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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Tap to give MacRumors readers a chance to win one of the company's wearable keyboard setups, which Tap believes will be the keyboard of the future.

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Priced at $199, the Tap is a futuristic keyboard that turns your fingers into the keys, allowing you to type letters, numbers, and symbols with different finger tap combinations.


Tap features a series of rings with built-in sensors, with the rings designed to fit over your thumb and each finger to detect your tap gestures. The rings are adjustable and can fit a wide range of hand sizes, and with the sensors, you can essentially use the Tap Keyboard anywhere you are.

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Each letter of the alphabet is a different tap. To create an "A," for example you tap your thumb in a downwards motion onto a desk or flat surface. A tap of the index finger makes an "E," while to create a "K," you tap your thumb and ring finger downwards at the same time. To make a "B," you tap your pinky and index finger at the same time.

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Learning to use the Tap Keyboard takes just a few days, but because it's an entirely new way of typing, mastering it can take some time. We reviewed the Tap last year and were able to learn the taps in about a week practicing 30 minutes per day.

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Tap recently came out with new software that's designed to help you learn faster than ever. The TapAcademy, one of the Tap apps available from the App Store, is a 30-day course that's used for 10 minutes a day to memorize the letters, numbers, and symbols you need to use the Tap as a keyboard replacement for iOS devices, Macs, and more.

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By completing TapAcademy, Tap users can greatly improve their typing speeds. According to Tap, its current regular Tap users type at an average of 40 words per minute, while some can type up to 70 words, which is impressive for a wearable keyboard with an entirely new input method. TapAcademy uses both games and daily exercises to improve typing speeds, and the company has a money back guarantee. After a Tap purchase, customers who are unable to reach 30 words per minute after finishing TapAcademy can return the product and get their money back.

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Tap is a Bluetooth keyboard so it works with all of your Bluetooth enabled devices like any other keyboard. It also has a built-in mouse replacement feature that lets you use your thumb as a mouse for navigation purposes.

There are a selection of games that use the Tap keyboard as an input method, and Tap is fully customizable so you can create different Tap Maps for various games and use cases.

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We have two of the Tap Keyboards to give away to MacRumors readers. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, following us on Instagram, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years or older and Canadian residents (excluding Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

The contest will run from today (February 22) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on March 1. The winners will be chosen randomly on March 1 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

Article Link: MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Gesture-Based 'Tap' Keyboard That You Wear on Your Hand
 

projectle

macrumors 6502a
Oct 11, 2005
525
57
It is actually pretty damn nice. It is a chorded keyboard that let's you type on any surface, such as your leg or table.

It also does not obstruct the screen, obviously as it hides the onscreen keyboard as any external input device does. And, it let's you type with more than just your thumbs while still being portable.

I am a fan.
 

eagle33199

macrumors member
Mar 13, 2007
92
274
It is actually pretty damn nice. It is a chorded keyboard that let's you type on any surface, such as your leg or table.

And yet it has no real tactile or visual feedback. It relies on you knowing the specific combination of taps for each letter, which sounds exhausting, quite frankly. If I'm going to do enough typing in one sitting to justify putting something like this on an setting it up, I'll just use the nice, traditional keyboard case.
 

mgmacius

macrumors member
Jan 16, 2008
51
137
But WHY?!
Btw. Is it only me or we had idiotic ideas like that all through 80’s and 90’s?
 

Mac'nCheese

Suspended
Feb 9, 2010
3,752
5,108
They call people who use this thing Tappers on the web site.

Stop trying to make Tappers a thing.


What did they call people who wore google glasses everywhere? Something with explorer....
 

subjonas

macrumors 603
Feb 10, 2014
5,549
5,878
Very likely you could but (beyond the haters) it's not a practical (read mass-market) product because of the learning curve.
Yeah I doubt I would use this outside of work. By the way, I’d use it with my Mac and Cintiq, not iOS device.

But I would be very open to using something like this for everyday mobile typing with a couple of conditions:
- if they could somehow achieve the same functionality with an unassuming wrist band instead of a glove. Maybe on a distant future Apple Watch. I think I might have seen a typing wrist band actually, but I don’t think it worked well. Not sure how they could get this to work accurately, so this is a big if.
- if after the learning curve, typing on it is as fast as or faster than thumb typing on the onscreen keyboard. This wouldn’t compete with physical qwerty keyboards obviously, since using two hands to type will always be faster than one hand. But you have to set the device down to use to do so. This would instead compete with typing on the onscreen keyboard while holding the device.

Under those conditions, I wouldn’t mind going through the learning curve for the payoff of getting back a full screen unimpeded by an onscreen keyboard. I’m up for the challenge.
 

0924487

Cancelled
Aug 17, 2016
2,699
2,808
Unless you are down to a few fingers like Steven Hoking, and you choose to use this, then you really need a bigger brain.
 
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