Steve Jobs – Grooming Us For The Key-Less Keypad

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Steve Jobs – Grooming Us For The Key-Less Keypad

Keyboards are getting flatter (and flatter).

Until recently, keypads haven’t changed that much since the Apple II, aside from color, ergonomics, and connections.  For years we were very used to a keyboard that was an accepted “10 and 2″ length with shapely fat keys that required complete commitment to the letter you were pressing.  Various designers and engineers have offered their interpretations of how the keyboard could be more different, efficient, or cooler.  Unless some (actual) thinking out side the box were applied, the future seemed certain.

On January 9, 2007, Mr. Jobs gave us a glimpse into that future, and it was everything except certain.  This of course was the day that the iPhone was introduced (yet it would be another six months before it was available to the public).  This device was a sleek little bundle of interesting.  Aside from a couple of buttons to activate the phone, it functioned wholly from it’s touch sensitive screen.  Like most smart phones, it provided a number pad for dialing and a keypad for texting, emailing, and browsing.  But these pads lacked the constitution of the raised keypads it’s competitors were settled on.  This keypad was purely visual.  It was not as if you could burn into your mind the position of the proper keys like a blind secretary from the 60’s that slam out 100 words a minute.  No.  You needed your eyeballs and a manageable small to medium finger to adequately type on version 1 of the keypad.  Well nothing is ever perfect right out of the gate.  And as time went on, the keypad would eventually get better.

Now I’m not saying that the iPhone was the first to come up with a key-less keypad.  There have been other attempts.  Attempts such as, IBM’s 1992 optical virtual keyboard (lasers) or Membrane Keypads as early as the 1980’s.  But none of these were ever mainstream enough to make any significant dent in our digital lives.  A certain set of circumstances met with the mojo of a major innovator would be the only formula to make the general market pounce.

Now is this “sight-only-keypad” something that will translate to those of us on desktops, laptops, and net-books?  The line between computer and phone is getting fuzzy.

August 2007 (8 months after the unveiling of the iPhone) the flat keyboard debuts.  People were intrigued but had their reservations.  Many of us who bought a new mac close to after this period, saved their old keyboards so as to not have to switch gears so abruptly.  It was enough just to keep up with the constant flux of the mouse designs, let alone learning to type again.  Aside from it’s critics and nubile users, it was a sleeker design and saved space on the Y axis for the obsessive compulsive.  The keys were not so difficult to press and the finger did not have to lift as high from the previous key to the next key.  Carpel Tunnel be damned.

If you were a computer (apple) geek, you took notice of people pioneering with the keyboard.  Slowly this new pad was being accepted for the norm.  It just took some getting used to.  Now you can still find those fat keyboards around, you just have to visit your grandmother who recently discovered “the Internet” or a PC.  But don’t strain yourself.  It’s all about to change again.

Recently Mr. Jobs introduced the iPad.  This iPhone on crack was originally intended to be the competitor of Amazon’s Kindle, but mutated to become a full-fledged net-book.  (In this writer’s opinion – a kindle owner – the iPad will be a Kindle killer, but that will be in the future).  People can actually do stuff on this iPad.  With iWork, iBooks, and even the ability to draw on the thing, it makes its cousin (the iPhone) look like a toy.  But it’s most notable feature in line with the article?  The same flat keyboard that is on the iPhone, but it’s larger – thus more ergonomic for typing, if turned on it’s side.  Since this is a hybrid e-reader/net-book, there will be a certain level of acceptance by users that it’s usable 8 inches of screen (9.56 inches wide is the actual dimension of the device, but not the screen) will make a suitable keyboard and something they won’t mind getting used to.  The Aug 2007 desktop keyboard is 10 inches wide (excluding the extended number pad with arrows).  So the iPad’s keyboard is actually comparable in size.

In Conclusion, is it safe to say that in the next few years as we get used to using the iPad, we will come to find, once we purchase our next desktop computer, a keyboard with out keys sitting neatly sealed in spongy wrapping at the top of the box?  Well it sure seems like Mr. Jobs is grooming us for this eventual shift.

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