What's stopping us from making something like http://www.yankodesign.com/2013/01/29/best-keyboard-ever/? Samsung came out with a phone in 2010 with an e-ink keyboard (Samsung Zeal). Are there any unsolved obstacles preventing this kind of keyboard from becoming a reality?
I would imagine such a keyboard, even at a $300 price point, would be massively more successful than the Optimus Maximus ever was.
To entice users even more, it could probably be made water resistant by not including any ports and using appropriate switches. It could come with a USB-powered inductive charging matt that you place the keyboard on top of to charge.
One problem. People what spend $300 on a keyboard are quite familiar with computers. This is the same group of people that types and uses shortcuts without ever looking at their keyboard, so the benefit is highly reduced.
The main benefit of e-ink is that the display only needs to be powered when you change the content. This enables you to greatly conserve battery life much more than the active displays on that Razer keyboard allow (if it was wireless).
From the description, it seems like the keys do not use displays and only the interface on the right uses displays.
I would imagine such a keyboard, even at a $300 price point, would be massively more successful than the Optimus Maximus ever was.
To entice users even more, it could probably be made water resistant by not including any ports and using appropriate switches. It could come with a USB-powered inductive charging matt that you place the keyboard on top of to charge.