I am down in SJ and friends are discussing the iPad. Then I remembered my post on Apri 6, 2009.

Imagine a Netbook with full day battery life, 3G network, keyboard, phone, wifi, and iPhone apps. This device could probably be always on like an iPhone. With a bluetooth headset you can leave the Apple Netbook in your carrycase.

The one area I got wrong is it is not a phone. Which is a smart move by Apple. Probably 90% of the iPad users will also have an iPhone. Don’t give users the option of not having an iPad only.

The one thing that would keep me from buying an iPad is given it is iPhone OS, there is no support for the Dvorak Keyboard.

The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout

The Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (pronounced /ˈdvɒrɔːk/) is a keyboard layout patented in 1936 by August Dvorak, an educational psychologist and professor of education^[1] at the University of Washington in Seattle,^[2] andWilliam Dealey. It has also been called the Simplified Keyboard or American Simplified Keyboard but is commonly known as the Dvorak keyboard or Dvorak layout.

Although the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (“DSK”) has failed to displace the QWERTY keyboard, it has become easier to access in the computer age, being included with all major operating systems (such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BSD) in addition to the standard QWERTY layout. It is also supported at the hardware level by some high-end ergonomic keyboards.

I’ve been typing on the Dvorak keyboard since 1987 when I worked on Apple keyboards for the Mac. Unfortunately, the Dvorak keyboard is a niche not worth the iPhone OS to support.