Will Hains And Marco Arment on the Wobbly Smart Keyboard Folio

Will Hains, on his blog:

I heard my friend Casey describe a car he was reviewing as “tossable”. I’m pretty sure that’s not a word in any version of the English language, but the meaning is clear.

That word floated up in my mind as I struggled to fold and unfold the 12.9-inch behemoth, to pry it from my office desk, and to get it in and out of my bag. It felt too awkward and unwieldy to quickly whip out while on the train and crunch through a few email replies.

I got very good at handling my old 10.5-inch iPad Pro, even propping up the too-clever-by-half keyboard cover. It was just more… tossable.

I too was extremely tempted to go down the 12.9-inch route at first but then I remembered my experience with the first generation model of this size. I like to use my iPad to read and thumb-type (e.g. when using Twitter) and the on-screen keyboard of the larger model is just not built for this. It should be smaller (or there should be a choice of an alternate keyboard). Weight is another issue — personally I don’t find it comfortable to hold with one hand for extended periods of time. The larger screen and the ability to run two full-sized portrait apps next to each other do not make up for this.

In practice, it means the top edge of the iPad Pro 12.9”, when propped up in its keyboard cover is very high off the desk. It’s harder to reach the top of the screen when there’s no keyboard shortcut to go back a screen, and the left-edge swipe gesture is unavailable. And when I did tap the top of the screen, the whole thing wobbled.

I first read about the wobbly screen in the Smart Keyboard Folio in Will’s post and layer saw that Marco Arment mentioned it in his video review. Do watch the whole thing — it comes at the iPad from a different and interesting perspective.

I don’t believe I saw anyone else mention this in anywhere else and it could be a deal-breaker for some. Personally, I’m not getting Apple’s Smart Keyboard Folio — it’s just too expensive for what it offers.

Having said all that, I just thumb-typed this post on my 11-inch iPad, which I wouldn’t have bothered to do on the 12.9-inch model — I’d have put it off for later, when I had an external keyboard connected.