Brydge Pro+: iPad Keyboard With Trackpad
I had a chance to use a prototype of the Brydge Pro+ last summer, and while in many ways it’s the iPad accessory I’ve been dreaming of for some time, it’s still quite limited by iPadOS 13. While the iPad has a real cursor now if you turn on Assistive Touch, it’s really just a virtual finger. (It kills me that external pointing devices can’t control the text editing cursor that’s been a part of iOS for years now.)
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Among the issues Brydge has had to deal with is that iPadOS doesn’t actually support trackpads, it supports mice. So Brydge’s trackpad has to translate trackpad touches into mouse movements and send those to the device. The result is a nifty piece of engineering, but one that doesn’t offer the rich, smooth feel of a MacBook trackpad.
Update (2020-01-10): Jason Snell:
While some will consider the mere possibility of adding a mouse or trackpad to an iPad to be sacrilege, I prefer to see it as an additional option that can improve the iPad’s flexibility in certain circumstances. However, Apple’s support for external pointing devices is very much a first draft. It needs to continue pushing this feature forward in iPadOS 14—and in doing so, the platform could reap some surprising rewards.
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The elephant in the room with Brydge Pro+ is the lack of smart connector and thus reliance on Bluetooth. In a way it not a Pro+ it's Pro-
