

Why Apple Refuses to Put A Keyboard on the iPad - dmyler
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/23/apple_ipad_air_how_keyboard_cases_explain_the_tablet_wars_and_future_of.html

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cbhl
This seems like fluff and hot air to me. Apple sold 30-pin keyboards with the
original iPad, but nobody bought them unless they were trying to use the iPad
to replace grandma's computer.

If you do want to use a keyboard with the iPad, you can buy and use the exact
same bluetooth keyboard you can use with a Mac Desktop or Laptop.

The Surface keyboard covers show the kinds of compromises that Apple probably
wouldn't make. The touch cover is a decent cover, but suffers from the same
hovering hand-strain issues that make on-screen keyboards unpleasant to use.
On the other hand, the type cover is a poor cover, in exchange for a slightly
better keyboard.

~~~
dmyler
It'll be interesting to see if there is a convergence, though. As iPads get
faster & Apple invests more in the iOS versions of their software, the iPad
will naturally become a competitor to traditional laptops. The lack of a
keyboard is a real drawback to that, though. The idea of Microsoft as the
plucky upstart in that regard seems ridiculous enough to be plausible.

~~~
cbhl
Personally, I think Canonical is heading in the right direction with regards
to convergence, with Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Desktop running off of the same
kernel and device. I suspect that it's going to be hard going for at least
another two or three years, though, especially since they'll have to target
existing off-the-shelf hardware, and virtually all of the latest-and-greatest
devices have proprietary binary drivers for the graphics chips. (For a while,
Google couldn't even release the _binary_ graphics driver for the 2nd-gen
Nexus 7, let alone an open-source one.)

At this point, I think a converged device would only hurt Apple's
profitability and brand. Why would you buy a Macbook _and_ an iPhone if you
could get away with just one? Plus, we'd have to deal with the differing
instruction sets. (It's one thing to write an app targeting mobile and compile
it for ARM; it's another to suddenly expect 3rd-party developers to start
cross-compiling desktop apps for ARM and phone hardware isn't fast enough to
emulate Intel chips the way Intel chips emulated PPC during the last
architecture transition.)

I know Microsoft has been trying to appear more vibrant with their university
recruiting efforts; they often play up the opportunities to work on Windows
Phone and XBox. At the end of the day, though, developers there still have to
deal with the bureaucracy and code that hasn't been touched in decades.
Microsoft has often been one to explore new form factors (Windows CE; XP-based
tablets, XP-based media centers), and I'm sure they still pour lots of R&D
into it even today. Making products that are good enough for users and priced
low enough for people to buy them, however, is still a challenge, I think.

~~~
dmyler
"Why would you buy a Macbook and an iPhone if you could get away with just
one?"

I agree, but I also see this as the moment their product line would start to
calcify. I don't worry about Apple's ability to make the smart moves, but it
seems like this will come to a head.

I saw this from another HN post, a quote from a Microsoft VP:

"Let’s be clear – helping folks kill time on a tablet is relatively easy. Give
them books, music, videos and games, and they’ll figure out the rest. Pretty
much all tablets do that.

"But helping people be productive on a tablet is a little trickier."

[http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/23/microsoft-bashes-
apples-...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/23/microsoft-bashes-apples-iwork-
software-new-ipads/)

No matter who says it, it's true.

