What I Do With My iPad Part 2: Write With a Keyboard
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:55PM The iPad is a wonderful focused writing tool. Both Harry McCracken and James Kendrick have perfectly described how its simplicity and one-app-at-a-time model encourage attentive productivity. McCracken writes:
With the iPad… You can devote nearly every second of your time to the task at hand, rather than babysitting a balky computer. I don’t feel like I’m “using an iPad to write.” I’m just writing. It’s a far more tranquil, focused experience than using a PC or Mac.
McCracken and Kendrick agree that using an iPad to write tranquilly and focussedly requires a physical keyboard (both like the Logitech Keyboard Case). I love using my iPad with my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. I really wish someone at Apple did too, because unfortunately, the device’s keyboard support feels like a bit of an afterthought. I can’t help but feel that if anyone on the iPad team was passionate about the physical keyboard experience, a few glaringly obvious shortcomings would be corrected.
- Command + Tab, optionally in concert with the left and right arrow keys, is the keyboard shortcut for switching apps on Mac. I want this functionality so bad on my iPad that I actually mocked up what it might look like. I hope this video makes it as clear to you as it is to me how incredibly useful this would be.
I know, first I extol the virtues of the iPad’s focus and single-app view, and then I beg for an easy way to bounce among my apps. What can I say—the only thing a writer likes more than a distraction-free environment is distractions. Now on with the gripes.
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When a search or other text entry, such as an email field, presents a list of suggestions based on what I’ve begun to type, I should be able to use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate that list, and Return to select—just like we do on OS X. iOS 5 added this functionality in a few places (address fields in Mail, for example), but there are still many text fields where it is frustratingly absent (most notably Search in Safari).
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If you purchased your Apple keyboard after July 2011, your F4 key is devoted to Launchpad, the iPad-esque app browsing screen in OS X Lion. This key, with its grid-of-apps icon, is just dying to function as an iPad home button.
It’s not just Apple that thinks of iPad keyboarders last, if at all. Most of my writing apps exhibit an understandable, but nevertheless frustrating behavior when used with an external keyboard. Writing often means adding text to the end of a document, so frequently the part of the screen that I’m focussed on is the very bottom, as far from my eyeballs as possible (especially when I’m using my Incase Origami case/stand). You can work around this by padding the end of the document with a bunch of empty lines (or, better still, raising the iPad closer to eye-level if possible—not easy, but if you can pull it off you’ve created something much better for your posture than any laptop), ;)
iA Writer in full-focustard modebut I do wish that some of these apps would recognize that without the on-screen keyboard naturally pushing my words up to the center of the screen, there’s utility in padding out the bottom of the screen and keeping your typing area near the vertical center—the way, say, Scrivener does on the Mac in its excellent full-screen mode. Of all my iPad writing apps, the only one that nails this is iA Writer—but only in its full-focustard mode.
McCracken wrote about using his iPad as a laptop replacement. That’s not how I see it. There are many occasions when the power to do anything that my MacBook Pro offers is exactly what I want. But there times where that potential creates such a distraction that I long for something simpler. The amazing thing about using the iPad for creative work is that the device goes away, and the task at hand becomes the entire experience. With a just little more of Apple’s characteristic attention to detail, the physical keyboard experience could be just as transparent, and the iPad would truly be the best writing tool I’ve ever known.
If you agree with all or any of this, consider letting Apple know via their iPad Feedback form.
Reader Comments (8)
I don't yet have an iPad (I know) but honestly, this is the exact set up and for the exact task, I had in mind, and why I want one. I thought it would be an awesome writing tool. So thanks Stu, to hear that's what you do, and how much you like it with external keyboard.
Just wanted to emphasize what a convenience CMD+Tab (or Alt+Tab on Windows) is in everyday work. I hope they follow your suggestion ASAP.
Forget Apple's keyboard for Macs and try Logitech's one for iPad 2. I find it pretty more usable and comfortable, with only dedicated keys for iPad.
Anyway, I really hope that your demo will help the world getting those vital functionalities for extensive iPad usage with an external keyboard...
As great as it seems, I specifically don't want the keyboard-case thing. I like the option to use the iPad in portrait, and quickly detach it from the keyboard for sessions of more touch-based work. Writing is a small part of what I do with my iPad.
Great suggestion! I'm adding another wish for paired BT keyboards, comic-sans style :)
http://www.gustavofontana.com/BTkeyboard_comic_gf_120106.jpg
(you'll have to copy>past URL, images/links are not supported)
A paired BT keyboard in another room (or even worse: in overhead compartment of a plane) makes a pass-code-locked iPad unlockable.
Woah, yes—that's happened to me, but luckily never in such an un-fixable way!
I hate to be contrary -- and I'm definitely not trying to tell anybody else how they should work-- but for myself, after a year of trying various attachable iPad keyboards, I find myself most able --and yes, most comfortable!-- actually using the iPad's onscreen keyboard. And I'm writing several pages a day in Apple Pages this way, then transferring the pages to my desktop Mac where the gathering of new pages can be done in Word. For me, it's just easier to only have to carry my iPad whereever I go, rather than to be always depending on any extra peripherals to get spur-of-the-moment work done.
Sort of off-topic, but i finally got that Bamboo stylus you recommended as a Christmas gift. I started up Penultimate and started doodling-- and just sighed with joy. Drawing with it is a revelation; the machine disappears and it's just me and the page again. Thanks so much for the recommendation. If somebody can come up with a keyboard that does for you what the Bamboo stylus does for me, it'll be a great day indeed.