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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

The functionality of the touch-keyboard has been my #1 concern in ordering an iPad - his comments:

"I found email easy and productive to use, and had no trouble typing accurately and quickly on the iPad’s wide on-screen keyboard. In fact, I found the iPad virtual keyboard more comfortable and accurate to use than the cramped keyboards and touchpads on many netbooks. . ."

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I've wagered that typing on the iPad will not only be tolerable but that people will actually be able to get Real Work done.

Over the past two months I have been involved in a project to develop a typing training application for the iPad. Our hope is that people will use TapTyping to get over the iPad-typing learning curve very quickly.

I just sent this to my posterous about Walt's article:

http://flairify.posterous.com/walt-mossberg-gives-ipad-typin...

That's a great idea - good luck with the app and make sure to update on HN when you release TapTyping!

I hope Walt's right, but I just find that so hard to believe. Did you see Steve typing an email at the iPad keynote? It was so awkward that it was kind of painful to watch. And, as I recall, Steve even had an uncorrected typo slip by in the one-line email that he composed.

That said, watching Walt's video got me super excited about getting one of these puppies. :)

Steve's body position looked awkward too. He really had to get his legs crossed tightly and keep his leg near his body to prop that device up so it was facing him.

This reminds me, nearly every Apple video has the iPad on the leg of somebody sitting crosslegged, sort of stuck there with magic velcro or something. Having balanced a fair share of laptops on my legs, and not enjoying the precariousness of it, I would be a bit frightened of hammering on a $600 slab with an unprotected glass front without securing it with at least one of my hands. And typing with one hand, even on a physical keyboard, stinks.

Tried to pre-order one (from AU) via Shipito but it was cancelled because I used a freight forwarder. Anyone else trying to get one early from overseas and had more luck? (Would rather not ask a friend to do it as it's a bit of a pain for them mucking around with shipping, etc.)

How did Apple know you were using a shipping service? Was that the only cancelling reason?

I guess they have a list of addresses blacklisted? Yeah, that was the only cancelling reason.

In it's defence it was exactly the same when he first demonstrated the iPhone keyboard.

I hope Walt's right, but I just find that so hard to believe.

I agree. The benefit of being able to rest one's fingers on a physical keyboard and feel each key seems rather obvious to me. Moreover, I doubt the iPad virtual keyboard is any less cramped than a netbook keyboard.

I'm not expecting it to be anywhere near a real physical keyboard in terms of speed but one of the interesting things about adapting to the iPhone keyboard is accepting accuracy isn't all that important. It decodes my crazy gibberish into the correct words most of the time. The trick of auto-correction is it punishes you for stopping to correct typos. It rewards you for completing your gibberish word. I would guess the process of tapping out the rest of the word is where all the computational multi-touch magic is happening to make a good auto-correct judgement. For speed the auto-suggest feature is also very effective. If I only have to type "qu" to make the word "question" that's 3 screen taps versus the potential for at least 8 key presses on a physical keyboard. Another side effect of mastering multi-touch typing is learning the value of brevity. Obviously this post is not typed on an iPhone. You learn to compose text in a straight forward way and do more of the compositional process in your head before you start typing. In this way it reminds me of writing short notes. So multi-touch keyboards won't replace physical keyboards but I really believe they are good enough and perhaps even better than a real keyboard sometimes. For example, if you are spelling challenged you're probably familiar with the type, type, type, mouse - click - click - correct, type type type proces. On a multi-touch keyboard it either fixes your spelling as you go or you tap once to auto-correct as you type. That's actually a more intuitive process.

Good points. The predictive text on the iPhone is excellent. It definitely requires a lot of trust from the user, and I think it takes a while to build up that trust. Even after a couple years, I find that I still need to make a conscious effort to let the iPhone handle my mistakes.

Based on the screen size, the onscreen keyboard should have dimensions similar to a 9-10" netbook. But a netbook keyboard has a lot more keys crammed into that space. Look what's missing on the iPad keyboard: http://images.apple.com/ipad/features/images/mail_type_20100... or http://www.zath.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/apple-ipad-... 0-9,",[],{}, TAB, cursor keys, etc. all have to be accessed from an alternate keyboard screen. I'll admit that the lack of keys adds a benefit of plenty of extra space between keys.

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