So I have this question that's been eating at me for a few days, and I can't find anybody who knows the answer and is willing to talk about it.
When I find myself wanting to write Mac (as opposed to say iPad) software, it is not always but usually because having a hardware keyboard is important to whatever software I want to write, and of course all Macs have hardware keyboards. There are other reasons, like better interoperability with other desktop software, but these seem to shrink each year.
But it occurs to me that with iPads outselling Macs at a ratio higher than 4-to-1, it seems at least plausible to me that either there are, or could be in the forseeable future, more iPad users with hardware keyboards than Mac users. So if you are trying to target people who use a keyboard, the iPad could be a better bet.
I can't find any numbers so I don't know if we are there already or if we are a long ways off. But this line of inquiry has really caused me to question whether the iPad makes more sense than the Mac for a lot of projects that I have formerly just assumed would be a better fit for a desktop form factor.
Not everybody who owns an iPad has or uses a hardware keyboard. I think most people don't have one, and of those who do, many may hardly use it. I have a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, but I really hardly use it. I bought it once for a longer vacation where I just wanted to bring the iPad but needed to be able to quickly respond to mails. In the end, I didn't even use it much during the vacation.
What kind of apps, except for text processing like word, number processing like excel, programming editors, or scientific like mathmatica are you thinking about? I think these are the categories where keyboards are really necessary for iPad, but for all others, I think touch input may be the better option (I'll probably have forgotten a couple of niche categories, like music trackers).
The API that's available to iPads with keyboards is substantially different from the one available to Macs.
If your Mac software relies on keyboard behavior that third-party apps cannot produce (like CMD+C doing a logical copy of a selected item instead of copy this text) it may not matter how many iPads have keyboards.
You'd be surprised. The method to detect chorded key combos isn't publicly documented, but that doesn't prevent e.g. http://panic.com/prompt from figuring it out.
Comments
So I have this question that's been eating at me for a few days, and I can't find anybody who knows the answer and is willing to talk about it.
When I find myself wanting to write Mac (as opposed to say iPad) software, it is not always but usually because having a hardware keyboard is important to whatever software I want to write, and of course all Macs have hardware keyboards. There are other reasons, like better interoperability with other desktop software, but these seem to shrink each year.
But it occurs to me that with iPads outselling Macs at a ratio higher than 4-to-1, it seems at least plausible to me that either there are, or could be in the forseeable future, more iPad users with hardware keyboards than Mac users. So if you are trying to target people who use a keyboard, the iPad could be a better bet.
I can't find any numbers so I don't know if we are there already or if we are a long ways off. But this line of inquiry has really caused me to question whether the iPad makes more sense than the Mac for a lot of projects that I have formerly just assumed would be a better fit for a desktop form factor.
Not everybody who owns an iPad has or uses a hardware keyboard. I think most people don't have one, and of those who do, many may hardly use it. I have a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad, but I really hardly use it. I bought it once for a longer vacation where I just wanted to bring the iPad but needed to be able to quickly respond to mails. In the end, I didn't even use it much during the vacation.
What kind of apps, except for text processing like word, number processing like excel, programming editors, or scientific like mathmatica are you thinking about? I think these are the categories where keyboards are really necessary for iPad, but for all others, I think touch input may be the better option (I'll probably have forgotten a couple of niche categories, like music trackers).
Yes, not everybody has a hardware keyboard, but at some point
I'm interested in getting some kind of OOM answer to that equation.Well for example, here I am, at this moment, typing a comment to you on an iPad with a hardware keyboard.
But to answer your question: heavy email, threaded discussion, bug reporting, data entry (e.g. invoices, grades, tracking numbers, door-to-door, consumer surveys, medical coding, pilot logbook, etc), inventory management, insurance adjusters, real estate listings, pro-grade eBay/Craigslist tools, non-casual games (e.g. Starcraft, Half-Life, etc.), Quicken, MSProject, TurboTax ...
The API that's available to iPads with keyboards is substantially different from the one available to Macs.
If your Mac software relies on keyboard behavior that third-party apps cannot produce (like CMD+C doing a logical copy of a selected item instead of copy this text) it may not matter how many iPads have keyboards.
You'd be surprised. The method to detect chorded key combos isn't publicly documented, but that doesn't prevent e.g. http://panic.com/prompt from figuring it out.