Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover Review

Long form typing on the iPad has traditionally been an interesting combination of amazing simplicity and needless complexity. Simplicity in the plethora of awesome text-editing apps make the software experience wonderful; complexity in the awkwardness of typing on a piece of glass, or setting up an external keyboard and cover (or stand). As good as the iPad is, the MacBook Air is probably better for this, simply due to the integrated keyboard, and the fact that the best writing apps also have Mac versions.

However, Logitech’s new Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for the iPad offers up a unique solution to the problem: a magnetic keyboard cover and stand. When I first saw it, I was worried that it wouldn’t be able to hold up an iPad effectively, that it would be too prone to sliding off the iPad when closed and being carried, and that it would add too much bulk to the device. Oh, and that the build quality would be terrible.

I’m very pleasantly surprised that Logitech was able to break all of the above expectations I had. The inner iPad slot is augmented by magnets, so the iPad sets in very securely, without being too difficult to remove when you’re done. You can easily tap, prod and push on the screen without worrying about the unceremonious thud of the iPad’s back slamming on the table a second later. When closed, the combination of magnetics and rubber spacers at the corners keep the cover from moving around without real effort to do so.

As for bulk, the cover does not add that much weight - the iPad/cover combination feels much like a MacBook Air. It’s a very portable setup, easy to carry around. The build quality is not quite up to Apple’s lofty standards, but the entire cover still feels solid. The bottom of the cover feels exactly like the bottom of the iPad - whether that’s aluminum or just really good plastic I can’t tell you. The keyboard surface and the cover hinge are black glossy plastic, which might not be ideal, but I prefer this to silver-colored aluminum in this case just because the black blends in with the iPad bezel better.

So how is the experience of using it? Quite nice, I’d say. You can open up the iPad and set it in the stand with one hand motion, which also instantly unlocks the device. It’s not quite as fluid as opening the hinge on a MacBook Air, but it is the next best thing, and I’ll gladly trade it for the ability of the screen to function as a tablet after you’re done typing. Total time from setting the thing down to being ready to type is merely 2-3 seconds. Before, I had to pull out the iPad, then a keyboard, then a stand, set up the stand, turn on the keyboard, and then unlock the iPad. If I was racing, I might have that done in about 10 seconds. The Keyboard Cover puts all that to shame - you’ve got a laptop now, no doubt about it.

I do have a few quibbles, though. The base doesn’t have rubber friction pads of any sort. While it looks cooler without them, even Apple knows better than to ship a product without them. The result is that it’s easy to slide the keyboard & iPad around, particularly when you try to press the Home button on the iPad itself. Fortunately there’s also a Home key on the keyboard, and typing on the keyboard doesn’t cause very much sliding as it’s downward force.

Typing on the keyboard is about on par with typing on an Apple Keyboard - the keys are a bit narrower, but otherwise feel the same, and I’m not having problems typing on it. I do have a complaint about the media/function key layout. Instead of having media/function buttons that are useful, like brightness controls and forward/back in songs, Logitech decided that having five keys for copy/paste/selection was a better idea. Since keyboard shortcuts already exist to do those things, I conclude that Logitech wasted those five keys. A shame, too, since I loved to use the playback keys to change songs. Oh well, the Deck app is good for that.

The cover has a rechargeable built-in battery, charged via micro-USB. Sounds like the right solution for the job.

My conclusion is that the keyboard cover is perhaps the ideal solution to the problem, which Logitech has implemented very well. The cover successfully provides the benefits of laptop keyboards with no compromise on the iPad’s usability as a tablet. You will still have problems MacBook Air users don’t have, such as having to charge the keyboard, but that’s a problem that isn’t even worthy of a “first world problems” meme. It’s no surprise that Amazon has a 1-3 month backorder on these right now - it’s a wonderful piece of hardware.

John Gruber’s Talk Show leaves 5by5

This is a big deal because The Talk Show was the podcast that forever changed 5by5. Prior to The Talk Show, 5by5 was characterized by shows like the Expression Engine podcast, The Pipeline and The Dev Show - podcasts that were almost entirely educational in nature. The Talk Show changed the equation: throwing in speculation, imagination and entertainment to create something that was fun to listen to, not just informative.

I’ve stopped listening to the Talk Show, however. Not just with the switch-over - it’s been mostly ignored for several months now. To try to explain why, I’ll go through the four podcasts I do listen to, and explain why I listen to them:

• Build and Analyze: Every time I listen, I learn something interesting. More often than not it’s something development related, often valuable insights from running your own software company. Other times it’s coffee, which intrigues me even if I won’t drink it. And other times it’s car talk, which I love learning about. It gets the imagination going, and I love to exercise it.
• Hypercritical: If B&A gets the imagination going, Hypercritical gets my critical thinking ability going. If John Siracusa was dictator of this country, we’d all be driving flying cars to work by now. He can take a problem, break it down, and come up with the best solution to it like nobody else can. He isn’t perfect, but when he isn’t, you can always explain it away as a matter of perspective.
• Geek Friday: This is what I would consider a wonderful entertainment and educational experience. Jason & Faith are the most ridiculous combination of co-hosts - I’m not sure if it’s a genius move or a recipe for disaster. They talk about geek culture, which is something that I don’t really get to experience in the middle of Wisconsin, and that may be for better or for worse. But I love listening to this show.
• B&B Podcast: This is also a show that tends to get the imagination going, though I disagree with Ben Brooks on damn near everything. I like how they talk about the tools they use and how they improve their productivity and daily routine, and explain why they use them.

Why isn’t The Talk Show on my list? I’m not sure. I can’t say why I don’t listen to it. However, it did serve as my backup podcast for when the four above ran out¹, and I can’t explain why I listen to it then, either. But one thing is for certain: these four podcasts above are better.

Which is why I worry for the show’s future. The best points of The Talk Show were the points where Dan Benjamin interjected. Usually he brought up something that was a little off the wall, it threw John Gruber off his balance, and it usually brought up a really good point a few minutes later. I worry that he’s becoming the David Lee Roth to 5by5’s Van Halen - goes off on his own, does alright for a while, but then it’s clear to everyone that he took the old band for granted. The initial comments on the new show seem to support that, though that should change somewhat as the new pair gets more comfortable with each other.

Time will tell, but I do know that Amplified is becoming my new backup podcast. To me, it seems broadly similar to The Talk Show, except with a more likeable host and less intentionally offensive Canada jokes. But I do hope that things go well for the new show on the new network, because it was the podcast that made 5by5 and inspired other great podcasts - it’s too important to wither away.

The New, Bigger iPhone

Something has been bugging me about the new iPhone rumors saying that the new phone will get bigger, and that to make apps work with the larger display they should only expand in one dimension.

I’m reluctant to say that a 9x16 aspect ratio is natural for anything. It just seems much too narrow to me. Further, I think the arguments for doing so don’t hold water. If Apple decides to do a new display at the same pixels per inch, I think they’ll take old apps and simply center them on the bigger screen, and the surrounding pixels will be nothingness. They already worked wonderfully at that size, after all, and the only consequence is more bezel around old apps. As long as the thumb can reach everything - which it will have to, else the new iPhone will be awful - it should not be problematic.

I think that a bigger 4-inch-screen iPhone will come in whatever shape feels most natural, and new apps will either have to rework themselves to the new resolution or be content with being the same size and in the same spot as they were on the iPhone 4. That doesn’t strike me as a bad deal.

Day in the Life of a Music Snob

7:30:00 PM:

Well, I’m out of podcasts, might as well listen to some music through my standard iPhone earbuds. Should be listenable for a little while, I would imagine.

7:30:30 PM:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH OH GOD IT SOUNDS LIKE A SCREECHING CAT FILTERED THROUGH RAW ANALOG TV STATIC AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH WHERE IN THE HELL ARE MY SENNHEISERS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

Windows 8: Russian Roulette Edition

Let’s say you’re a Windows developer. Already you’re facing the problem that you’re on an Android-esque platform where no consumers want to buy applications. Compound that with the fact that Microsoft’s UI development tools on Windows before Windows 8 are either 20 years old (Windows Forms) or slow, heavy and blurry (WPF). What you have is an enviroment that is not conducive to making great consumer apps, no matter how wonderful C# and .NET may be as a language.

Now with Windows 8 we have something different: Metro and WinRT. Microsoft is clearly saying this is the new way going forward… while also clearly saying the Windows desktop is not going anyhere. So they’re clearly saying Windows will be a dual-ecosystem OS going forward. So you, as a Windows dev, need to make a choice, if you don’t have the resources to support multiple platforms.

What happens if consumers don’t massively adopt the Metro UI? Also, what happens if Metro works out too well, and the desktop is put on the chopping block? If you’re on the wrong side of that line, your app needs to be ported. For that matter, what if both are adopted equally? Then you need to build and maintain an application with two user interfaces to reach the wider audience.

This adds a level of uncertainty that has to be factored into the risk equation for building a Windows app. Windows is already a risky platform to build a paid app on. The last thing Microsoft needs to do is give developers another reason to pick up Objective-C books, but that’s exactly what they’ve done.

When Upgrading is not a Choice

On the latest Hypercritical episode, John Siracusa is talking about Apple’s App Stores and the lack of paid upgrade capability. He is spot on for much of the episode, but I take issue with what he says around the 100 minute mark. He thinks the mindset that people can be forced into upgrading an application is a false one - that there is nothing truly forcing you to stay on the current version of your application.

This is indeed true for most apps, but I think John forgot about one important exception. Let’s use Adobe Creative Suite as an example. Printing companies typically have the latest versions of CS available to them. The reason is not that they want the new features, but that inevitably at least one of their customers will, and if they send in a new file that only the latest CS can open, then they have to have it or they lose the customer.¹ This is not unique to CS - Microsoft Office is notorious for the 2007 transition to new document formats which could not be opened in earlier versions of Office.

What we have in those cases is social lock-in - you have to have the highest version of the application that the people you’re working with have. It could happen with proprietary and incompatible file types, such as with CS and Office. There is also social lock-in in the broader sense. Let’s say everyone else has a version newer than yours of a cloud-syncing app. There’s a chance that down the road you will no longer have access to the API because support for the old one has been cut off, and then your app gets bricked. If you have to pay to upgrade to the one that isn’t cut off, then most people would feel cheated by that.

iOS’s free upgrade system - the OS too, not just the App Store - ensures that as many people have the latest version of the application as possible. The hard work Apple has put in to ensure that even iPhone 3GS users can get the latest iOS version ensures that apps are also broadly compatible across as many devices as possible, and forcing free updates means nearly everyone can and should have the same version of the application.

When everyone is on the same version, then compatibility problems largely disappear, and as a result customers are usually happier. Apple is famous for putting the user experience ahead of that of developers, and this sounds like a scenario where paid updates have a detrimental effect for users, minor though it may be.