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I tried using iPads with keyboard covers. Having to constantly switch between tapping the screen and typing was a dealbreaker for me. There's zero integration for keyboards beyond the ability to type in textboxes and a few system shortcuts. You can't even select apps with the arrow keys on the homescreen!

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Well, if your expectation is to just turn the iPad into a laptop, it's not going to work out. If you want to turn it into an iPad you can type faster on, it will be much better.

Funny, Microsoft seems to have figured out how to strike a middle ground.

I was just thinking about this as I woke up. Somewhere in my HN comment history, I took a contrarian (and supporting) position about the pre-iPad Microsoft tablet vaporware commercial: basically that if they did do something like this, with an accurate stylus and split-pages multitasking, it would be a winner.

That's not the middle ground iPad is aiming for, though. It's a spectrum, and it sounds like you'd rather have a Surface. Sometimes I think I'd like one to doodle with, too. I've seen people be productive with iPads as well, but you have to use them differently.

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