Apple's Bluetooth Keyboard; first impressions after an hour of use

I've taken the plunge and bought one of Apple's Wireless Bluetooth Keyboards to use with my iPad (the wife has a Keyboard Dock - more on that later). It is undeniably beautiful, a masterpieces of consumer electronics and a delight to use, but it does have a few problems or, at least, unusual operating features when compared to the touch keyboard. For example, when tying on the physical keyboard, the iPad doesn't capitalise the first letter of sentences or translate "iphone" to "iPhone', or convert "i" to "I".

A more serious complaint is that the @ and " marks have been reversed so that the @ sits on the 2 key, which you would expect on a US keyboard but not on a UK keyboard. Then there are the shortcuts; quite a few of these work as they would on a normal computer (cmd-c for Copy, cmd-v for paste etc.) but there aren't very many of them so you can't, for example, jump to the address box in Safari without tapping the screen. This isn't a huge problem, and there's a reasonable chance that things will improve in iOS 4.0, but it does seem a bit strange.

Then there are a couple of minor niggles. You can't as far as I can tell, change the key repeat speed (I like my keys to repeat quickly). It's also glaringly obvious that Mail and Pages haven't been setup for use with a physical keyboard, so although cmd-backspace will delete a whole word (as you would expect) you will be left with a double space, or a space followed by a full-stop depending on your starting point. Again, not a big problem, just a modest lack of sophistication.

Having said that, there are a few cmd shortcuts and they work well. I like being able to delete whole words and sentences, or sections of text by shift-selecting with the cursor keys. Typing is definitely faster on a physical keyboard, but the iPad is still primarily a touch device and, sooner or later, you need to go back to the screen to make a selection. One unexpected example of this is the selection of a URL from the list suggested by Safari once you've typed in the first few letters; you can't use the cursor keys to move through the list as you would on a desktop.

So, overall, a great keyboard. It's light, easy to use and, unusually in my experience of Bluetooth-connected devices, reliable. Integration with iOS 3 is ok but not great, so although I would recommend the keyboard if you want to do a lot of typing (and there really isn't any other reason to buy a keyboard) you need to be aware that it has a few shortcomings. Apple have a great opportunity to address some of these complaints in the next version of the iPad's operating system (promised for the Autumn) so now we wait, eagerly, and hope.