Microsoft Universal Bluetooth Keyboard or Dictation with Siri
Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard
I bought a keyboard by Microsoft to use with my iPad. It’s a good little Keyboard and I like it. Takes a bit of getting used to because of its size. I do most of my typing on a full size Apple Bluetooth keyboard so any mobile keyboard will seem a bit cramped to start with. Despite how good it is, I don’t use it as much as I thought I might. This is because of my preference for dictation of text rather than typing. Dictating with Dragon Dictate is so much faster and easier. I can knock out 1000 words in no time at all. I will admit that I am typing this and that’s because it is in the middle of the night and I have to be quiet. Don’t want to wake up my wife who’s asleep in the next room. There are other occasions where a keyboard is still useful such as when you’r in a room with other people. When you start talking to your computer people think you are talking to them and you have to explain yourself. If these other people are working on something else they might just get annoyed at having to listen to you dictate your words. So it seems we will always needs keyboards for some of out text input tasks.
iOS Dictation or typing
Using an external keyboard is going to get better with the iOS 9 version of the operating system. Even so the onscreen keyboard is not bad to use either. The predictive text is very handy indeed to speed up your typing. You have to remember to look at the extra row about the keyboard for the suggestions. Nice when you can typing in a whole string of words by tapping on the suggestion just onece to put in a full word. Especially good when it is a longer word and it has saved you even more time.
Talking to Siri
Dictation using Siri on the iPad and iPhone is usually pretty accurate and this is even more the case when you use Siri to put in text on the Apple Watch. People do look at you strange when you are talking to the watch but in time that might change when these devices are more common place. I will work on a sentence at a time when I dictate on the iPhone and iPad. The full sentence gives context and Siri is more accurate with the speech to text conversion. I can then read the sentence through and make corrections if needed. If a word is incorrect I will select the word and change it. Sometimes I’ll type in the right word and other times I’ll try dictating the word again. More likely to dictate if there are two or three words I want to put in. Even with the repairs to the sentence like this, it still works out quicker to dictate on iOS than to type. Some days I have to resort to the keyboard entry due to poor connection to the internet and Siri. So it is still working out good to have this Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard – Black, UK Layout
