I have used the Apple Smart Keyboard as my main keyboard for my 12.9” iPad Pro since I bought the device in January 2016. Unfortunately, they are not reliable as I have gone through two of them in that period. I went to Apple to try and plead for swapping out the second carcass but failed.
I love creating on my iPad. It is perfect for writing and drawing with. The Smart Keyboard worked well for me as it was easy to flip around from writing mode to drawing mode and it didn’t add too much weight to the device. It also charged from the iPad and I didn’t need to worry about pairing with Bluetooth.
The Smart Keyboard’s death, however, triggered a long tail of analysis.
The first thought is iOS 13 stands a chance at being a sea change for iPad productivity. I am not sure of two things: whether those changes will make a meaningful difference to how I use iOS; and if those changes work on my iPad Pro. If the answers to both of those are yes, I will likely get something like the Brydge keyboard1 for my iPad and call it a day. If the changes are amazing but don’t work on my iPad, later this year I will look at getting a new iPad Pro2. If the changes don’t improve my use if the iPad, I will take a long look at what the iPad means to my creative life.
There is always a lot of discussion about iPads as laptop replacements, but to get a new iPad Pro setup that mimics what I use now costs about $1,600. That is well towards 13” MacBook Pro prices. If you take out the Pencil, it’s pretty close since the 256GB MacBook Pro is $1,500. At that point, if I drop that kind of money I simply want my iPad to do more than it can now. Little things, like use a mouse and keyboard3, and access data on USB drives. Right now, the new iPad Pros don’t solve $1,600’s worth of problems.
All of the keyboard cases — save the Smart Keyboard — are a form factor that make the iPad more laptop-like, but at the sacrifice of the flexibility of quickly switching to tablet mode. The closest I have seen is the Brydge keyboard, but that one still requires you to remove the iPad from the keyboard to use it in tablet mode. If I am just going to jam the iPad into that style of encasement I wonder if just using my actual laptop is a better option.
Until the WWDC keynote I am not buying another keyboard for my iPad, which means until then I am trying to work off the virtual keyboard as much as possible. Right now it is a tough slog but we will see how that goes. I have a spare Bluetooth keyboard I could use, but I prefer to keep my keyboard and iPad as a singular unit. One thing I do like about the virtual keyboard is just having the tablet flat on the table and not reaching up to use the interface is amazing.
- Or, yes, another Smart Keyboard. They aren’t reliable but they work best for the way I use my iPad. ↩
- The biggest disappointment would be if USB-drives are only available on USB-c iPads. ↩
- The main use case is using our Virtual Desktop system at work. ↩
Mark Crump 