[BrianHV]

I'm not entirely convinced this falls under the category of good design. As it stands, it's a fun and useful easter egg. But good design wouldn't have required a blog post months after the OS's release to inform users of the feature's presence.

Good design should have some sort of affordance. In this case Apple probably didn't want to have two instances of the keys along that border, but perhaps some sort of faded version of the keys could have provided the necessary affordance without cluttering up the keyboard.

[sjwright]

This feature didn't require a blog post. It just works, and there's probably been thousands of iPad users who've pressed these phantom keys without even realising it.

[BrianHV]

Perhaps there were thousands of iPad users who used the keys without knowing it. I don't have access to those numbers.

But how many more would have used them if there were an affordance?

And if we're talking about good (user interface) design, there's an element of "what if everybody did it" involved. I don't want a lot of applications hiding useful features behind invisible buttons. I think having the keys there is a fantastic idea; I just think it would be better if they were visible.

[hej]

You really don’t get it, do you? That’s pretty amazing.

This is about people accidentally pressing keys on the wrong side of the keyboard. It makes sure that those people are not interrupted in their writing, while still presenting a clear image to the user that is not confusing. It’s a line of defense, like the buttons that are actually a bit larger than they are displayed – just in order to make sure that users missing those buttons is less likely.

It’s error correction. The feature is not that there are repeated buttons on the keyboard and users can pick which they want to use. Users are not supposed to use those. They are not supposed to know (or have to know) about them.

[BrianHV]

I find the personal dig at the start of your comment unnecessary, but I appreciate that you're engaging me in a discussion about the design aspects.

I'll grant that if you're optimizing for error correction, it's a perfectly suitable solution. I'd even go so far as to say that's exactly what Apple was going for when designing this. Even so, I really think this is a case where showing that this is an option would be valuable. When I see a split keyboard, I assume that I need to press the keys where they're displayed and frequently have to slow down my typing to figure out which side of the keyboard the key is on. It's nice to know I don't have to do that.

[maxmcd]

That's too literal. This solution is the best possible setup for all users. If you're typing slowly on the keyboard and taking it literally you just learn the new setup. If you're used to another device and expect those keys to be in different places it performs as that users expects. Adding an option just places something on the screen that should really be irrelevant for the vast majority of users.

Also, I wouldn't take that initial comment as a dig, even if it was intended as one. I think it says something about the the discovery of this feature that you couldn't immediately realize the intention. The fact that it's not obvious to everyone what this is for gives even more reason for it to be a hidden feature.

[hej]

You want something very different from what Apple implemented. It doesn't even make sense to connect the two.

[MBCook]

It's really nice they did this, even if it doesn't work all the time (according to some comments above). I would have preferred that they put the B key on the correct side, even though it would have looked stranger.

[gchpaco]

I use the split keyboard all the time and for some reason my fingers seem programmed for the y key on the left hand, almost always. I've been using and noting this for a while but didn't realize that it extended to other keys. I think it's perfectly done; I use it by accident a lot and didn't even realize for a whole where the y key actually was! And this from a guy who types on Dvorak mostly.

[lazerwalker]

I recall reading a blog post about this months ago, when the first iOS 5 betas were released.