# So what's your verdict on the iPad?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-verdict-on-the-ipad/538394>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 5, 2010, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-verdict-on-the-ipad/538394 "2010-05-05T09:21:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 9

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**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-verdict-on-the-ipad/538394/161 "2010-05-15T02:35:24Z")

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> [@scr4](#):
>
> - Screen auto-rotation is annoying, but fortunately there’s a physical switch to lock the screen orientation. I’ve pretty much kept it in landscape mode.  
> …
> - The on-screen keyboard is disappointingly bad. It has no feedback, not even that pop-up thing that the iPhone on-screen keyboard has. And why can’t they display the whole keyboard including the number keys?? It’s not like there’s a shortage of screen real estate. It’s _really_ annoying to have to hit a key to switch between the alphabet and the number/symbol keyboard.

I really like the auto-rotation. (though if there weren’t a switch, I would be annoyed.)

It is nice that it works in any direction. I often find myself using the iPad in bed, with the “home” button at the top of the screen. It seems easier to pinch the button at the top rather than reach down and find the button at the bottom.

The keyboard suxx. The device isn’t an iPhone, so I can’t see why they gave it a lame phone-like keyboard.  
Using a BT keyboard improves things greatly, but according to one SSH terminal app provider, the SDK doesn’t handle some critical keystrokes nicely (e.g. arrow keys).

I want to be able to launch a terminal session and do a quick vi edit on a server if I have to. The keyboard just isn’t sufficient for that (no Escape key? vi is useless without that key). This means that terminal apps will continue to have to provide their own quirky overlays on the screen for standard keys.

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