I don’t know about you, but I’d love to be able to rest my hands on my Apple iPad virtual keyboard and touch type. A clever, transparent plastic overlay for the tablet — called the TouchFire — lets me do just that.
It even features 3D keys that fit over the iPad, giving you tactile feedback as you type. That’s something folks like me miss.
Check out this video to see it in action.
Funded by Kickstarter, inventor Steve Isaac’s innovation has raised more than $185K in prepaid orders alone for this gizmo. Expect my review soon.
I tried a hand a creating content with an iPad using an Apple UltraSlim wireless keyboard. Even with this, creating content other than an email or text message still seems a clumsy and ponderous affair. It’s still a marvelous consumption consumption device, perhaps not so for creating.
> perhaps not so for creating.
Agreed. I have not tried out the TouchFire, and even if it feels really good, the keyboard will be quite narrow. I’ll be skeptical till I try one out. Still, even if it just doubles typing speed it will be handy.
The iPad excels for that which it appears to be intended, including a quick email or text. That for which the iPad does not is productivity.
I’m pretty picky about keyboards, being a writer and all. I like the feedback, the clicking, the feel of a real keyboard. But an Apple iPad will work in a pinch, LOL : )
It is mine that I’ve been trained as a touch-typist. While it’s a great skills set for the vi text editor, I’m nearly lost without the tactile feel and clicking sound of a real keypad. Robert
The Touchfire promises to give you tactile feedback, so it might work well for you, but no matter how good the feel and sound, the keyboard will be narrow and require character-set shifts. We really need some hands (fingers) on experience to know how well it works.
Its amazing that their Kickstarter.com goal was for $10,000 and now almost at $200,000 three (3) hours before closing .
Even for the curious mind I believe this is gonna be product that sales. I might have to look into the company stock :)
Really — Kickstarter is a cool “wisdom of the crowd” way to raise capital, and the crowd seems to like this idea.
The Kickstarter drive has ended, and 3,146 people pledged $201,400 — twenty times their funding target. Since it was oversubscribed, the first production run is sold out, but you can place an order for one from the next batch at http://www.touchfire.com/.
This reminds me of the MITS Altair — the first mass market hobbyist PC. MITS was a near-broke calculator company when they brought out Altair kits. They financed the kits by asking for payment in full at the time you placed your order. I guess they cashed the checks, bought the parts, stuffed them in baggies and sent them out.
Maybe we should start aNewDomain kickstarter-like program. Just sayin’ gs
> aNewDomain kickstarter-like program
Are you serious about this?
Sure I’m serious.
I’m no writer, but I finally replaced my old kboard and have been trying my BEST to get used to it. These newer kboards want to use chiclet keys and sound less noisy than older ones. i NEED that feedback, i guess. Plus, my hands are fairly large and i like feeling that I “pressed” a key.
back to the topic at hand, i think it’s a neat idea, but if a user knows their iPad isn’t for typical production, why bother purchasing a product of this nature? Just my two pennies….
-RAP, II
Agreed — an iPad is surely not for typical production. I can only do hunt and peck typing on an iPad and I keep moving my eyes back and forth between the keyboard and what I am typing — it is slow and tense,
But, we do end up typing URLs, emails, tweets, short blog posts, etc. on them. If this, or some other gizmo, can speed that up or cut down on errors, I am all for it. That being said, I have not yet gotten to try a Touchfire overlay — I hope they work well.