The newest tool in Apple’s business arsenal is starting to see its accessories arrive in customer hands and on hooks at the local Apple retail store. But many more providers are waiting until the end of this month to roll out the business suits that iPads will wear on client visits: covers and cases.

One significant accessory that arrived in our offices yesterday was the iPad Keyboard Dock. At $69 it’s priced at about 10 percent of the cost of a top-end WiFi iPad, and it is a slim offering indeed. Think of Apple’s standard mini-keyboard, then slap on a plastic extender with a mini-USB port and external headphone outlet, and you’ve got the total feature set of the Keyboard Dock.

The Keyboard Dock only extends the keyboard width about a total of 3 inches from the on-screen keyboard in the iPad’s landscape mode. But since the iPad has no dock on its longer side, you can only use the Keyboard Dock in portrait mode. If you’re still looking for a dock for your iPad, in these early days of the tablet’s life you could do worse than getting a Keyboard Dock. Apple’s standard iPad dock sells for $29, and its wireless keyboard, sans dock but able to talk to the iPad, sells for the same price as a Keyboard Dock. Read the rest of this entry »