVE THE KEYS WHERE GOD PUT THEM.
My iPad now goes in the iLuv keyboard folio which is heavier and not nearly as clever and has a huge area of open space below the keys so you have to raise your wrists at an uncomfortable height to type properly. But at least I can touch type.

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