While I think the Optimus Maximus is a fantastic looking product, I've got to ask who has the money for this? Does anybody here own it yet or plan on purchasing it?
I've got to assume that something like this is at the level of a 1980's handheld cell phone with regards to price at the moment (and maybe tech?).
And just like the 80's cell phone, the only people I've heard online (as a group) considering these keyboards have been doctors (specifically radiologists and radiation oncologists). Basically they are people with a) lots of cash and b) a great need for complicated software and c) little time and patience to learn useful things like keyboard shortcuts, they way programmers,etc would.
Now I just wonder if we'll see drug dealers picking these up...
You know I used to want this keyboard a lot, but now I would happily settle for one of those super thin aluminum mac ones. This isn't quite in vogue anymore.
That's interesting. I tested about 30 keyboards before I settled on it. The decision was almost entirely feel and I love it. I type/code ~6 hours a day on it.
Just get an old Model M from ebay, and remove the keycaps with characters. You do have to get an oldish one, though, the newer Model Ms don't have two keycaps.
Not if you're a design student. Nobody uses things developed in design school, they're only for being looked at. (According to my friend in design school, they fail if they don't develop something that "looks different". Apparently none of them have ever read Norman.)
That's right, the current price is ridiculous. But I think given the tremendous advantages to such a technology (my keyboards hardly ever displayed the "right" labels out of the box), we can expect it to become a commodity in the near future (10-15 years?).
Now, I think there's a little problem with this keyboard... looking up at your keys all the time is not the most productive way to use a keyboard. They market it to geeks, yet I think consumers would find it useful the most.
I think I disagree. I can't imagine writing code or a book with voice recognition, even assuming 100% accuracy. The initial dictation isn't the hard part, it's editing that's hard. What commands will we use? "Change that last foo to bar?" That still seems pretty tedious.
I could do without the mouse, though. I would rather press a link with my finger than move my hand all the way over to the mouse, then point, then click.
That's a pretty limited view of the capacity of computers. I'd bet a good 60% of your editing commands are cursor motion. So one pretty obvious improvement is to just look at foo, then do your edit. heck, it's still called cut and paste, how about pushing words around on the screen? not with the mouse, but with your hand on the screen.
The perfect ui is literally, read my mind and do what I want. I doubt we'll see fmri-at-a-distance in my lifetime, but I can indicate my wishes many many ways.
Also, there's some evidence that moving your hands to the mouse is faster, you just notice it, because it's effortless, whereas working out the key combination to move the cursor chews up clock cycles. (http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html)
And even if you are faster with the keyboard, it probably took you years to get as fast as you are. If programmers can provide a ui to get users to some sizeable fraction of your editing speed in days instead of years... it's worth it. The only real risk is if the fastest of the new ui category can't edit as quickly as the fastest of the traditional. Really, there's no way your hands can compete with looking at what you want.
Even then, it's still faster to press the keys for moving around. But maybe your editor could be in command mode by default, and you could import words by speaking. That might be cool.
Rather than having a hundred little tiny LCDs, they should have figured out a way to have one large display and some sort of ingenious key assembly/lens system. Seems it would be more economical.
Take away: "Typing on it, well, sucks."