Magic Keyboard for iPad
What I was hoping for was something approximating the feel and experience of a MacBook — a little more top heavy, a little stiffer at the hinge to accommodate that extra top-heaviness — but basically I wanted an iPad-as-laptop that feels like a MacBook Air.
It doesn’t feel like that at all.
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Once I let go of my preconceptions, I fell in love. This took all of 15 minutes. I went from that “I don’t like the way this thing feels at all” first impression to “I can’t wait to start raving about how great this thing is” in 15 minutes. The iPad Magic Keyboard is to iPad-as-laptop accessories what AirPods were to earbuds: a game changer.
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At their widest viewing angles, the Magic Keyboard feels noticeably more open than the Smart Keyboard, and the MacBook Air feels noticeably more open than the Magic Keyboard.
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The MacBook Air trackpad is about 120 × 80 mm. The 12.9-inch Magic Keyboard trackpad is just 100 × 50 mm — by area it’s just a hair over half the size. (The 16-inch MacBook Pro keyboard is the size of a small studio apartment in comparison — 160 × 100 mm — as tall as the iPad Magic Keyboard trackpad is wide and over 3x the size by area.)
The MacBook Pro’s trackpad is way too big.
This is Apple’s answer to users who have been asking for years for a “pro Smart Keyboard” to turn the iPad into a quasi-laptop device, and it doesn’t try to replicate all the features from the Smart Keyboard Folio or regular Smart Folio. I would have liked to see the option to fold the Magic Keyboard in the back of the iPad; I’m just not sure how that could be physically possible given Apple’s design direction for the Magic Keyboard (more on this later).
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Here’s where the Magic Keyboard’s design differs from traditional laptops though: when lifting the iPad’s display, you’ll feel a first snap when the bottom hinge (the cylinder-shaped one that comes with a built-in USB-C port) has reached its open position; keep pushing on the iPad’s display, and the iPad will detach from the second hinge, which is located in the Magic Keyboard’s back cover and lets you adjust the iPad’s viewing angle. It’s the horizontal line that separates the two halves of the Magic Keyboard’s cover.
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The Magic Keyboard turns an iPad Pro into a laptop, but it does so in a way that isn’t definitive – the transformation can always be reversed by the simple act of pulling the “computing core” away from it. This is also where the Magic Keyboard differs from competing accessories[…]
Looking at all of those use cases together, it really is apparent to me that using my iPad Pro with the Smart Keyboard Folio is my best opportunity to meet all things. I can augment the experience when docked, or I can carry around the Magic Mouse 2 when I need to be mobile. It’s not always going to be the ideal experience, but it does what I need to get the job done. Also, I already have the components I need, and don’t need to spend an additional $300 on something that would be a limited use case for me.
See also: Nick Heer.
Previously:
- iPad Desk Mode
- iPad Pro 2020 and Magic Keyboard With Trackpad
- Brydge Pro+: iPad Keyboard With Trackpad
Update (2020-04-23): Ben Lovejoy:
First – and I find it hard to believe this is true – there’s no Escape key! I’m so used to using that to exit from full-screen video viewing, it seems such a fundamental element on a keyboard, and yet it’s true: it really is missing.
Second, the lack of function keys. I hadn’t been sure how much I would miss them. I don’t often play music on my iPad, so wasn’t bothered about the lack of music controls. I find the on-screen brightness control of the iPad faster to use than keys, so didn’t mind the lack of those. I almost never adjust keyboard backlighting, so no problem there. But there was one immediate and obvious weakness when watching video: no volume controls.
Update (2020-04-24): See also: Jason Snell, Stephen Hackett, David Sparks.
Update (2020-05-20): Steve Streza:
Got the Magic Keyboard. Way too top-heavy. The keyboard is very good. The trackpad is pretty good. The texture on the sides of the trackpad are very unpleasant to the touch. Using a mouse makes an iPad much nicer to use. Turns out having a touchscreen on a tilted surface is fine.
This is really for people who use iPad on a desk. Using it on the lap is still not great.
It’s weird that the iPad now has a better keyboard than literally every laptop Apple was shipping up until about 6 month ago. The keys feel great, and travel is surprisingly deep. I can type very comfortably on this.
I would like if there were a bit more of an angle of view. It’s way nicer than the old Smart Keyboard folio in terms of adjustability. But I’m a tall person. Being able to tilt back even further would be nice.
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The keys are not full-sized, of course, so I still find myself, as I always have on iPad keyboards, typing with three fingers and thumb on each hand, rather than using both pinkies. I’ve gotten used to it by now, but I’m never going to be quite as fast on an iPad keyboard as I can be on my laptop. If I moved to the 13-inch iPad, this would not be an issue, of course.
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It’s amazing how fast you get used to using a trackpad on iOS. It feels way more natural than I would have expected.
Update (2020-07-30): John Gruber:
One of the weird things about an iPad with Magic Keyboard is that iPadOS still runs iPhone-only apps and they are only run length-wise on the display, so, in laptop mode, they are sideways. And once on screen, everything else is sideways too: the dock, ⌘Tab switcher, everything.
Update (2020-08-27): Matthew Panzarino:
In order to dive a bit deeper on the brand new cursor and its interaction models, I spoke to Apple SVP Craig Federighi about its development and some of the choices by the teams at Apple that made it.
See also: Dave B.
