A keyboard case that makes your iPad look a lot like the MacBook Air.
thebrydge.com
thebrydge.com
Can you believe it's 2012 and operating systems still don't come with an manual or a guide?! So of course people are flocking to iPads. They're powerful yet brain dead simple. Which empowers people rather than making them feel incompetent or stressing them out.
I think Steve Jobs made a mistake. Maybe the iPad should have come with a keyboard and competed with the laptops.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/552506690/brydge-ipad-do...
[1] http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-05/record-breakin...
Impressively, it was designed, engineered, and machined all in-house by a three person team, of which two members had a prior successful hardware project on Kickstarter. The project appears to be the very opposite of vaporware.
iPad keyboards have been around for a long time, but they don't sell in numbers nearly as comparable to the iPad itself. To me, this says that most people in the post-PC world are happy without them...
That being said - this does look like a nice design.
I actually think what this says about the iPad, is how very strong a product & category it is. That it can spawn an ecosystem of very high end add ons to adapt it to different use cases. To me, that just further demonstrates the depth of its conception and quality of execution.
I remember Windows coming with a pretty thick manual explaining how to use it. Either way your point still stands, the OS has changed so little they don't feel like explaining it anymore. But it's not user friendly enough for other people.
Gestures are an extra. An added bonus. Think the multitasking gestures for iOS 5 on iPad
There are several short videos about the gestures in System Preferences -> Trackpad.
You mean what the Mac still is.
Apple relies on unmarked, multi-fingered "gestures"
Actually, they are marked quite clearly, and only some of them are multi-fingered, and they are remarkably easy to use.
and two-handed hotkeys
Actually, Mac OS hotkeys are quite consistent and intuitive, and have survived the test of time. command-c, command-v, command-x, command-z, command-s, command-p all do what they did in 1984. It's simply not true that Mac hotkeys are less intuitive than the alternatives; indeed, Windows copied the most-common Mac hotkeys verbatim.
Yeah, it's a clinic of hypocrisy
This is where you really start to run off the rails.
Then it comes out with one inept, piece-of-shit mouse after another
You can argue with their ergonomics, but they certainly weren't pieces of shit. I found at least some of those mice quite usable.
culminating in a "multi-touch" mouse
The real culmination of Apple's input-device path is the Magic Trackpad, which is the best trackpad I've ever used, and it's not even a close comparison. I prefer it to any mouse, and I've used 28 years' worth of mice.
But given that Apple has sold more than 60 million iPads without keyboards makes me think that the current design is working just fine for most people.
Sales figures don't prove something is good (or bad).
The iPad remains a toy because it is missing one major thing: power.
That's one thing that Windows 8 has going for it. It's got the might of Windows but works on a tablet. That's the right idea, but Windows 8 will be installed on tablets with no keyboard, laptops whose keyboard can't be removed, and desktops.
What we need is the simplicity of the iPad, the benefit of a keyboard, the option to remove the keyboard when we need to, and the power of an OS like Windows, OS X, or Linux. They also need the computing power of a laptop or desktop.
I'm thinking the desktop will be replaced by a dock that lends power to the new generation of tablet, or that mice, monitors and larger keyboards will be available to connect to them. The latter lacks simplicity, so a dock sounds much more feasible. Just plug in and go to work, rather than connecting a handful of different cords.
Similar, familiar, comfortable look and feel across platforms.
The same fundamental data, applications, and generic controls at our disposal despite the medium.
A phone that can plug into a dock, and signal "dock mode" where it accepts slightly different control inputs by way of keyboard & mouse, displays on an external monitor, and possibly offers additional functionality now that it's plugged into a power source - unlock cores, activate dedicated GPU inside the unit, etc.
I believe Microsoft was operating on a similar notion in Windows 8. The way I see it, as your use case changes, the OS would adapt, capabilities change (IOS turns into Snow Leopard when docked).
Oh, I guess when I said "we", I meant "me".
Then you'd better get rid of the keyboard on the computer.
> This is just further proof that people don't really want
> an iPad
If the iPad is a mistake, it's a mistake to the tune of 67 million units over two years, and that's limited by manufacturing, not demand. Or you are wrong.
YES.
They sell poorly because they are crap and expensive. Exactly like tablets were before the iPad.
Give me something like the transformer prime, with an a15 and an android + desktop linux combo for a reasonable price and i'll be all over that.
This dock (+retina ipad) has brought me closer to wanting the ipad than ever before.
So if you combine a bunch of things that each sell very poorly then that would sell really well?
The basic problem is the age old one- tablets (/os) suck at content creation. That is a problem of both OS and lack of keyboard. So a keyboard alone doesn't cut it.
As for linux, I would take any desktop OS, but MS have already committed to locking down their bootloader + laming arm windows 8, and there are no signs that apple is about to cannibalise their MBA line. OTOH android integrates well with linux, sharing the kernel-- as ubuntu have demonstrated.
And wtf @ downvoting that comment.. why??.
Had you suggested that, and some foolish HP exec would have believed you, then it would have failed catastrophically. The ARM processor is not the magic juice that made the iPad a success.
After Jobs' comeback, Apple has been incredibly successfully at refining concept products that weren't selling well and bringing them to the mainstream. They'll eventually do the same with tablet/laptop hybrids, I'm pretty sure about that.
A 15" MBA is attractive even to a longtime PC user like me; a 15" iPad/MBA hybrid? I'd order five tomorrow.
You won't see a hybrid from Apple, because hybrids, by their very nature, are compromises. They are more awkward and less useful than the two things they combine. Apple understood this, which is why iOS exists.
The point about Apple not doing hybrids is simply short-sighted, btw; isn't the iPhone a "compromise" between a computer and a phone? Isn't the iMac a "compromise" between a monitor and a case? And that's exactly why these products are successful: because they give you the best of both worlds in one single physical object. If/when they fail to do that, they end up giving you the worst instead, which is what you mention, but that's not a necessary outcome for all hybrid efforts.
Every time I read a headline about how much money Apple are making, I reflect on how much pent up demand there was for years, held back by the Wintel (and IE) monopolies.
This is just further proof that people don't really
want an iPad, they want a laptop
When someone buys an iPad they are escaping the hangover of using Microsoft Windows for two decades. You'll find most iPad owners love their tablet precisely because there is no concept of files and folders, and drivers, and a long bootup process, and hard drives, and defrag utilities, and spyware, and virus protection... None of that stuff really improve users' experience.
Ordinary people just want to get onto the internet, play some games, and read facebook. Whether the hardware that lets them do this in an easy way is a tablet, or a laptop form factor is irrelevant.
Apologists for the crippled user experience act as though a file system is some kind of arcane "nerdy" or "geeky" facility. It isn't. It's how people organize information. That's why we have file cabinets and recipe boxes. It's also how multiple applications can act on the same files.
In iOS we have mobile, handheld Unix computers that are ironically cut off from the outside world on purpose. On those computers we have applications that can't interact with each other or each other's data. This is not progress.
The problem with that is she'll complain about the application being at fault. And maybe it is. After all, sending a recipe to a friend should be easy. And exporting the recipe to some standard format should be available. And printing is something that can happen. None of those complaints can be levied against iOS.
Of course, the flip side is also true: the nature of iOS and the App Store means the app developers really are limited by what Apple will allow them to do. I hate reading app reviews that complain about things that aren't the fault of the app, but rather Apple or another 3rd party.
In essence, I see a damned if you do, damned if you don't approach.
This is slowly changing and in 2-3 generations everybody will know what a folder-based filesystem was because it'll be prominently listed on the wikipedia page about broken computing metaphors of the past.
Form factor is incredibly relevant.
For me it's not about escaping from vendor X, or operating system Y, it's about what the form-factor allows me to do.
It about having the freedom to chose where I want to sit and _the_posture_ I want to adopt when reading stuff on the internet.
Laptops/netbooks got us half-way there (no longer force to sit in a certain location). Their short-coming was you're forced to adopt a certain posture, or put something hard under it so it doesn't overheat (or burn you).
However, the ability of a well designed tablet to open another 'ergonomic dimension' does not guarantee that the tablet can maintain all the other ergonomics of other form-factors.
Some users realize this and think the fix is to make the new device 'morph' into that other form factor. I suspect that some team of people will realize that it can be achieved some other way that is simpler and sexier and make a mint from their idea. It will involve a revolution in input device hardware (and acceptance of that hardware) to get there though.
Too black and white. Imagine more.
MBP on the bottom, lid snaps off and is an iPad. Compatible applications sync on event: snap off/on between the iPad and the MBP.
So basically it's the Asus tablet and base station affair (or this Brydge thingamabob) but instead of just speakers/keyboard/battery you have the works in the base station and you can plug in a monitor and use it separately from the iPad/screen assembly.
It's not that people want this or that, it's that they want it all.
Would be curious to see real world photos of it, because that light has the potential to cheapen the rest of the design (i'm thinking of lights like this: http://www.chelseadeals.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=27&...)
It can be startling how incredbly annoying such bright (almost always blue) LEDs can be. Especially being charged nearby while you sleep or if you are watching a movie/screen from a distance.
http://floodmagazine.com/2010/10/14/apples-attention-to-deta...
Hopefully there is some third way where we can get a snappy OS, vague nods towards physical quality, and a netbook that doesn't feel like an accident waiting to happen every time you pick it up.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui...
this remarkably capable for Android development. You can even open up an Eclipse project directly in it and edit and install right on the device. Not sure if this is the kind of development you're looking for but developing for Android on Android is a reality with surprisingly few compromises. The IDE is called AIDE by the way.
I can imagine having that as primary device, but only with some other computer to connect to via SSH (and constant internet connection).
oh, connectbot probably had some problem with Transformer's keyboard AND it doesn't have "esc" button (which is kind of useful in vim), so I used some custom-build version that maps the search key to "esc" (since you don't need the search key anyway). But they maybe fixed it since then and I am still using some ancient version.
I generally have no interest in tablets because of the OS limitations you mentioned, but the well-designed keyboard that ships with the Transformer made the deal for me. Like the Brydge, it has a solid hinge, and it also has a second battery that charges the Transformer as needed, providing an extra 10 or so hours of battery life (for a maximum of 18).
iPad+Keyboard is probably a compelling alternative to a crappy lowend laptop for say students with light word-processing needs, but otherwise spend most of their time on web, social networking, and games.
Stanford med school actually "gives" (this verb seems out of place considering the tuition) every incoming student an iPad.
Still, it looks well designed and Apple-y in form and function.
Personally, I use the virtual keyboard exclusively. I find it a nice change of pace. Somewhat similar to how the thought process seems to change when writing with paper and pencil, compared to hammering away at a physical keyboard.
Still, this is just a gimmick for early adopters. I bought my mother-in-law a bluetooth keyboard for her iPad. She doesn't use it. Not because she doesnt want to or has no reason to, but because she can't get through the bluetooth sync process.
To know if there should be a keyboard for the iPad, just ask one question: Does Apple make a keyboard for the iPad?
The first time these early adopters sit down with their new monstrosity and have to reach out across the keyboard to use their fingers to select text or copy paste or browse to a different app or website, they're going to realize why this is a bad idea.
Now if Apple wanted to include a pointer in iOS that could be used with a mouse (or trackpad built into this keyboard), then this starts to make sense. Until then, ppl buying this are just trying to fit a square peg into a round hole using money as lube.
So you'll need one cable to charge the iPad and another different one for this device. In their shoes I'd try to make it possible to also have the iPad in portrait orientation so that the keyboard can access the dock connector and then have a dock connector on the keyboard for charging and passthrough charging/data.
The prime is something much different from an ipad with a semipermantely attached keyboard. It's more of a slow laptop with a detachable screen that can be used as an ok tablet, as opposed to a nice tablet with a heavy bluetooth keyboard case.
I just hope it becomes a real product after the kickstarter stuff is over.
Another thing is the file system is locked up so completely, that is not in any way could be used for professional purpose, for example, writing code. It is still a casual device.
All these limitations are imposed by Apple themselves. Too bad, they really had the potential to rule the world.
It's incredible how this ridiculous gimmickry is playing out in 2012. Downright juvenile.
Why get angry about people liking their iPad but wanting a keyboard? Looks pretty cool to me. Like a laptop with a detachable keyboard.
It's a design dictated by Apple's fear and refusal to learn from the failure of DRM. More hypocrisy.