Apple denial + soldering iron = fixed Smart Keyboard for 10.5” iPad Pro

Many of us who have iPad Pros know about the Smart Keyboard problems. After a while, the darned thing just loses connectivity with the keyboard. This failure is often accompanied by messages that the accessory isn’t supported. After a lot of frustration, I took to my favorite search engine for relief. When I saw an article proclaiming that Apple had extended the warranty support to 3 years for Smart Keyboards, I got excited, only to have my hopes dashed by reading that only the 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch models were covered. I purchased my 10.5” model in the fall of 2017, and Apple apparently doesn’t care what problems I—and other 10.5” iPad Pro owners—have, even if they’re the exact same problems people with the other sizes have.

What the actual heck, Apple? You know that doesn’t make any sense, right? Why are you picking on the middle children?

All was not lost, however. Just before I was about to commit to a purchase of a new keyboard that wasn’t made by Apple (hey, if they’re going to force me to spend money that others don’t have to spend for the same issue, then I’ll give the money to some other company), I did some more searching, and I found a couple of beautiful videos on YouTube about vloggers who fixed their iPad Pro Smart Keyboards using soldering irons. 

The wheels started turning. I have had a soldering iron for a long time, but my one attempt to use it was a dismal failure. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this at all. Even one of the vloggers had a mishap; his hand slipped, and the iron burned a bit of the strip that houses the keyboard connectors; fortunately, the damage was just cosmetic. With my lack of experience, I thought it was too risky. I settled for bending the connector strip so that the nubs on the base protruded more, and that worked for a few weeks, though I had to bend it a little bit more as time went on.

Tonight, however, I started to bend the connector strip again, and I heard a tiny crack. I thought my little Smart Keyboard was done for. It was giving me the unsupported device error messages, and nothing I was doing could convince it to cooperate. I had finally reached the point my soldering iron was waiting for: things were so bad that I couldn't make things any worse. It was fix or toss time. 

I took a flat piece of metal and drew some tiny dots on it with a Sharpie. I used that to practice the technique of getting a bead of metal on the tip of the soldering iron and dabbing a spot to leave the metal right where I wanted. Once I thought I had the timing and aiming down, I went for the keyboard. Unlike the YouTube vloggers, I couldn't see one contact lower than the rest; they were all depressed, so I put a dot of solder on each one. Like one of the guys, my hand did slip, and I burned a little bit of the plastic, but I think my keyboard fared better than his. It sure is an ugly job, though; no pretty, rounded and even mushroom caps for me:

I’m using the keyboard to type this, so I guess my grandmother was right: pretty is as pretty does. Thank you, YouTubers! I’m now a little less angry with Apple. I'm still of the opinion that I shouldn’t have had to do it, but I’m really pleased with my success.

A Tale of two Siris (not really)

I LOVE Google Now, especially with the Touchless Control on the Moto X, but it's not answering certain questions helpfully, though Siri handles the same questions like a champ. When I ask questions like the one below, or if it's going to storm, I'm not looking for search results on Alcorn State University or links to weather.com, I'm looking for Google to find some info and, like Star Trek's Mr. Spock, make an educated guess! Now, this may not be what Google wants, but it's what I want, and the lack of this is what makes me have to occasionally put my hands on my iPhone, which has no Touchless Control.

HTC blah blah yeah?

I have to admit the HTC One M8 "blah blah" commercial really appeals to me. I used to love HTC as a brand, but then I had the HTC HD7, and my relationship with them soured. Random hard-resets, compounded with Windows Phone 7.5's lack of a decent backup solution, really rubbed me the wrong way. It's time to consider replacing one of my phones (my Motorola Photon 4G can't hold a charge long enough to be useful as a backup phone, even with an extended battery), and somehow this commercial has me reconsidering my decision to never look back. Maybe it IS time to ask the Internet. 

AVAST! me hearties (and now hard-of-hearing)

Yep, I know what this is like:

 

source:  http://doblelol.com/5/funny-daily-quotes-for-work.htm 

How does your site look on mobile devices?

The screenshot above was lifted from Inside BruCrew Life. Interestingly enough, I have only one issue with the site; while I'm no expert on web design by any stretch of the imagination, I think they gave some thought to making it easy to access their site from mobile devices. I'm glad that it's so easy to share the content you find there, but it's difficult to read the content on my iPhone 5 (with Safari or Chrome) and my Motorola Photon 4G (native Browser or Firefox), because the share links obscure the text and part of the photos

So let's say that, incredibly, you have a website and don't have the kind of technology obsession that propels you to own multiple mobile devices. How can you make sure your pages look great on phones and tablets you don't own? Here's a link, for starters:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/11/6-free-mobile-device-emulators-for-testing-your-site/

I created this post from my iPhone, so I can't make the link pretty. It should still be useful (I hope).