I volunteer for a neighborhood organization. I run all the neighborhood business from a dedicated iPad Mini 3 with LTE. An earlier experience with a 'rugged' ZAGG keyboard had me nearly ready to chuck keyboard, iPad, and iOS.
A new keyboard has me hanging on for a bit longer. That keyboard is the awesome Logitech K480. Every surface is hard plastic. Every plastic edge is a bit sharp. The thing weighs in at just over 800 grams. That's 100 grams more than an original iPad! The whole thing seems like it could be an entire 80's 8 bit home computer by itself.
The best part is the Mike Mulligan-esque 'Bing Bang Crash Boom, Louder and Louder, and Faster and Faster' sounds you get when you slap the keys around. The second best part is the serious slot in the back. It will hold an iPad mini in portrait with a smart cover folded behind it. An iPad mini in portrait has almost as much vertical real estate as an Macbook Pro Retina 13.
The K480 keyboard can do one trick more. It has a chunky dial on the side that picks which of three paired devices will receive input. The slot will hold an iPad mini and an iPhone 6 together in portrait.
The K480 is happy to pair as a keyboard with essentially any bluetooth machine. This means that it has an actual physical key with the blessed letters 'e', 's', 'c' silkscreened right on.
I downloaded and installed iOS 9.3 on the iPad mini after yesterday's iPad Pro announcement. I hoped a extra bit of Pro-ness would somehow permeate the iOS line. I hoped that iOS would stop taking virtual acetone to the escape key. No such luck. This Pro operating system still hides the escape key from 'keypress', 'keydown', and 'keyup' events in Javascript. Amateur hour.
With the new iPad Pro 9.7, Apple has caved on a physical keyboard and a stylus for iPad-sized tablets. When will they end their war on escape? I don't need 1024 levels of escape. I don't need to know the angle at which I press escape. I don't need John Lasseter to say that it's the most realistic escape ever. I just want escape.
