The TacType keyboard Approach
The TacType keyboard solves the one problem with a tablet computer—the impossibility of touch-typing on its virtual keyboard.
You can’t touch-type because a virtual keyboard (which is just an image on the tablet’s touch-screen) deprives you of the positioning cues and tactile feedback provided by a “real,” or physical, keyboard.
A touch-screen is super-sensitive, so it’s impossible for you to lightly rest your fingers on the virtual keys without typing the characters. And because the keys themselves are just images, you can’t know by feel alone where your fingers are on the keyboard.
Instead, you must suspend your fingers over the screen and must keep your eyes on the virtual keyboard—at all times—to know where to type. The only kind of typing you can do is the two-fingered, hunt-and-peck variety. This kind of typing requires your brain’s exclusive attention.
FREE YOUR HEAD
Touch-typing—the ability to hit the keys you want without looking at the keyboard—increases typing speed and therefore is vital for productivity.
Even more important, touch-typing frees up your brain to focus on other tasks besides finding the next key to type.
Touch-typing uses the part of the brain where “muscle memory” is stored. Muscle memory enables an action to become automatic. Touch-typing is like riding a bicycle, or playing a musical instrument, or just walking. And, as in walking and riding a bicycle, the thinking part of your brain remains free to take in information and to think.
Hunt-and-peck typing, however, “hijacks” the thinking part of your brain, making it unavailable for more important tasks. Your brain is monopolized by having to ask and answer a series of questions and issue a series of instructions: “Where is the ‘W’? Touch that spot.” “Where is the ‘H’? Touch that spot.”
Imagine sitting in a classroom or business meeting trying to take notes on a virtual keyboard. You have to keep your eyes on the keyboard and think about hitting the right virtual keys, so you’re going to miss most of what the speaker is saying.
By making real touch-typing possible on a tablet computer, the TacType keyboard sets the thinking part of your brain free. Free to listen, free to learn, and free to think.
DOESN’T A BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD SOLVE THE PROBLEM?
Yes, Bluetooth is an option, but using a Bluetooth keyboard instead of your iPad keyboard adds weight and bulk and increases the iPad’s footprint. If you’re going to carry around an iPad plus a Bluetooth keyboard, you’re much better off just taking a laptop computer with you.
Adding a Bluetooth keyboard to an iPad is turning a prince into a frog.
The extremely lightweight TacType keyboard piggybacks on the iPad’s virtual keyboard. Remarkably slim, it fits under many iPad covers (including the Apple Smart Cover™). You don’t have to remember to pack it because you store it on the iPad screen.
The TacType keyboard isn’t an “extra” keyboard for you to carry around. It’s a device that makes the iPad’s own keyboard more versatile.
March 9, 2012 by cliff
