FingerWorks Offers Replacement PowerBook Keyboard 82
JerryKnight writes "FingerWorks, the inventor of TouchStream keyboards such as the LP, is taking pre-orders for a drop-in replacement for the keyboard in a 15" PowerBook G4 that is pretty much the same thing as the LP. Now the beautiful PowerBook can be completely smooth. Words fail to express the enthusiasm felt by me and hopefully anyone else who has used these keyboards. No word on availability. List price: $259." It's called the MacNTouch. Hm.
great... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:great... (Score:1)
Duh.
Re:great... (Score:2)
I also have my mouse close enough to my keyboard that I can hit the number-pad Enter with my thumb when I need to enter something.
The cool thing a
Re:great... (Score:2, Funny)
I had to open up terminal and type a sentence just to figure it out.
Re:great... (Score:2)
I wonder if right handed people use the left thumb by default, and left handed the right?
Sad I'm even thinking about this
Re:great... (Score:2)
Re:great... (Score:2)
Re:great... (Score:1)
Re:great... (Score:2)
Me, I usually use my right thumb. Sometimes, I'll use my left, but not often.
Granted, I don't do standard touch typing using all 10 fingers. I use three fingers on my left hand, three fingers on my right hand, and my right thumb. My pinkies are generally unused. And I can still attain 60-90 corrected wpm.
It really depends on your typing style, the style of keyboard you are used to, and what your
Re:great... (Score:2, Informative)
This is great news! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is great news! (Score:1)
Re:This is great news! (Score:2)
For the young-uns out there, let me explain it in terms they can understand better. You know those cheap plastic DDR pads? And how sometimes your position drifts and you step on the "X" instead of the right arrow? This is the same thing, only
Re:This is great news! (Score:1)
Our 'zero-force' typing system is MUCH more forgiving. There is no minimum pressure threshold, so you can drop your fingers on the surface as lightly as you like. And when
Re:This is great news! (Score:2)
Nope.
Proper typing (that is, how people have typed for over a century successfully) has you only making contact with the keys on contact, which is not different whether there are edges or not.
The primary tactile feedback necessary for touch-typing is the home-row dimple. To help align your hands, this keyboard has a dimple for each finger. Should work fine.
Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:5, Insightful)
It reminds me of the problems with 'logically designed languages'. (i.e. all words for colors in the language might start with "cro", "crob" is blue, "crog" is green, "cror" is red, etc. The problem being that a single typos in the word might still be a valid word of a similiar type, but not what you meant.) I suspect someone who became a total expert with the keyboard could do just fine, but an intermediate user could get highly frustrated -- forgetting to use/accidently using an extra finger in a gesture might cause some unwanted operation to happen, not merely cause the desired operation to not happen. Maybe the software is smart enough to second guess some of these issues, but...
Go to the company's page and look at the Enhanced Modifier Chords [fingerworks.com] -- if you tap with six fingers on the home row, you get an Enter -- if you tap six fingers on the row above the home row, you get an Esc key press. (Personally, I would immediately redefine those two gestures to have far more difference between the two -- accidently hitting "Enter" when one meant "Escape" in some dialog boxes would be very bad.) Or the shift/control differences.
Of course, one could just not use the gestures, but then why bother with the keyboard?
Nonetheless, very interesting ideas, but it may not be ready for everyone.
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:2)
It's a bit of a stretch trying to use modifier keys while pointing with another finger and then clicking with your thumb since control is on the left side of the keyboard.
I'm allready a big fan of launchbar to avoid having to move my hands. I'd love to try one of these out for a while, but the price is a bit scary. I'm going to go try to dig up some reviews.
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:1)
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:2)
Are you getting a distributer in the midwest? I'd love to try one out. It's a lot of money to spend on something I don't know if I'd like. I'm pretty concerned about touch typing (I'm sure many of your customers are).
If you'd like so
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:2)
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:2)
Oops. Except when I'm doing the PgUp/PgDn/Home/End stuff.
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:2)
Can anyone out there explain what this is referring to? are these computer languages or human-communication ones? I tried to google for the term (with or without a hyphen and singular or plural) and came up with nothing.
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:1)
http://www.medianet.pl/~andrew/l/ebubo.htm [medianet.pl]
It's very regular, very logically designed, and a single mis-typed character can still yield a valid word -- no way of error detection (i.e. in English, I can type "the color bluu", "the color bleu", "the color "bluo", "the color blu", and people can probably guess what I mean. In Ebubo, "awa" (green) and "awe" (cyan) and "awi" "red" have no such distinctive differences. If I
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:1)
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:1)
The enhanced gestures you mention are aimed at expert users and have simpler non-zonal equivalents.
I find the keyboard far more effcient and less stressful than any other setup and I've tried a few over the years!Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why I'm dubious, I have to use a lot of different machines, it isn't economic to replace the keyboards for them all, and this would just confuse me. QWERTY may be a crappy standard, but it is a standard.
Re:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive (Score:1)
My keyboard is querty. I like to think of it as an extension of the mouse/keyboard interface. I have no problem using my laptop or any other setup for that matter.
I use this because the amount of time I spend working on my computer any improvement in comfort and effciency is worth it to me.
Looks nice (Score:4, Interesting)
Same for return... umm enter... where is return??? I know quite some apps, where return and enter have different functions... take Fire for example: return sends out, enter makes a new line in the message... I do not think I would want to use additional shift for this. And it IS far too small, leave it at the current size, it was already difficult enough for me to stop hitting back-slash all the time...
Overall:
the whole right part of the keyboard is messed up and will require you to get used to the new layout.
Too much self advertisement... use it for bigger keys instead, although the hand is quite cute.
Can I press command + option with one finger only? I hope so.
NO IBOOK?
What about the heat? I have 1GHz and it gets quite hot already. If you look at the current keyboard, it is designed to provide better air circulation. You think it is not important? Buy the hoover TiBook, wait until the fans go on, lift the keyboard and wait for a while... the fans go off. With the keyboard it takes longer time for the fans to go off, I dunno about MacNTouch with no holes at all.
I do not think I will buy it, maybe I would for my iBook, but it has IMO too many design/usability flaws. I had to try it out first.
weeeee
Re:Looks nice (Score:1)
Personally, I'd go for the iGesture Pad [fingerworks.com]. It might not be usable on a plane, but it's most probably easier to master gesture-mousing than gesture-typing.
Then again, the TouchStream ST has scored excellent reviews [extremetech.com].
Considering my budget, however, I'll most probably never get my hands onto either one...
(No pun intended.)
Re:Looks nice (Score:2)
I didn't even think about it, but I press command + option with only one finger too. But the only function I can think of off hand also includes the Escape key. Do we really use Force Quit Application that much in OS X?
I guess one could always create a gesture for Force Quit Application. Maybe a circle with a line through it?
Re:Looks nice (Score:1)
There are quite a lot of applications with rather long key shortcuts: Being web/it-developer I use Photoshop a lot, my favourite shortcut is: Comand+Option+Shift+S (Save for Web).
View Source in Safari: Cmd+Opt+V
BBEdit has quite a bunch of those shortcuts as well.
Weeeee
Re:Looks nice (Score:1)
href=http://www.fingerworks.com/images/layouts/Mac NTouch_printable.html
Basically, TouchStreams have home-row chords and other convenient gestures to replace all these keys. Our customers quickly find the gestures are easier to learn and use than any pinky key placement, hence we focused on large, comfortable placement of the alphabetic keys.
Re:Looks nice (Score:1)
Modifiers: I can say from experience that you will never use the modifier keys again, except maybe for double-modifier combos (although double-chording does work). Chording is the way to go. You can even "chea
Power Drain on battery (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't measured, but the keyboard on my TiBook looks very similar to the one in my iBook... I wonder if it would work in both?
Still, for the money, perhaps it would be better to buy the TouchStream LP and just bring it along with you. It folds up for portability. I know the drop in replacement is slick, but it means it will only ever work on the TiBook... if you are like me and move from machine to machine, I think portability of such an expensive keyboard would outweigh the wow-factor of having it built in to the TiBook.
But then, maybe I am crazy. Or something.
Re:Power Drain on battery (Score:2, Informative)
As we're able to reduce the TouchStream LP's power usage, we'll update its tech specs page as well.
What about the trackpad? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, maybe I should be suggesting same to manufacturer, rather than bitching about it to the slashbots?
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Personally I mostly use mac os x gui apps along with terminals to unix boxen. I've had no real need for a 2 button mouse. When the powerbook is on
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:2)
And as for the 'toy' comment, I was referring only to that 190, since it's so underpowered by today's standards. I wasn't talking about Macs in general, as I quite prefer my 533mhz G4 tower to the 2.5ghz Dell I have at work.
And again, all this is academic (or worse!) since I have neither the cash nor the need for a PowerBook. (I'm saving up for the 4.2ghz Quad 980 that's being released next month.)
But... (Score:3, Informative)
Immediately that means you have a five button mouse at your disposal:
Click
Shift-click
Ctrl-click
Option-click
C o mmand-click
Not to mention chords:
Shift-ctrl-click
Shift-command-click
Sh ift-option-click
etc, etc, etc.
So... why is the lack of a right mouse button (ctrl-click, but you know this already, right?) stopping you fro
2 button trackpad? (Score:2)
"Bob, how much would you like to wager on our first test?... A
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:1)
Well, I guess it's all just a matter of what you're used to.
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I guess it's all just a matter of what you're used to.
Not entirely true. I'm used to 3+ buttons, and I constantly hit the wrong button on a windows machine's trackpad. One thing I did like was the way the right hand edge of the tackpad on said machine worked as a scroll wheel (which is something I miss far more than the second button when I use an Apple mouse). Does / can the PowerBook trackpad
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:3, Informative)
It's mainly a keyboard-remapping software - the trackpad stuff is just an added bonus.
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone have any suggestions for improvement to this technique?
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:3, Interesting)
There might be a bit of timing involved in this solution, however.
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:2)
Wiring up a gutted USB mouse chip to a spare internal USB header is a pretty clever idea, if you (like me) don't give a rats ass about Bluetooth.
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love to find a piece of software that recognized the physical trackpad button as a control-click, thus simulating a two-button mouse.
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about the trackpad? (Score:1)
Re:more buttons (Score:1)
Re:umm... is there a tilde on that thing? (Score:1)
It is a bit pricey for my taste, and kinda ugly - but a good idea nonetheless
Mouse (Score:1)
Re:Mouse (Score:1)
http://www.fingerworks.com/touchstream_gesture_
Re:Mouse (Score:1)
Three fingers is click/drag, so gone are the days of double-click-dragging on the glidepoint. Another very useful thing is two-finger-drag on the non-mouse hand (default: left hand). That controls the text cursor.
Yeah, check the gesture guide. There are too many to mention, most of which I use frequently.
ugh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ugh.. (Score:1)
And no, I don't think the split space bar is stupid because backspace is now extremely easier to hit.
Better: spend 10 minutes to convert to Dvorak (Score:1)
Re:Better: spend 10 minutes to convert to Dvorak (Score:1)
Been there, done both (Score:1)
I don't really laugh at the qwerty-ness of the MacNTouch. Somebody "normal" at some point will want to type on it since it is so cool. They won't pause for a month to learn Dvorak before trying out the keyboard, and dvorak typers
Ctrl key still retarded, I see (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple's own full-sized keyboards put the control key in the lower left corner where it belongs, although it should REALLY go where caps lock is. Why must they have it out of place on the powerbooks?
Yes, I know about the software mapping utilities such as uControl [gnufoo.org], which I use, but they all have quirks and have a nasty tendency to cause kernel panics on system upgrades. If someone comes up with a "programmers's keyboard," I've got a nice pile of money to throw at them.
Re:Ctrl key still retarded, I see (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.fingerworks.com/modifiers.html
for Shift, Ctrl, and Alt are much nicer than any pinky control key. And if you're an Emacs user, our Emacs mode automatically generates those crazy C-x C-f
Re:Ctrl key still retarded, I see (Score:2)
I appreciate the thought, but my emacs keys are wired into my brain (and fingers) with about 17 years of use now, and I can do C-x C-f with about one braincell's worth of reflex directive. I'd just like the friggin' control key in the corner like it is on every other keyboard on earth.
Note this is primarily a gripe at Apple, not you.
Won't be long until ... (Score:1)
I like this idea, actually, as much as it doesn't make sense for me to do so (I work for a company which makes hardware synthesziers, after all)... if more apps were able to have their own keyboards for special-uses, maybe we'd see some really interesting innovation in hardware control surface design...
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how long it takes until NI Reaktor comes with its o
Re:Won't be long until ... (Score:1)
Interesting looking, but I'm hesitant.... (Score:2)
How long would it take me to change over to not having the click-y feeling of mechanical keys? It's a fact that my fingers have had that feedback system beat into them for over 20 years now, and I'm not sure I'd be able to change (even if it is better for me in the long run).
It sounds like some folks here are happy users of these keyboards
Re:Interesting looking, but I'm hesitant.... (Score:1)
If you remind yourself of the awesome mousing/gesture abilities the keyboard offers, the headache of learning zero-force/zero
Re:Interesting looking, but I'm hesitant.... (Score:1)
really, pre-order now... (Score:1)
This is how it works.. The touchpad can sense diferent numbers of fingers on the board: typing is one finger, mousing is two fingers (right hand), click-drag is three fingers. There are also 'gestures' that can be used to do common things (similar to the command-* keystrokes). You can do things like copy, cut, paste, open, save, close, et