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Search results for "Keyboard"

1Password Extends into the iOS QuickType Keyboard with Password AutoFill

This year’s WWDC must have been a wild roller coaster ride for 1Password’s developers, Agile Bits. Anxieties were surely at a high as Apple shared news of iCloud Keychain’s expanded capabilities in iOS 12 – the system now offers seamless new password creation, security code AutoFill, and more. Those segments seemed to signal Apple’s intent to make third-party apps like 1Password unnecessary for most users. Yet not long after Apple’s Keychain announcements, a new API was discovered that told an entirely different story. As I wrote in my iOS 12 overview earlier this summer:

One advantage Apple’s own iCloud Keychain has had over third-party password managers like 1Password is that it can populate relevant account info inside the QuickType keyboard. That level of convenience is hard to beat, no matter how much more full-featured third-party apps may be. Fortunately, in iOS 12 a new Password Manager API will enable the same type of feature to be adopted by third parties.

The team at Agile Bits wasted no time getting to work implementing this Password Manager API, and it’s launching today in 1Password alongside iOS 12.

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Improve Typing Skills and Learn New Keyboard Layouts with KeyKey Typing Trainer [Sponsor]

KeyKey is a minimalistic touch typing trainer for Mac. It’s suitable for beginners who want to learn basic touch typing skills, as well as for advanced users seeking to master alternative layouts like COLEMAK or DVORAK.

Touch typing is not about key arrangement, as you might believe. It’s about training your muscle memory, making your fingers remember the micro-motions unique to each language. KeyKey knows the most popular letter combinations and words of your native language and utilizes them in lesson generation.

Lessons are presented in several languages, including English, Spanish, German and French, along with the popular layouts for these languages: QWERTY, COLEMAK, DVORAK, AZERTY, QWERTZ (Swiss) and BÉPO. Lessons can be changed both automatically and manually, and you can add punctuation marks, capitalization, and numbers to each of them.

In the near future, KeyKey will add separate lessons for programmers to practice touch typing on real code examples from some popular programming languages.

If you are ready to master the art of typing without typos while never looking at your keyboard, get KeyKey on the App Store, or try it for free in Setapp.

Learn more about all of KeyKey’s features at the KeyKey Typing Trainer website!

P.S. You have a chance to win a free copy of KeyKey ($9.99) in the KeyKey Facebook group. Just like and share this post to enter the giveaway. Five winners will be drawn randomly on Sunday, August 27 at 12 pm CST.

Our thanks to KeyKey for sponsoring MacStories this week.

iFixit Tests MacBook Pro’s Keyboard Membrane→

iFixit ran more tests and took a closer look at the keyboard membrane that was added to the 2018 MacBook Pro released last week. It turns out, the membrane is one sheet of die-cut silicone with tiny cutouts to allow keycaps to connect to the butterfly switches beneath.

To test how well the new design holds up against dust, iFixit sprayed a new MacBook Pro with a dusting of paint additive. They then tore apart the notebook and found:

Lo and behold, the dust is safely sequestered at the edges of the membrane, leaving the mechanism fairly sheltered. The holes in the membrane allow the keycap clips to pass through, but are covered by the cap itself, blocking dust ingress. The previous-gen butterfly keys are far less protected, and are almost immediately flooded with our glowing granules. On the 2018 keyboard, with the addition of more particulate and some aggressive typing, the dust eventually penetrates under the sheltered clips, and gets on top of the switch—so the ingress-proofing isn’t foolproof just yet. Time will tell how long the barrier will hold up.

iFixit followed up by testing with grittier sand, which managed to cause keys to stick.

It’s good to see that the MacBook Pro’s keyboard withstands fine particles better than earlier models in testing. The real test, of course, is long-term human testing. Only time will tell whether the 2018 MacBook Pros can hold up when faced with a crumbly muffin in your local café or the pollen blowing across your keyboard as you browse the web in your backyard.

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MacBook Pros Updated with Faster Processors, Up to 32 GB RAM, New Keyboards, True Tone Displays, and More

In a press release today, Apple announced updates to its MacBook Pro line of notebook computers. The new models feature faster 8th-generation Intel processors with six cores in the 15-inch model and four cores in the 13-inch model. According to Apple, the 15-inch model is up to 70% faster and the 13-inch model two times faster than earlier models.

The new notebooks also support up to 32 GB of RAM and include a True Tone display and Touch Bar. The 15-inch model can be configured with up to 4 TB of SSD storage, while the 13-inch model is limited to a maximum of 2 TB. The new MacBook Pros feature Apple’s T2 chip, which debuted in the iMac Pro and adds ‘Hey Siri’ support to the Mac.

In the wake of issues with recent-generation MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards, Apple has also updated the keyboard of the new MacBook Pros to a new, quieter third-generation model. Apple’s website doesn’t address the new keyboard’s performance or whether the issues experienced with earlier models have been resolved. However, according to a story on The Verge:

This new third-generation keyboard wasn’t designed to solve those issues, Apple says. In fact, company representatives strenuously insisted that the keyboard issues have only affected a tiny, tiny fraction of its user base.

In addition to the new notebooks, Apple introduced a leather sleeve for the MacBook Pro that is available in Saddle Brown, Midnight Blue, and Black, which is similar to the leather sleeves available for the MacBook.

The new MacBook Pros are also part of a Back to School promotion that Apple announced today.

Apple Will Replace Faulty MacBook Keyboards Free of Charge

It wasn’t long after Apple changed the mechanisms of its MacBook keyboards that reports of sticky keys and other problems surfaced. Over time as anecdotal evidence mounted, it became apparent that the problem was widespread, but of course, only Apple knew exactly how common the issues were.

Now, in response to the keyboard problems, Apple has begun a keyboard service program to fix or replace keyboards with faulty butterfly switch mechanisms. From Apple’s support page about the program:

Apple has determined that a small percentage of the keyboards in certain MacBook and MacBook Pro models may exhibit one or more of the following behaviors:

  • Letters or characters repeat unexpectedly
  • Letters or characters do not appear
  • Key(s) feel “sticky” or do not respond in a consistent manner

The program covers MacBooks and MacBook Pro models from 2015 onward. Service is free of charge for four years after the first retail sale of the computer. To check if your model is covered, visit Apple’s support page for a complete list of eligible models.

My MacBook Pro’s keyboard hasn’t failed, but I know several people whose keyboard has, and I’ve had a few occasions where keys would become sticky for a short period. If my keyboard ever fails, I expect it will be at the most inopportune time, but at least that hassle and frustration won’t come with a big price tag too.

Things 3.6 Reimagines External Keyboard Control on iPad

Despite Apple’s message that the iPad Pro can be a viable PC replacement because, among other features, it natively supports a dedicated external keyboard, its software still isn’t fully optimized for keyboard control. This isn’t surprising at all: iOS was designed with multitouch in mind; as long as the iPad shares a common foundation with the iPhone, it’ll always be first and foremost a touch computer. The iPad Pro line, however, is nearing its third anniversary, and its external keyboard integration still feels like an afterthought that’s hard to reconcile with the company’s marketing.

Take multitasking for example: after three years, Split View, one of the iPad’s marquee exclusive features, still can’t be controlled from an external keyboard. If you buy an iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard and assume that you’re going to be able to assign an app to a side of the Split View, or maybe resize it, or perhaps change the keyboard’s focus from one side to another…well, do not assume. As much as Apple argued against vertical touch screen surfaces in laptops years ago, the iPad Pro ended up in this very situation: if you want to take advantage of all the great features iOS 11 offers to pro users, you will have to take your hands off the Smart Keyboard and touch the screen. There are dozens of similar instances elsewhere in iOS. For the most part, the iPad treats external keyboards as inferior, bolt-on input devices.

It’s with this context that I want to cover Things 3.6, a major update to the task manager’s iPad version that gives us a glimpse into what Apple could do with external keyboard control on iPad if only they understood its potential.

I’ve been able to play around with Things 3.6 on my iPad Pro for the past couple of weeks. This isn’t another “keyboard-centric” update that only adds a handful of shortcuts to trigger specific commands. Instead, the developers at Cultured Code have focused on an all-encompassing keyboard control framework for the whole app, from task lists to popovers and multiple selections. With version 3.6, Things has the best implementation of external keyboard support I’ve ever seen in an iPad app.

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Twelve South’s PencilSnap Upgrades Your Smart Keyboard with a Pencil Holder→

One of the longstanding frustrations with the iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard is that it contains no place for holding the Apple Pencil. Last year Apple released separate accessories – the Leather Sleeve and Pencil Case – that could house the Pencil, but many iPad users still wanted something simpler: a Smart Keyboard with Pencil holder.

Twelve South, with its new PencilSnap accessory, appears to have made that possible.

The PencilSnap is a small leather holster, very similar to Apple’s own Pencil Case, but with one significant difference: it includes magnets for attaching to other accessories, including Apple’s Smart Keyboard and Smart Cover, and Twelve South’s own SurfacePad. While we haven’t been able to test the product yet, Twelve South stresses the strength of the magnets and tight grip of the Pencil holder – in other words, they’re confident the PencilSnap won’t get easily disconnected from its attachment point, nor will the Pencil come loose when you don’t want it to.

PencilSnap is available for $29.99 in two colors: Black and Camel. If it works as advertised, it may well become the new go-to Pencil storage solution for iPad Pro users.

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Apple Shares Differential Privacy Insights for Emoji and QuickType Keyboard→

In the most recent issue of Apple’s Machine Learning Journal, titled “Learning with Privacy at Scale,” the team working on differential privacy shares details on exactly how its systems work. While much of the article is highly technical in nature, it concludes by sharing results from several real-life applications. Regarding emoji:

The data shows many differences across keyboard locales. In Figure 6, we observe snapshots from two locales: English and French. Using this data, we can improve our predictive emoji QuickType across locales.

The referenced chart is featured above, showing the popularity of certain emoji in different parts of the world.

The results regarding QuickType words aren’t presented in a chart, but the article does mention words in several specific categories that Apple has been able to learn about thanks to differential privacy.

The learned words for the English keyboard, for example, can be divided into multiple categories: abbreviations like wyd, wbu, idc; popular expressions like bruh, hun, bae, and tryna, seasonal or trending words like Mayweather, McGregor, Despacito, Moana, and Leia; and foreign words like dia, queso, aqui, and jai. Using the data, we are constantly updating our on-device lexicons to improve the keyboard experience.

Another category of words discovered are known words without the trailing e (lov or th) or w (kno). If users accidentally press the left-most prediction cell above the keyboard, which contains the literal string typed thus far, a space will be added to their current word instead of the character they intended to type. This is a key insight that we were able to learn due to our local differentially private algorithm.

Though the article doesn’t mention it, presumably the latter example of accidentally-tapped QuickType suggestions might lead to Apple adjusting sensitivity for its touch targets related to the ‘e’ button and the left-most prediction cell. It’s interesting to consider what other unexpected lessons may be learned from differential privacy data.

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Connected, Episode 164: My Mother Has a Bunch of Keyboards→

Live in Chicago, the boys discuss the Google Home Mini’s rough launch, the future of AR at Apple and Federico’s baker.

We had so much fun recording this episode of Connected live in Chicago last night. We rarely get to record Connected in person, so this episode is extremely special to me. You can listen here.

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