iPad, Stylus, and Keyboard

by Rian

I had an iPad Pro from 2018. It was a 12.9 inch model running on A12X chip, so supposedly my iPad’s days were numbered. Except I never felt it. Until the day I sold it, I didn’t see an app that took advantage of iPad’s unique hardware; most apps were either upsized iOS apps from iPhones or downsized macOS apps from Macs. The only exception I could think of were the apps that needed a stylus or a keyboard.

Let us start with the folio keyboard. It may seem obvious to add a set of keyboard on an iPad for productivity reasons, but there’s a catch. On any smartphones currently available on the market, having a physical keyboard could be a good add-on, but it is an add-on nobody wishes to make a compromise for. The loss of portability by attaching a keyboard was detrimental enough to take classic smartphones off the shelves. In 2024, there were some attempts to add the keyboard back as a form of an accessory, like a smartphone case, I am yet to hear it made a hit product.

Tablets suffer a similar fate as most smartphones do, except tablets often have less weight room to work with. iPad is bigger and heavier than an iPhone, and adding a folio keyboard case doesn’t help the cause to keep the load light. Physical keyboards are, no doubt, better when you do need to type for an extended of period time, then it begs the question; why not just get a laptop? —Laptops with proper OS, laptops with proper applications, and laptops with proper physical keyboard and trackpad.

Same goes with the stylus in the beginning. Stylus was never “needed” in Apple’s ecosystem. Earlier touchscreen didn’t compensate for what users see on the screen and where the input is actually made on the screen by software; this was one of the key differences on iPhone’s touchscreen. So a stylus was needed to physically compensate for the inaccuracies. Finger tip is bound to have more foot print on the screen than a stylus, which is essentially a pen.

When Apple decided to add a stylus for its tablets and called it Apple Pencil, it was obvious the company was gunning for a prosumer device. It wasn’t meant to be used as a general input peripheral, albeit you can if you needed it to. There were already styluses available from the third party made compatible with iPhones and iPads, so it’s no wonder Apple wanted its stylus to serve a purpose. I can’t speak for how the illustrators are using Apple Pencil as I am not one. But seeing as Apple Pencil did fit the bill for many artists and hobbyists, perhaps iPad was meant for them.

This came as a surprise few weeks ago when I got two independent inquiries on iPads. One was related to iPads’ versatility as a mobile TV. LG and Samsung are pushing hard on the idea of TVs that are mobile, running on battery, with wheels. But it’s essentially a cheap monitor (FHD, around 27”) hooked up to a chromecast. You’d have better accessibility to wider range of stands with tablets, especially iPads. The other was the stylus; how Apple Pencil fared with the need to charge in order to operate. Charging never bothered me; it was the fact that I often preferred to type than to write by hand.