I remember when the first iPad was in development, there was a lot of speculation about how Apple would solve the "large touchscreen keyboard" problem. Typing on a large touchscreen was hard, just blowing up a iphone keyboard wouldn't cut it. It'd be too large for thumb typing, but you also couldn't type on it like a physical keyboard, it would be awkward hovering over the touchscreen and you couldn't hold it while you typed.

Tech sites and bloggers talked about how Apple cared too much about the user experience to just release a big keyboard, and how we were about to see a revolutionary new keyboard design. There was speculation about split keyboards, radial keyboards, and more. People weren't sure how Apple was going to fix the keyboard issue, but it was going to be magical.

Finally the actual iPad reveal came, and it was just literally a giant iphone keyboard. Jobs showed how to type on it by balancing the ipad on his knees, and hover hand typing onto it.

Honestly that was the point where my opinion of Apple started to decline, it honestly wasn't even that big of a deal, but it changed them in my eyes from a revolutionary tech company into one that just wanted to appear revolutionary. I've never quite been able to separate that initial disappointment from the iPads, and that disappointment is still the first thing that comes to mind whenever I see one or read an article about them.

> it changed them in my eyes from a revolutionary tech company into one that just wanted to appear revolutionary

Doesn't your story imply the opposite? The blown-up keyboard works. It's not revolutionary. But it's also not performatively different in the way those bloggers' keyboard proposals were.

> I remember when the first iPad was in development, there was a lot of speculation about how Apple would solve the "large touchscreen keyboard" problem. Typing on a large touchscreen was hard, just blowing up a iphone keyboard wouldn't cut it. It'd be too large for thumb typing, but you also couldn't type on it like a physical keyboard, it would be awkward hovering over the touchscreen and you couldn't hold it while you typed.

I liked how Windows 8 did it on one of my laptops / touch devices, the keyboard would split in half and be on each edge of the screen, so if you truly wanted to type with your thumb, you could.

A lot of people did not like Windows 8, but I had fun with it on devices designed for it.

I do prefer whenever I find my Apple Pen (I have a knock off one from Logitech) that I can just write text over a text field, and the iPad will happily fill it in for me.

Weird. I bought the first iPad and loved the big keyboard. I was much faster using it than I was on a phone. Particularly with the magnetic case, I found I could set it up like a physical keyboard and take notes in lectures, but unlike most keyboards it was silent. I made lots of mistakes, but autocorrect fixed most of them.

I don’t really get what the iPad is for either, but you should at least consider that Apple decided that “big keyboard” was the best option.

The blown up keyboard worked for as much typing as many do on it. I’m using a virtual keyboard on a 2019 iPad Pro to write this comment in fact.

It has essentially always been possible to split the iPad keyboard or have it be iPhone sized and floating. Both are a good experience

Even though you can now make the keyboard a small floating one and use swipe typing?

> Finally the actual iPad reveal came, and it was just literally a giant iphone keyboard. Jobs showed how to type on it by balancing the ipad on his knees, and hover hand typing onto it.

> Honestly that was the point where my opinion of Apple started to decline, it honestly wasn't even that big of a deal, but it changed them in my eyes from a revolutionary tech company into one that just wanted to appear revolutionary.

Would a company that merely wanted to appear revolutionary have released some novel (but probably pointless) keyboard design?