FingerWorks Offers Replacement PowerBook Keyboard

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...

[kasper37]

Unless you use your left thumb for the space bar like I do...

Interesting, but perhaps too responsive

[Bookwyrm]

After looking at some of the sample gestures for the keyboard, I have to admit I am somewhat impressed. Some very interesting ideas there. After looking at more of the sample gestures for the touch keyboard, I am still impressed, but wary.

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.

ugh..

[Suppafly]

am i the only one that thinks splitting the space bar in half and making the left half of it into a backspace is a stupid idea. people learn to type on keyboards that have the space bar under either hand, its ignorant to assume that only the right hand will be used for space. backspace and space and totally different, its really annoying to be typeing along and delete the last character of every word you type and string all of your words together because some keyboard designer thought it would be cute to make half the space bar into a backspace key.. atleast make it a programable key so people can make it back into a space bar. if you make it just a backspace or delete key, its not really possible to remap it without messing up the backspace key that is in the proper location.

Ctrl key still retarded, I see

[TomatoMan]

Why on earth can't someone make a powerbook keyboard with the control key in the right place? I defy anybody to type a ctrl-a with their left hand, with the ctrl key one key to the RIGHT of the fn key in the corner, without either rotating their entire hand from the wrist, or inflicting major tendon damage. Don't even TRY ctrl-q.

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:Interesting, but perhaps too responsive

[Yarn]

...and would not go back to using a mechanical one

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.