iPad Keyboard Dock

I'm not what could be called the greatest fan of Apple's peripherals. Within a desktop metaphor, I've long held that while Apple's keyboards are technically functional and certainly aesthetically pleasing, they're outclassed by the competition. The iPad Keyboard dock is, at its heart, a standard small (so not number pad) iMac keyboard with the iPad dock nailed to the back. Logic says that I should dislike it just as intensely as it do its desktop counterparts. The thing is, while on the desktop any choice of keyboard would be better, the iPad has no native keyboard. It's designed (if you need keyboard operation) for a market largely dominated by netbooks. Most netbook keyboards are quite woeful. There are some counter-examples, such as HP's generally serviceable efforts, but by and large they're compromise all the way. Stack the keyboard dock up against any of them, and it comes out looking good and, critically, working well. The keyboard dock adds some rather more Mac-like functionality to the iPad, including screen brightness, music playback and spotlight searches, as well as adding some more standard keys that the onscreen keyboard never offers, such as tab. With a standard iPad socket at the back, it will acommodate the sync cable for charging and synchronisation, and should work with other iPad accessories such as the VGA adaptor — although I've not had the opportunity to test that. One small catch is that the position of the dock connector on the base of the iPad means that it only works in portrait orientation. A landscape solution would presumably require some kind of looped cable, but if your text-entry aspirations only work in a widescreen scenario this isn't the keyboard for you. With the inbuilt dock attachment it's clear that Apple intends for it to work primarily as a desktop solution. Then again, rules were made to be broken, and the keyboard dock isn't terribly heavy. With that in mind I gave it something of a torture test, chucking it into a bag and attempting to use it to type out parts of an article (including this review) while on a busy Sydney train — essentially turning the iPad into a notebook. I was expecting a rather perilous journey, complete with rocking iPads, and hopefully not too many catches before it hit the floor. Instead, I got a largely smooth ride with only a few bumps. There are some downsides to this. The dock only works while the iPad is comfortably nestled on the dock connector, but the only thing holding it on is gravity. As such, large bumps can cause it to shift just enough to break the connection, leading the onscreen keyboard to pop up and any typing you'd just done to vanish into thin air. From a pricing standpoint it's surprisingly competitive. Grabbing just the dock would set you back $39.95, and the comparable wired keyboard currently sells for $69.95. Nailing the two together (and presuming you could get the iPad to talk to both) would cost you ten cents short of $110. The combined dock is $89.95. It should be noted that it's not Mac compatible in case you do fancy an extra keyboard, although that's just an interface problem that an agile hacker might be able to overcome. Not every iPad user will need nor want a keyboard. You can indeed use the camera connection kit to hook up any external USB keyboard, or simply pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard — but both of those approaches still leave you with the problem of mounting the iPad itself in an orientation where it's actually comfortable to type. The combination of keyboard and dock in that context works superbly on a desk and surprisingly well on a lap in transit, as long as you're careful to keep an eye out for sudden movements.