Why you'll love your on-screen keyboard

[urlwolf]

this article is going to be big :O)

Note: I don't agree with most points (using a kinesis contour + colemak now) but it's true that evolution in kb technology has been pathetic the last 20 years.

[ch_123]

Have they considered the ergonomics of proper typing on something that is front of you as opposed to underneath you? The article looks like it was written by someone who hates using computers to be honest. Seriously -

I believe the skepticism will start to melt next year when Apple's tablet ships. Shortly thereafter, we can expect a wide range of incredible Android tablets, followed by more running Windows, Linux and other operating systems.

I also believe that once you try a full-size, on-screen virtual keyboard using advanced haptics, predictive typing and customizability, you'll happily take your funky, clunky old keyboard to the recycling center and say good-bye to that technology for good.

Sounds like he's being given a rimjob by some Apple salesman. Also -

Keyboards are nice. But screen real-estate is even better. By eliminating physical keyboards, we'll be able to do with all our devices what the iPhone did for the cell phone -- increase the screen size.

Or you can just give me a bigger screen and let me use my keyboard. I really don't see how they're mutually exclusive. In fact, isn't the keyboard going to waste that space on the screen anyway?

Again, this is one of those things that's designed to look cool to the ignorant masses but is completely unusable by anyone else.

[002]

"or choose from a whole "app store" full of downloadable virtual keyboards"

Now yuppies who have the old analogue phone ringtone on their iPhones can have a matching Model M click presuming someone writes such an app

[hyperlinked]

I like the Microsoft idea of drawing the keyboard based on where your hands are rather than where they need to be to hit the keys. That alone might make an on-screen only keyboard tolerable to me.

When I got to this site, I hated chiclet keys. I've since picked up a netbook and a Macbook Pro with chiclet keys. I can type just about as fast as normal on both boards now. I'm mentioning this because I find these boards to be like tapping on flat boards. If my hands are in the wrong position, I'll start typing and I have a hard time feeling that something is wrong. If they're in the right position, I just cruise along still with an uneasy feeling that I can't really tell where my hands are, but I'm able to type at about my normal speed now.

I have a MacPro tower. The flat USB keyboard it came with was in a closet somewhere in all its original packaging. Someone came about here mentioning that he bought one of those for use on his PC. I thought he either had to be crazy to actually want to spend money on one or I was being too much of a keyboard snob. I dug mine out of the closet to give it another shot.

It was the worst keyboard I've ever used the last time I tried it two years ago. It was a perfectly ok keyboard this time around. I imagine there might be a day in which I won't regard a virtual keyboard to be quite so dreadful too. Once your neurons adapt, it's probably not as big of a deal as it may seem initially.

[Rajagra]

If you forward to the 3:45 point in this video demo by multi-touch designer Jeff Han, you'll see what a 1.0 virtual keyboard on, say, Windows 7 might look like. And then he says something as profound as it is obvious: "There's no reason in this day and age that we should be conforming to a physical device ... We have so much technology nowadays that these interfaces should start conforming to us."

"There's no reason in this day and age that we should be conforming to a physical device ... " unless it's the one they are currently trying to sell, of course.

[Mental Hobbit]

The part on predictive typing is hilarious. So I enter the first couple letters of my word. I look if it made the right prediction. Not yet? Ok, I enter another letter. Still not there? One more... Eventually, checking predictions on one word will most of the time take longer than blind typing a full sentence.

This reminds me of speech recognition. I tried speech recognition software about ten years ago on a Mac. It was highly impressive. After a short learning stage I could dictate pages of text with next to no errors. Then however I realized that I could still type a lot faster than I could speak - with two fingers back then. So for anyone with two healthy hands it's just playstuff.

No need to write up obituaries for physical keyboards just yet.

[Mercen_505]

A major issue that I feel people are ignoring is that of fatigue generated by tapping on a flat, hard surface. We can touch type all day long because our fingers are constantly landing on a slightly curved surface that gives to the pressure of the finger fall. Try drumming your fingers on your desk for a good 30 seconds and tell me how that feels. Yeah, it doesn't feel so hot. So you compensate by making the "hits" lighter, but then the difference between a stroke and repositioning your finger becomes harder to differentiate. False positives will be inevitable and likely frequent, no matter how good the software is at predicting what you're trying to type.

There is a very good reason why keyboards still exist in their current form. To many, the keyboard is un-sexy, but it's so hard to replace because it adequately addresses a tricky as well as necessary aspect of computing, even if it doesn't do so in a way that gets Apple fans moist.

[ch_123]

BUT OH MY GOD THE LATEST HAPTIC TECHNOLOGY WILL MAGICALLY SOLVE ALL THESE PROBLEMS

or something...

[hyperlinked]

A major issue that I feel people are ignoring is that of fatigue generated by tapping on a flat, hard surface.

This is the best serious counter point made so far. I think you're totally right here though it'll be interesting to see some studies on fatigue and RSI as a result of using virtual input devices.

Part of the problem with any assumptions made about this currently non-existing field of study is that everyone suffers premature fatigue and is more susceptible to injury when they're trying something novel. Is it possible that most people will gain enough efficiency with tapping on a flat surface to the point that it's an acceptable alternative for your average person?

The guy's wrong about there being no innovation in keyboards since the Model M came out. I guess he's never heard of a chord keyboard or remapped boards like the HHKB. Like a lot of us, I'll be he also doesn't know how to pronounce Topre.

The part on predictive typing is hilarious.

Guy must have never let Google Autocomplete finish his search for him. Supposedly Lady Gaga got her name because her producer and then boyfriend's text message got mangled by predictive text.

This reminds me of speech recognition. I tried speech recognition software about ten years ago on a Mac. It was highly impressive. After a short learning stage I could dictate pages of text with next to no errors. Then however I realized that I could still type a lot faster than I could speak - with two fingers back then. So for anyone with two healthy hands it's just playstuff.

I'm surprised you had good speech recognition on a Mac 10 years ago! My MacSpeech program didn't stop sucking until they started using the Dragon speech engine and they've since been acquired by Dragon (way cool).

If you practice you can be about as fast through speech recognition as you can by typing. It's a different skill to speak your thoughts than it is to type it. I've had some tough bouts of tendinitis before I got my Filco and I started to get pretty good at composing through speech dictation. I used my hands for programming and I'd dictate the rest.

If you're referring to the technology itself being slow, it's no longer slow at all and the accuracy of the top speech recognition softwares is impressive and getting more so by the year.

[hyperlinked]

??  They had those 25 years ago.  In fact some older keyboards you could program WITHOUT DIP switches.

True. Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse, worked on a chord keyboard himself, but I meant more modern chord keyboards and adaptive tech input devices.

[Mental Hobbit]

I'm surprised you had good speech recognition on a Mac 10 years ago! My MacSpeech program didn't stop sucking until they started using the Dragon speech engine and they've since been acquired by Dragon (way cool).

Dug up the CD: ViaVoice by IBM. Worked great for me with the included headset. I have an extreme bass voice btw, which is often difficult to understand even for humans. But I spoke German, which is more accentuated than English, so that might have made a difference.

[Mercen_505]

Is it possible that most people will gain enough efficiency with tapping on a flat surface to the point that it's an acceptable alternative for your average person?

It's possible. At this point all I know for sure is that after making several mock attempts, the tips of my fingers hurt like hell after a few sentences. Not a good sign!

[Ulysses31]

He needed a dialling wand, remember.

[EverythingIBM]

I like the Microsoft idea of drawing the keyboard based on where your hands are rather than where they need to be to hit the keys. That alone might make an on-screen only keyboard tolerable to me.

When I got to this site, I hated chiclet keys. I've since picked up a netbook and a Macbook Pro with chiclet keys. I can type just about as fast as normal on both boards now. I'm mentioning this because I find these boards to be like tapping on flat boards. If my hands are in the wrong position, I'll start typing and I have a hard time feeling that something is wrong. If they're in the right position, I just cruise along still with an uneasy feeling that I can't really tell where my hands are, but I'm able to type at about my normal speed now.

I have a MacPro tower. The flat USB keyboard it came with was in a closet somewhere in all its original packaging. Someone came about here mentioning that he bought one of those for use on his PC. I thought he either had to be crazy to actually want to spend money on one or I was being too much of a keyboard snob. I dug mine out of the closet to give it another shot.

It was the worst keyboard I've ever used the last time I tried it two years ago. It was a perfectly ok keyboard this time around. I imagine there might be a day in which I won't regard a virtual keyboard to be quite so dreadful too. Once your neurons adapt, it's probably not as big of a deal as it may seem initially.

Pressing forcefully doesn't bother me: it all depends if your hands are able to do so, and feel no strain with it.
The problem with chiclet keyboards is that I apply too much pressure. So I bottom them out horrendously more than I do with every other keyboard in existence. I'm surprised those apple chiclet keyboards can survive my pounding. I like the feeling of cylindric keycaps however; especially the sand-papery cats'-tongue feeling of model M keys.

And... even though the model M is 25+ years old, sometimes you just fix or "upgrade" something that's so good and commonplace. There's no NEED to change it.

Virtual keyboards are only good in certain situations, not professional/practical typing, I'm sorry.

[Rajagra]

I like the Microsoft idea of drawing the keyboard based on where your hands are rather than where they need to be to hit the keys.

That was my first thought. My second thought was that there might be an RSI risk if you have to keep the heel of your hand in contact. Now while that might seem a small risk given how little time you will type on a screen today, what if such devices start taking over, just as cheap rubber dome over membrane keyboards did?

[DreymaR]

Typing on a screen = Dirtier screen.
Typing on the screen you're watching = Conflict between optimal viewing angle and optimal typing angle.

[urlwolf]

Horrible ergonomics!
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3640/apples-ipad-the-anandtech-review/8

this kills it for me.
I need a web experience where I can communicate, not only read/listen.

[hyperlinked]

I pretty much anticipated it'd be a pain in the ass to type on it the way you see people doing it in the videos. It's too heavy to casually grasp for long and it's too big to thumb tap on the virtual keyboard.

A good hand harness could change all this though. If you can tether the device to your non-dominant hand a shrunken keyboard is better for a one handed "touch typing" technique because your five fingers are able to reach all of the keys without much lateral movement.

Some wireless sales guy told me that Research in Motion specifically designed their BlackBerry devices so that it could be operated with one or both hands. Indeed, that's something you can do with a BlackBerry. Having two thumbs is better, but with just one thumb you can reach all the keys and buttons. On most phones the keys are way too close together, but if you pick up a phone that has generous spacing for all of its keys, it doesn't always improve the experience. You also don't want to reach too far to hit each key. This is one reason why I own a BlackBerry. It's keyboard is just right.

That was my first thought. My second thought was that there might be an RSI risk if you have to keep the heel of your hand in contact.

A major point... that makes me rethink the thought that I might be able to get used to it. Ultimately, even if this sort of input may be reliable, would it be practical as dominant form of input? I think probably not. In addition to issues related to feedback, reliability, and ergonomics, it'd need to adapt to the movement quirks of each individual user. It seems like it'd be solving a $10 problem with a $10,000 solution.

Typing on the screen you're watching = Conflict between optimal viewing angle and optimal typing angle.

I'm willing to bet that those Microsoft ideas are intended for one of their table top touch PCs. I got to try one of those at a tech conference a couple of years ago. It was basically a squarish lounge table with the entire suface touch sensitive... basically an iPod Touch the size of an end table. It wouldn't be as awkward to type on this thing as the viewing angle was ok from any sitting position. Still, it'd probably be awkward if you had to type on it for a long time.

[itlnstln]

Anand has a money home theater.  Missing arrow keys, huh?

[wellington1869]

i just tried one out at the apple store in midtown.  immediately i hated that you cant rest your eight fingers in home position. (soon as you do, it immediately types "asdfjkl;")

yea, anyone who thinks this will replace netbooks is smoking something. On the other hand, as Raj said: "what if such devices start taking over, just as cheap rubber dome over membrane keyboards did?"  The mass consumer is a curious beast for whom the regular laws of computing just dont apply.

The place was *mobbed* for a wednesday night - standing room only at the ipad demo tables.  First of all the apple store looks like a freaking mormon church. The worshippers gathered around the tablet like it was something moses had just brought down.

That said, the thing is pretty.  Its not for me because i'm too much of a tweaker and i'd resent too much Apple's closed system (you dont just buy the ipad; you buy the whole locked-in system that apple controls).  But was it pretty? Hell yea, it was pretty and if Android makes one i'll probably buy one. Not as a replacement for a regular laptop tho, but maybe to replace my bedside alarm clock. Thats actually the best use I can think of for ipad-like products. Replace your alarm clock.

Because it basically can turn your bedside alarm clock into an email checker, weather reporter, quick web lookup device, occasional game or movie or book -- and still be an alarm clock. Thats what i'd buy it for. Not to replace any of my main computers. Its an appliance, a gadget, not a computer, AFAI'm concerned.

I have to say tho, to criticize MS for a bit, I recently set up a netbook for an elderly couple, and by the time I did the 80 or so windows updates, got the crapware off, setup office and an antivirus program and etc, it took almost 2.5 hours, maybe longer.   The elderly couple could never have done it on their own. They would probably have  been better off with an i-something. There's definitely a legitimate market out there for the 'appliance model'.  It just happens to not be me.

and yea, i hate touch-screen-keyboards, even on cell phones. I have to have physical buttons. Like someone else was saying, i blame apple for that too if it becomes the norm.

The book reader on it was pretty too, nice graphics, very responsive, but at 1.5 lbs, I wonder how long i'd happily hold it up before my forearms get sore.  I also happen to be perfectly happy with e-ink screens (I have a sony prs-600 ereader which I really like. E-ink screen and much, much lighter, and a battery that lasts 10 days straight).

[itlnstln]

If I had a netbook, I would use the Ubuntu build for netbooks.  It's a little of both worlds (simple but usable for a "techie").  That said, I'm not sure it would be right for an elderly couple.

[skcheng]

If I had a netbook, I would use the Ubuntu build for netbooks.  It's a little of both worlds (simple but usable for a "techie").  That said, I'm not sure it would be right for an elderly couple.

Netbooks suck.  I'd rather use either my IPhone or my Blackberry.

[skcheng]

I'm picking up my IPad today.   Seems like "most" people really like it for surfing and viewing photos.    Interesting price point because for the same amount of money, you could buy a VERY nice laptop.......just not an Apple.

[wellington1869]

I'm picking up my IPad today.   Seems like "most" people really like it for surfing and viewing photos.    Interesting price point because for the same amount of money, you could buy a VERY nice laptop.......just not an Apple.

It would also be perfect for showing powerpoint slideshows (say for travelling business folks for instance).

It definitely has its niche uses for which its probably perfect. To be honest I was tempted to try it as a reader for a while before selling it, to compare with my sony. (or just using it as an alarm clock). The screen is gorgeous alright.

(but how i wish it had atleast one usb port, or sd card reader slot, i always feel apple's minimalism goes way overboard sometimes).

are you getting wifi or 3g? My friend got a wifi one and he already has 3g envy.

[itlnstln]

I'm picking up my IPad today.   Seems like "most" people really like it for surfing and viewing photos.    Interesting price point because for the same amount of money, you could buy a VERY nice laptop.......just not an Apple.

Jesus, dude, do you sell drugs or something?  What, 6 IBM minis, looking at a Das, and getting an iPad?

Netbooks suck.  I'd rather use either my IPhone or my Blackberry.

Then why are you getting an iPad?

[didjamatic]

I thought they had both Wifi and 3g capability?  You have to choose?

[wellington1869]

I thought they had both Wifi and 3g capability?  You have to choose?

reviews of it seem to indicate different HW versions at different price points...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/how-to-choose-the-right-apple-ipad-for-you/

[wellington1869]

Jesus, dude, do you sell drugs or something?  What, 6 IBM minis, looking at a Das, and getting an iPad?

lol, i'm okay with it, he lives 10 minutes away from me ;-D

[itlnstln]

lol, i'm okay with it, he lives 10 minutes away from me ;-D

Do you buy his drugs?  I'm so confused.  I'm in the wrong profession.

[wellington1869]

Do you buy his drugs?  I'm so confused.  I'm in the wrong profession.

Well he's already offered to let me try out his model F. Thats sort of a drug

[hyperlinked]

Jesus, dude, do you sell drugs or something?  What, 6 IBM minis, looking at a Das, and getting an iPad?

Then why are you getting an iPad?

Remember, he's epic.

[wellington1869]

he also mods his boards using his dentist drills. seriously. I thought that was kinda cool.

[elbowglue]

Jesus, dude, do you sell drugs or something?  What, 6 IBM minis, looking at a Das, and getting an iPad?

I think he's loaded. He's probably like a dentist or something.  Teeth for dough, keyboards for show.

Oh.  I was cheating cause his ebay id is like skchengmasterpaingiver since he bid on my topre hehe.

[didjamatic]

I propose a DT225 vs. Ipad durability test.

[itlnstln]

My finger has better DPI.  Of course you don't WANT to know where my finger has been.

DPI?  Distals Per Insert?