A Real Keyboard for Your iPhone! Wait, What?

With all the hype churning about  Vision Pro coming out on Friday, I was amused about this product popping up in my feeds that addresses a need that I thought was settled in 2007: attaching a keyboard to your iPhone. It was right in the introduction of the original iPhone, five minutes into Jobs’ presentation he said that the problem with smartphones at the time was what he called the “Bottom 40,” the plastic keyboards that you’re stuck with that are not programmable and can’t change based on whatever programs you’re running. Apple fixed that with its virtual keyboard. Right?

2007 iPhone Intro – smartphone keyboards – the usual suspects
2007 iPhone Intro – smartphone keyboards – the lower 40

Michael Fisher (AKA Mr. Mobile) at Clicks Technology says not so fast. In a highly produced 10-minute video he said that we threw out the baby with the bathwater when we got rid of physical keyboards. As a touch-typist I have to agree that I type much faster with physical keys, thus I spent lots on my Magic Keyboard for my iPad Pro and I experimented with foldable bluetooth keyboards to use primarily with my iPad. And I have pounded out extended text on my iPhone (using the DayOne journal app), but I’m dubious about slapping on a keyboard to my iPhone, which would make it even bigger in my pocket. Fisher seems undaunted at making the iPhone even longer by adding the keyboard. He recommended leaning into it by letting your keyboard-flag fly by letting it peek out of your back pocket.

Yeah, I think I’ll pass on this one. I enjoyed my Palm Treo back in the day (I still have the last model that I had when I bought my first iPhone in 2007 and wrote about last April ), but I don’t miss clicky keys on my phone enough to make the thing even longer. I have big pockets in my Tactical 5.11 pants, but they’re not that big. Truthfully, given my need to constantly be writing, I was looking for a device that could be my digital reporters notebook and toyed with idea of getting a iPad mini and find an up-to-date foldable keyboard to do the trick. All of that is on hold because Apple hasn’t updated their iPad mini in a very long time and I’m not so sure about how much “out and about” writing I’l be doing in the near future and there’s also a real need to slow down my technology consumption now that I’m lacking in revenue/kind’a retired. I’m all about the mobile computing and added possibilities of being able to write and have access to all my stuff remotely. I think I’ll pass on the Clicks. Who about you? Is this at all tempting?