If you like the look of Adobe’s new Creative Cloud apps Sketch and Line, but don’t fancy buying the $200 official stylus to use with them, you should pick up Adonit's new Jot Touch instead. It has a tiny “Pixelpoint” tip instead of a disk or fat rubbery point, and it works just like Adobe’s Ink stylus, letting you copy and paste to/from the Creative Cloud as well as access files and Kuler color palettes. Best of all, it’s just $120.
Griffin’s wired iPad keyboard at first it seems like a ridiculously tardy April Fool’s joke, or a signal that perhaps Nashville has been overcome by some bizarre warping of time; aren’t we supposed to be taking wires away instead of adding them? But under the right conditions, a wired iPad keyboard is actually a smart idea.
Current iOS 7.1 keyboard - is the Shift key on or off?
Among Jony Ive’s many changes brought to iOS 7 was the tinkering of the keyboard’s Shift key which has inexplicably gotten worse over time.
Streaks of successfully guessing whether the shift key is on or not should be award with showers of iTunes credits, but as designer Geoff Teehan points out, Apple could fix its keyboard woes with one simple change.
The immensely popular SwiftKey keyboard makes its debut on iOS today via a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. It promises to be the fastest way to make notes on an iPhone and iPad, and it boasts features like Evernote syncing and multilingual typing. It’s also completely free.
SwiftKey, the most popular third-party keyboard on Android, is coming to iOS through a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. A leaked promotional image for the app has been leaked on Twitter today, but it’s not yet clear when it will be available to download from the App Store.
The iOS 7.1 beta seems to be way more in flux than previous betas, adding odd little experiments (f.lux-style white-point adjustment) and handy – and surely temporary – little tweaks for developers (manual deleting of install files). But one thing that has been going crazy throughout the betas 1–3 is the keyboard.
And man is the keyboard in iOS 7.1 beta 3 a pain in the ass.
For nerds of a certain age (my age), the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was our first home computer/games console/escape from the nightmare world of normal humans. And now this iconic machine is set to be reborn in its home country of Great Britain, only now it’ll be a Bluetooth accessory for your iPad.
Fleksy, the developer of an innovative third-party keyboard for the blind, launched its own integration software development kit (SDK) by partnering with four other app developers to include in their software.
The partners include Launch Center Pro, Wordbox, GV Connect and BlindSquare, and they’ll demonstrate the innovative approach to keyboarding for everyone.
Forget 3-D printing. The future of personal manufacturing is now 2-D printing – when you’re making iPhone keyboards that it. Using nothing but a keyboard printed onto a sheet of regular paper, along with Gyorgyi Kerekes’s new Paper Keyboard app, you can type and play games as if you’d dropped cash money on a real 3-D metal and plastic keyboard.
The ring of Tim Cook’s softened Southern twang hasn’t yet left our ears, and yet Belkin has already announced, not one, but practically a whole wall at the Apple Store full of iPad Air cases and keyboards.
Of the ten cases and three keyboard cases announced by Belkin after today’s event, the most interesting is the minimalist Qode (perhaps a Star Wars character?) Thin Type Keyboard Case — one of Belkin’s excellent keyboards wrapped in aluminum and equipped with a hinge that lets it double as a cover for the screen. For a little more protection, there’s the Qode (Peruvian dessert?) Ultimate Keyboard Case, which adds a protective aluminum backing around the iPad Air.
So, it happened that a friend of mine turned off Bluetooth on her Mac mini, and then turned it off for the evening. When she got up the next morning, her Bluetooth keyboard was on, as per usual, but she couldn’t log in on start up, as her Mac did not see her keyboard.
She was worried that she’d have to go borrow or buy a wired keyboard, plug it in, and enter her password, then turn Bluetooth on again to make her wireless keyboard work again.
Luckily, that’s not what had to happen. Here’s how we solved it.
While the iPhone’s Retina display may no longer be king when it comes to pixel count, it’s one of the fastest smartphone displays on the market, easily outpacing all of its rivals.
According to a TouchMark test carried out by Agawi, the Retina display responds more than twice as fast as any of its rivals — including the Galaxy S4 and other high-end Android devices — even on the three-year-old iPhone 4.
When you’re writing up a long document, or even in the middle of a simple one, it’s good to be able to move around and edit in the text without taking your hands off the keyboard. All the little switches from keyboard to mouse and back again take up valuable time, and–perhaps more importantly–force you to change the way your brain is processing information.
Using the arrow keys is a good way to move the cursor around, and of course there are the standard Command key shortcuts, but did you know that there’s some legacy keyboard shortcuts that come to us all the way back in Emacs, a popular text editing program for Unix, the operating system Mac OS X is based?
There are, and here are a few good ones. I’ve tested them in Text Edit, but chances are several Mac text editing programs will take advantage of these.
On the Mac, you can always hit Command-Z to undo something. You can also hit Command-Shift-Z to redo something and put it back to what it was before you hit undo. Make sense?
This isn’t so easily done on iOS, as there isn’t a Command key, to being with, but there is, in fact, an option to undo and one to redo hidden in the iPad keyboard. Here’s how to get to each of them.
I thought that iOS 7 was ready to go on the iPad, but today I’m actually trying to do some work, and my cloud of optimism has been quickly dispelled. It’s a combination of OS-level bugginess and apps which have been too-hastily updated, and it’s causing all sorts of trouble.
The biggest problem? Using an external Bluetooth keyboard. So it’s pretty ironic that this post is about the excellent new keyboard shortcuts in iOS 7. Especially in Safari.
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The Tao of Mac blog points us to three great new shortcuts, lifted straight from OS X:
Cmd+L to move the focus to the location bar
Cmd+T to open a new tab
Cmd+W to close a tab
This is surprisingly useful, although I’m ungrateful enough to wonder why there’s no way to navigate between tabs. I’ve rattled away at my Logitech K811 and no combo of arrow key or square brackets and modifiers seems to work.
Another great side-effect of that Cmd+L shortcut is that you can now trigger an in-page search from the keyboard: just hit Cmd+L and type your query. At the bottom of the list that pops up are the in-page results, and because you’re using an external keyboard, there’s no on-screen keyboard to get in the way.
Also, double-tapping the Logitech’s home button takes you into the app-switcher view, and in iOS 7 that means that the previous app’s screen thumbnail pops into view. Combine this with the fact that any keystrokes are passed to the current app (even though you can’t see it), and you can now copy-type from one app to the next. Very nice indeed. Sadly, you need to reach up and tap the screen to actually switch to the app.
Nimblstand byNimblstand Category: Keyboard stands Works With:iPad, Apple Wireless Keyboard Price: $67 as tested
The Nimblstand is an accessory for the Apple wireless keyboard, a kind of organizer and iPad stand which can be used on the desk or the lap. As such, it needs to be compared to the InCase Origami Workstation, the established gold standard for such things.
Which isn’t to say that the Nimblstand doesn’t have its own distinguishing features.
SwiftKey creator TouchType will be closely watching Apple’s WWDC keynote on Monday, hoping that the Cupertino company opens up its iOS platform to third-party keyboards for the first time. The SwiftKey keyboard has been exclusive to Android since its inception, but the company is itching to bring it to iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches.
Mac OS X is full of great accessibility features to help those with differing abilities access their Macintosh, whether they have visual, hearing, or motor challenges. One feature, Full Keyboard Access, is set for those who can’t use the mouse reliably. You can use it, too, if you just want to keep your hands on the keyboard, focused on the task at hand.
Here’s how to activate it and make it work for you.
If you haven’t been using OS X’s Mission Control lately, you’re missing out. It’s a great way to separate out your apps, full screen and not, to be just that much more productive on your Mac.
Trouble is, it seems like a fairly mouse-centric system, with users encouraged to click on the different desktops across the top or the apps in the main window area to bring them up.
Luckily, there are a couple of keyboard shortcuts to help you move between Desktop spaces, at least, and one to help you add or delete them, as well.
Starting up your Mac each day may seem a simple thing, right? Just press the power key on your keyboard or main Mac unit, hear the Mac chime, and then get to work, right?
Sometimes, though, you might want to boot a Windows partition with Boot Camp, or start up from a network volume. Heck, you might even want to start from a completely different OS X disk.
In that case, use the following keyboard shortcuts to do so.
It takes practice to learn how to efficiently type on the iOS keyboard. Because all the keys are virtual, you have to tab through multiple layouts to access all of the available characters. I remember how slow I was at alternating keyboards to type numbers and punctation when I got my first iPhone. Over time, muscle memory kicks in and it becomes second nature.
What if there was a more productive way to type on iOS? A new jailbreak tweak called AltKeyboard is a fantastic enhancement every iPhone typist needs.
Some of us can pick up an iPhone and master its virtual on-screen keyboard in a matter of minutes, but for others, it takes a bit of time — especially if you’ve just come from a BlackBerry or another smartphone that has a physical keyboard built-in. For those of you in that latter group, the NUU MiniKey for iPhone 5 is here to help.
MiniKey by NUU Category: Keyboard Case Works With: iPhone 5 Price: $59
The MiniKey is a clip on case with a special feature: a slide-out physical keyboard that aims to give those who don’t like typing on glass a more traditional solution. Its keys are “designed to match the ergonomics of typing with both thumbs” in an effort to help you type faster and more accurately.
The MiniKey has a built-in Li-Pro rechargeable battery (380mAh) that charges via USB, and like most wireless keyboards, it connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth. It boasts 42 backlit keys, with functions for media playback, numbers, common symbols, and more.
I reviewed the MiniKey’s predecessor for iPhone 4 a couple of years ago, and I was pretty impressed with it, so I couldn’t wait to try out the latest model and find out whether it’s worth its $60 price tag.
I have a confession to make: I own a BlackBerry Z10, and I love it. I think its BlackBerry 10 operating system is terrific — it’ll be even better when it gets more apps — and I haven’t been this excited about a new platform since I got my first iPhone. Seriously.
I certainly don’t want to see BlackBerry sinking anytime soon, then.
Logitech has today announced a new addition to its growing family of iPad keyboard cases, but this one is unlike anything the company has offered before. It’s called the FabricSkin, and it offers a fabric keyboard much like that that comes with the Microsoft Surface tablet.
The great thing about a fabric keyboard is that its super slim and liquid resistant.
They look great, and Michael over at RAWBKNY says that while they are only designed for the non-Retina MacBook Pro right now, he’s tweaking it so it should work on the Retina MacBook Pro and MacBook Airs soon.
We’ve got a review unit on the way to see how well these work, but be warned: replacing every key on your MacBook is likely to be a time consuming process. $40 will get you a set.
