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by janderson215 9 days ago
Now that iPhone has switched to USB-C, I can plug in my Apple Extended Keyboard directly without needing a dongle. It’s like magic.
3 comments

I now have visions of an Apple Extended Extended Keyboard that comes with a crank...
It’s nothing new. In fact, many of the comments on this site were made by keyboards with cranks.

Er… I meant to say cranks with keyboards. Sorry. It was a rough weekend.

The real question is does the power button on the AEK still work on iOS?
You have to also hold down `ctrl` [+power], but yes.
Not even an ADB-to-USB dongle?
Thirty years ago, Apple made a translucent green ADB "keypad" which had a small LCD display (perhaps only two lines of text?) – marketed towards academics, it allowed students to learn touch-typing without the distractions of an entire computer.

Once you were happy with your touch-typed document, you then plugged the "keypad" directly into your Mac's ADB (keyboard/mouse) port... and the thing would sit there and manually re-type your composition into the computer's texteditor.

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Education needs such "reduced tech" to return to teaching. Think of this one as a "more advanced typewriter" – although I own a few of those, too, and they're fantastic for pure composition.