The Typeable Tablet?
October 18th, 2010, 9:58pm by JakeIs it possible to make a tablet that works well in its native form but is still easy to type on? Reports from the field suggest the all-touch keyboard is rough. Portrait slider would be unbalanced. What other novel form factors should be at least considered? My latest thought is an all-touch front screen, with a flip-over keyboard that’s usually tucked away on the back side, but lays on top of the screen (think Kindle) for typing.
October 19th, 2010 at 12:27 am
How’s the iPad for portrait typing? I imagine it’s also unbalanced (top heavy) when thumbtyping and holding at the same time. Wonder it it would have been more ergonomic to have the virtual keyboard appear in the middle section of the screen rather than the bottom. I remember some of those Ultra UMPC’s had some novel keyboards– the virtual keys were split, with half of the keys within reach of each thumb. In fact, Samsung Q1 was a hardware keyboard manifestation of that idea.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Q1?wasRedirected=true
Anyway, I think of tablets as fundamentally consumption devices, so input just needs to be good enough. I imagine 7″ portrait keyboad (virtual or otherwise) would comfortably thumbable, but in landscape, it’d be in between. Too big for thumbs only, too small for finger touch typing. A hardware keyboard has a different problem– only works in one orientation. Seems like that would be a deal breaker, even if you could solve the bulkiness issue.
October 19th, 2010 at 9:06 am
The iPad keyboard on portrait mode is too big to be thumbable, but the benefit, of course, is that in landscape, it’s nearly full-size. It’s useable in portrait mode, but it turns me into a hunt and peck typer, as opposed to thumbs or touch typing. A 7″ might be better in portrait, but would suck in landscape.
I agree that input is not the main purpose of a tablet — at this point, I wouldn’t recommend an iPad as a computer replacement if you type a ton — emailing is good, but there’s no real way (in my experience) to really type paragraphs-worth of text on it. I guess you could get an external keyboard, but at that point you’re entering the why-not-just-get-a-laptop zone.
October 19th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
I saw a comment somewhere asking about photo editing on an iPad and everyoje said, no way. That got me thinking, why not? Mostly editing is dragging sliders, and a touch interface seems more natural for that sort of thing. Not really typing related, but hey, how often do we have tablet posts on The Board?
October 19th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Makes sense to me. I do photo editting on my laptop in tablet mode. It’s much easier to do that than use the trackpad (although I definitely prefer a mouse).
October 19th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
We need to write a PDK app for that.
October 19th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Who said no way to iPad photo editing? There are dozens of apps for that*.
* (c) Apple 2010
October 19th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Here are six options for the iPad. Maybe your contacts had more stringent criteria (RAW editting, maybe?).
A photo editor for webOS would be nice and potentially possible with the 2.0 SDK, sources say. So keep the faith.
October 19th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I think you meant… There’s an app for that.™
October 19th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Really, I need a levels slider, exposure, sharpness, white balance adjustments. Cropping tools. Color filters. Etc. Not Photoshop, more like iPhoto level stuff. I’d like to see screen shots of these apps.
October 19th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
I’ll take a little of my ire back — the iPad is pretty good to type on if you’re lying on your back on the couch with your iPad on your thighs — a position that actually is kinda hard to use a laptop in.
Just realized this. Sent from my iPad.
October 19th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Mike, that’s the right position to be using the iPad, per all the billboards. In fact, I’m sure Steve would say that if you find the iPad hard to type on, you’re holding it wrong.
Jake, follow my link– there are iTunes links to screenshots for all six apps they talk about.
October 20th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
I think he’d go so far as to say that if you have trouble typing, you need to reorient your entire body until you’re happy typing.
Jake: here’s a keyboard you might like.
October 20th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Hmmm… not what was in my mind’s eye.
October 20th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I was thinking pancake thin, and a better feedback mechanism than showing an alphabetic keyboard.