The iPad has a reputation for being difficult to type on. It’s generally accepted that the iPad is okay for short emails and notes, but is not suited to longer documents. The anecdotal consensus seems to be that an on-screen keyboard, with no tactile feedback, leads to more errors than a physical keyboard with real keys. Based on my research today, I’m not sure that this is the case. Instead, it may be a bug in the iPad’s keyboard software that is causing some of the typing errors.

I’ve never learnt to type properly – I use at most three fingers – but I can get around a physical keyboard pretty quickly. As an interface designer, I’m intrigued to see whether an on-screen keyboard really can be a valid alternative to a physical one. As a result, I’ve studied the iPad’s keyboard in quite a bit of detail.

The more I’ve looked into it, the more I’ve suspected that my typing may not be at fault for some of the mistakes in my iPad documents. To test this theory, I positioned my iPhone 4S (the best video camera I own) over an iPad 2 (supported by a folded Smart Screen), and filmed myself typing some sample text into a Pages document. I decided that Pages, as the de facto (and Apple-created) word processor for iPad, would be a good test of using the device for long-form writing.

Here’s the video of my typing, played back at 12.5% of the original speed so that you can see the individual keys being pressed. I’ve used the on-screen keyboard’s highlighting of pressed keys (fading to a darker grey and back again) to ascertain which keys I have successfully pressed, and in which order. I deliberately used a piece of text I don’t know well, to avoid familiarity; the pauses in the video come from me reading each block of text from the screen of my Mac. (The video is 12 minutes long, and is quite dull to watch in its entirety; it’s included here primarily to illustrate the examples below.)

Here’s what I’m trying to type:

Of the causes which have induced me to print this volume I have little to say; my own opinion is, that it will ultimately do some service to science, and without that belief I would not have undertaken so thankless a task. That it is too true not to make enemies, is an opinion in which I concur with several of my friends, although I should hope that which I have written will not give just reason for the permanence of such feelings.

…and here’s what I end up with on the iPad (with differences from the original text highlighted in red):

Of the causes which have induced me to print this volume image little to say; my own opinions, that t will ultimately do some service to science, and without thatbelef I would not ave undertaken so tankless a task. That it’s tod rue nt to Maeenemies, is anopinionin which I concur with several of y friends, although I should le that what iave written will nt give just reason fr the permanence of such feelings.

Clearly this is lot of of errors. The first error occurs just after typing this volume. On the iPad keyboard, I correctly type i [space] have. There’s very little time between pressing h and a, but long enough for the framerate of the iPhone video camera to detect them as being pressed in the correct order.

After I type the letter i, the following space is ignored, as is the letter h. Is this because the iPad is expecting me to select or dismiss an autocorrect overlay for the lowercase i? Or is it because the keypresses are missed by Pages? In either case, Pages doesn’t start processing my keystrokes again until the letter a. It then correctly detects the v, the e and the subsequent space, causing it to display iave; this is autocorrected to imageafter the ending space is pressed. This is despite the fact that I typed all of the letters correctly, apart from using a lowercase i.

The second error is a genuine typing mistake, as I fail to hit the space bar between opinion and is. The autocorrect suggestion of opinions is a sensible one.

The third error seems to be another ignored keypress. I’m typing that it will, and from the video recording, I press all of the keys in the correct order. However, the keypress of the letter i in it is ignored, despite the fact that the keyboard shows it turning grey, leaving me with that t. Likewise after the second l in will, I definitely press space, and the keyboard notes this by turning the spacebar grey, but doesn’t register a space in the document on screen, leaving me with willultimately.

To its credit, the iPad then autocorrects willultimately to will ultimately without showing a suggestion overlay. Nonetheless, it shouldn’t have needed correcting in the first place.

Another error – during my typing of the word science, my correct keypress of the letter i is ignored, resulting in scence being displayed on screen. Again it’s autocorrected, and ends up as science.

More letters are missed; the i from belief is ignored, and the word isn’t autocorrected, leaving me with belef. The o from not is ignored too, leaving me with nt. (We’ll skip over my slightly embarrassing inability to type the word several – I get it right in the end.)

Yet more characters are missed in the second half of the text. Here’s the final output text, showing my errors in green; missed-letter errors (not subsequently autocorrected) in red; and missed-letter errors (subsequently corrected by autocorrect) in blue.

Of the causes which have induced me to print this volume image little to say; my own opinions, that t will ultimately do some service to science, and without thatbelef I would not ave undertaken so tankless a task. That it’s tod rue nt to Maeenemies, is anopinionin which I concur with several of y friends, although I should le that what iave written will nt give just reason fr the permanence ofsuch feelings.

Out of a 435-character text, 30 keypresses were ignored – nearly 7% of the characters in the text. And out of 17 errors in the final text (after autocorrect had helped out), only three were my fault – about my usual error rate on a physical keyboard. (I made five mistakes when typing the same text in Pages on an 11” MacBook Air.)

So it turns out I can type on an iPad – but maybe the iPad isn’t processing all of my keystrokes. If it did, the iPad would be my default typing device on the move.

Update 1: following a few questions on Twitter, I’ve run the same test in other apps (Notes and Mail), and the missing characters problem seems to occur there too. This suggests there might be a lower-level text input issue, rather than a Pages-specific issue. I’ve also tried using a physical Bluetooth keyboard; this didn’t trigger missing characters, suggesting that the issue might be specific to text input from the on-screen keyboard only.

Update 2: a few people have asked if this problem might be specific to my iPad 2. I’ve tried the same test on two iPad 1 devices (albeit without the benefit of slowed-down video analysis), and seen very similar behaviour. Although this isn’t conclusive, it leads me to believe that the problem isn’t specific to my device.

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