I recently got an iPad. In most respects I love it. But I can’t get used to typing on the touchscreen keyboard.
I’m used to touch-typing, where I don’t even have to look at the keyboard. I know where the keys are by feel. I can type a pretty long letter this way without getting tired, or even noticing the physical act of typing.
But this doesn’t work on a touchscreen because there’s nothing to feel. Not to mention that the keys are smaller. So there’s no way to type except by watching as your finger hopefully taps the right spots. I find it much more tiring and much slower.
Yeah, you’re not going to type on a table the same way you type on a keyboard, and I think most reasonable people agree that you can’t type very efficiently on a tablet - it’s going to be a “good enough” situation for occasional use, but if you need to type a lot on a tablet, you probably need something more than a tablet. At least, you need a bluetooth keyboard or something to go with your tablet.
You are expected, like how you’re expected to type on a touchscreen phone - they recognise it’s a compromise, that’s why there are so many keyboard options for tablets.
I don’t know about iPads, but on an Android tablet, there are lots of keyboard programs you can download. Some are better than others, but you can probably find one that lets you type fairly efficiently according to your personal style and preferences. But still, it is a compromise compared to an actual keyboard. That’s life!
It’s not a perfect solution, but have you tried splitting the keyboard? Click and hold the “hide keyboard” button on the bottom right, and select “split” when it pops up.
I like Swype a lot better than poking each individual key on my smartphone’s touchscreen. While it’s obviously not as good as a full computer keyboard, it’s really not too bad for short communications where brevity is a factor. My phone’s Swype keyboard is very accurate and quite fast, compared to button-poking on my Kindle Fire. I don’t know if Apple supports Swype, though.
Probably a better option, when you need to type more than just a brief text message or google search, is to use a real keyboard. But for button-poking on-the-go (when a keyboard is impractical), you can get a capacitive stylus. Styluses (styli?) make it easier to see whether you’re hitting the right button than when you use your finger directly on the screen. They also keep your screen cleaner because they’re not oily like fingers.
Not to be one of those people who’s all, “Back in my day, we had buttons and we liked it!” But back in my day, yeah, buttons. I’ve never typed on a touchscreen tablet before, but Lord knows I’ve tried entering my contact info into an iPhone, which is infinitely worse, and the whole process took roughly 40 minutes. I mean, I know these gizmos are sexy and all, but can I get a keyboard please? If I ever find myself in some circumstance where I have to regularly use a device that requires I use a touchscreen to type, I will certainly need a stylus.
When I had my iPad 2 (before we gave it to the granddaughter) I found typing on it annoying but serviceable. I would not write great tomes on it, but it was OK for short messages and forum replies, for instance. If I had shelled out for one of those separate iPad keyboards that they sell, I would have felt weird using it…may as well just get a laptop or notebook PC then.
For me the joy of the iPad was all the neat software and the way you could interact with it simply with gestures, pokes and strokes. My granddaughter can’t be separated from hers now and I hope it really serves to accelerate her education in tech and many other useful subjects.
Oh, I agree the touchscreen keyboard is perfectly fine for short messages. But the other day I had a long email to write and I realized, not for the first time, what a chore it was.
I got a Zagg bluetooth keyboard/case combo for $100 and it really helps for longer missives but the keyboard is still much smaller than a standard keyboard so you feel a little cramped. I can touch-type on the display keyboard but I have to look at they keyboard. On a standard keyboard I don’t.
My problem with Swype is that you need to think about spelling. I can type away on a keyboard and concentrate on the words and sentences. With Swype, I need to think about letters. Really slows things down.
I’m not the world’s fastest typist to begin with, but with a few years of practice under my belt now, I find I can type just about as fast with my thumbs on my iPhone as I can on a real physical keyboard. It’s not the same kind of typing, so it’s basically a matter of learning a whole new skill. Not better or worse, but different.
I imagine the next generation may find typing on a conventional keyboard to be a slow and awkward process, because they’ll have grown up with touch-screen typing.
The primary difference is that the virtual keyboard occupies the same space as the rest of the interface. When you’re on a desktop or laptop, your line of vision is in line with the monitor (usually bigger), and muscle memory takes care of the rest. Also, auto-correction can at times take care of inaccuracies, if you get the general word together (it’s not perfect, but can help).
In all honesty, you get used to it and you can certainly get more accurate and faster, just as you did with a physical keyboard. It’s not the most practical for content production, but for short messages and text entry, it does the job rather well.
Either way, you may want to consider a bluetooth keyboard accessory if it bothers you enough, but I’d try to live with it for some time and see how you adapt.
I don’t have a tablet to check, but my iPhone on-screen keyboard has no particular markings for the F or J, in either portrait or landscape keyboard mode.
My LG Droid keyboard has a particularly tall J letter, dipping below all of the others. Somehow that makes me particularly aware of how it doesn’t have a semicolon on the same keyboard as the letters. (Neither does the iPhone keyboard, but I didn’t realize that until I checked it.)
I usually like Swype but sometimes I end up thinking ‘dammit, my finger’s in the way and I can’t see where I need to go next’.
As the OP said, I can’t type on a keyboard without looking, but I can’t type (or swype) on a phone without paying attention to where my fingers are. Also, to MeanOldLady, most people get used to it in a week or so. Even the so called ‘fat fingered’ people. I was surprised when iPhones, Androids and other non-stylus devices first came out that even people with legitimately huge fingers had no problems at all with them. Having said that. I don’t bother with huge amounts of typing on them. Texts and one or two sentence e-mails are about it. I’ll read my message boards, but if I want to post, I wait until I get home to do that. It’s just too much work to try and do it on a phone.
I actually skipped out on writing an angry letter to my landlord that I had composed in my head simply because I couldn’t work up the energy and patience to type it out on my tablet. This thread is making me realize I need to invest in a Bluetooth keyboard, cuz that’s just ridiculous.
