About this project

A giant thank you to all of our backers for your incredible support! If you missed out on our Kickstarter project, go to www.touchfire.com to see what’s next. You can also follow us on twitter @touchfiretype and on facebook.com/touchfiretype to hear about our latest adventures.

Cheers, 
Steve & Brad

TouchFire makes your iPad feel like a normal keyboard!

TouchFire puts the "touch" back into typing on an iPad. You can now feel where the keys are and rest your fingers on the home row, so you can type as fast and accurately as you can on a laptop. You can even type without looking at the screen. TouchFire cushions your fingers as you type, something both touch-typists and two-finger typists really appreciate. Typing on an iPad is no longer a pain!

TouchFire is ultra-thin and weighs less than an ounce. It attaches to the inside of the iPad cover and folds with the cover, so you can always keep TouchFire with your iPad without it getting in the way.

What People are Saying About TouchFire

New York Times - "The keyboard is incredibly simple to use. Typing on it is like typing on a physical keyboard"

Wired - "Two Seattle-based inventors have come up with an iPad keyboard that could dramatically alter the tablet keyboard landscape"

FastCompany – "Turns the iPad into a true laptop killer"

CNET –  "The super-thin-and-lightweight TouchFire adds virtually no physical bulk"

How It Works

TouchFire fits right over the iPad's on-screen keyboard and is completely transparent, so you can always see the keys underneath it. 

TouchFire is soft and supple if you swipe through it horizontally, so you can easily select the special characters on the keyboard. Yet it is stiff enough vertically to allow you to rest your fingers on the home row keys without accidentally triggering the touch screen. At the same time it responds to typing with just the right amount of resistance and spring-back to feel  like a lively and responsive keyboard. Amazing! 

When you want TouchFire out of the way, you simply fold it down. TouchFire's magnets keep it neatly folded below the screen.

TouchFire also comes with a pair of cover clips, which help secure it magnetically to your iPad's cover.

You also get a thin storage case, should you ever want to store TouchFire off your iPad.  

TouchFire Supports Both iPad 1 and iPad 2 

As you saw in the video at the top of the page, TouchFire attaches to the iPad 2 using the magnets built into the iPad 2. TouchFire also works great with the original iPad. Here's a video showing how.

Our Story

Steve has been passionate about mobile computing since the early 90s, when he was one of the first employees at a Silicon Valley company called GO that made one of the world's first tablet computers. He also worked on Microsoft's first mobile operating system, Windows CE. 

Input (handwriting, typing, etc) has always been the biggest challenge for tablet computers, and those early systems were marginal at best. When Steve first got an iPad, he immediately realized that typing on it was better by leaps and bounds than anything that came before. But typing was still the iPad's weakest area.

Steve became obsessed with finding a way to make typing on the iPad live up to its full potential. In the spring of 2010 he finally came up with the idea that became TouchFire. He built a conceptual prototype of TouchFire, and asked Brad, a mechanical engineer and product designer, to join the project.

TouchFire was one of the most challenging design problems Brad has ever tackled. On one hand, TouchFire had to be thin, light and flexible enough to live in the iPad's cover. On the other hand, TouchFire's keys had to provide the proper force resistance to allow people to rest their fingers and type naturally. Brad figured out how to do this by inserting a series of micro-structures inside each key. You can't feel these micro-structures, but they contain carefully designed walls that provide the proper force resistance no matter how your finger strikes a key.

The money raised through Kickstarter will enable us to fund our first production run and bring TouchFire to market. We are in the final stages of choosing our manufacturing partner, and plan to start shipping shortly after our Kickstarter campaign finishes.

TouchFire Rewards

The TouchFire Standard Pack includes a keyboard, a storage case and a pair of cover clips ... everything you need to use TouchFire with your iPad.

We also have a special offer just for Kickstarter - the TouchFire Variety Pack.

It includes:

• Two TouchFire keyboards, one black and one white
  
• Two storage cases
• 5 pairs of cover clips in colors that complement the iPad Smart Covers

The Variety Pack lets you pick the colors you like best (and we'd appreciate you telling us what those are). Since the Variety Pack comes with two keyboards, you can also give one to a friend. 

Thanks for stopping by. Please help make our dream of bringing TouchFire to market come true!

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TouchFire® is a registered trademark of TouchFire, Inc. Redmond, WA. All rights reserved. PATENT PENDING.

Put the Touch Back into Typing™ and Screen-Top Keyboard™ are trademarks of TouchFire, Inc.

iPad® is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc. Cupertino, CA.

Big thanks to JedShare.com for video and still photography production.