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The iPad's 'Ultimate Typing Accessory' Is A Dud

This article is more than 10 years old.

Apple products are the boybands of tech hardware and fans go extra nuts when they see those beveled edges snuggled up against a sleek twisty stand or decked out in full-grain leather. So when designers put an Apple add-on up for funding on Kickstarter, they often raise hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars from salivating techies looking to dress up their iPad like a West Village Chihuahua.

The Touchfire was one such product, an iPad keyboard overlay that raised $200,000, twenty times its original Kickstarter goal, in a matter of weeks. Not only did it seduce Apple groupies by lovingly attaching to the tablet and its ubiquitous case, it also stood to solve one of the only real pain points of the iPad – clunky, awkward typing.

As backers of the product can tell you, there have been some hiccups along the way. Touchfire creators Steve Isaac and Brad Melmon originally promised to send the products out in December 2011; they started shipping barely two weeks ago. The company was kind enough to send me a Touchfire for review and after nearly eight months of delay, I have to say the final product is frankly disappointing.

My immediate reaction when removing it from the packaging: this doesn’t feel like something I’d want to put anywhere near an Apple device. The case is cheap, black plastic, literally rough around the edges in places where the mold didn’t quite make the cut. Opening and closing it makes the subtle but sickening sound of cheap plastic parts rubbing together.

Open the case and the translucent Touchfire, neatly folded in place, is already covered in a stubborn, eternal layer of dust and grit. At first touch it feels… not quite slimy, but only slightly better. Take a closer look and we find the same problem as the case – this thing is literally rough around the edges. In my own version, there’s a small black plastic string that coming off from the middle of the bottom edge.

Aesthetics aside, does the thing work? Yes, kind of. As promised, the Touchfire fits neatly into place with magnets, dutifully lining up with the iPad’s digital keys to bring the flat, joyless gray keyboard to tactile life. It’s actually pretty gratifying to have something to dig into when typing on the iPad.

One benefit touted by the Touchfire creators is that you can rest your fingers on the keyboard without accidentally producing a string of nonsense. The problem with that statement is that it is, in fact, nonsense. Especially when typing on an angle, my resting fingers easily made it through the thin plastic layer to create fun words like “eoran” and “nadskj”.

Unfortunately, upon opening the package I immediately lost one of the 3M adhesive magnets that attaches the device to the iPad cover case so I wasn't able to test that aspect of the Touchfire. I can attest that it's thin enough to be unobtrusive and the magnet attachments seem like a clever solution to integrating the keypad into daily use.

Weighing in at less than an ounce, the Touchfire sells for $49.99 online, though it’s hard for me to imagine paying even half that for the one that I received. In theory, this is a great product - a simple, seamless way to improve iPad typing. In execution, it's shoddily manufactured and ugly, an unworthy add-on to a beautiful device.

*The phrase "The iPad's Ultimate Typing Accessory" comes from a Mashable article found here

Follow me @JJColao and on Facebook. Check out my blog here.