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Any news on the Textblade?

inscrewtable

inscrewtable

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 9, 2010
1,656
402
I asked for my money back after 18 months of waiting. That was about 5 years ago. I can't find any info that is recent and I'm wondering if the whole thing was just some sort of in joke, in the time they've been tweaking the keyboard, Musk has built a rocket and flown it to the space station. A keyboard shouldn't be more complicated than rocket science.
 
you are referring to this? If contacting them again doesn‘t work - boy, somebody has to help them on how to create a subject line when you contact them 🤪 - file a complaint with:
Assuming you are in the US. The European Union, as well as many other countries, have similar institutions.
 
inscrewtable said:
Musk has built a rocket and flown it to the space station. A keyboard shouldn't be more complicated than rocket science.
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LOL. Adding to the laughs is how the people behind TextBlade are always talking about how Elon "inspires" them and is a "beacon".
 
SigEp265 said:
Was this thing on kickstarter?
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No. The device was claimed to be only weeks away from its full launch and the maker was charging buyers the full price when orders were placed on its amateurish-looking website.

The MacRumors connection is that a series of staff articles was published on the front page over several months. These articles both promoted the TextBlade and added–very, very undeserved as it turns out–legitimacy to the company behind the TextBlade.
 
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Wot KaliYoni said

So has anything changed over the past few years, I see the website still looks the same as it always has for at least seven years, i.e. 'preorder now for early delivery'.

I know that it's simply not possible for a keyboard that is ostensibly almost ready, to be in a testing phase for seven years, it's not credible. I know their forums indicate that there are people who have been receiving 'testing units', but one wonders how real that is.

Maybe it's time for Macrumours to finish the job and do some investigative journalism as to what the flop is going on. Or is the attitude like 'yeah they'll take your money under false pretences, but they'll give it back if you ask, so everything is fine'.
 
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Some change on the Waytools website! There is nothing in the store any longer although all the rest of the site appears the same as it always did/does. It looks like it's all over red rover.

Macrumors needs to do a deep dive into this strange tale of the amazing keyboard that couldn't.
 
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Yeah, I tried to pre-order one around 2014, and canceled--refunded more than a year later. Like to glance at Waytools sometimes now for a kind of anti-nostalgia. Sketchy company, if I recall. Charging customers before the product even existed is rather ridiculous. Worse, I remember their customer service being run by rude people. What truly amused me was how Apple basically came out with a "butterfly keyboard" when WayTools was still accepting pre-orders for their perpetually incomplete product, and that Apple's version was disliked by consumers! Their "scissor switch" tech seems really different and more comfortable now. Haven't used wireless keyboards on mobile for years either. Don't think TextBlade was meant to be "vaporware" but it appears that's what it became. Someone needs to do a retrospective article on this, as someone already mentioned here.
 
Ok, I know this is a super old thread. Once in a while — may couple times a year — I wonder what happened to Textblade (Waytools) and look them up. Anyone know what’s going on? Can’t find any updates.

I first pre-ordered maybe around 2015. About a year later, I moved to a new home and may after another year I cancelled my pre-order. I can’t believe it’s been 7 years and the damn keyboard still isn’t out as general release.
 
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I am more or less in the same position 🤜🤛… it has something really surreal… 🤣😂🤪
 
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(cue voice-over announcer)

Berlin Brandenburg Airport: 14 years.
Washington Monument: 40 years.
Sagrada Familia, Barcelona: 140 years and counting.

TextBlade: TIMELESS.

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JeffreyH_1987 said:
I tried to pre-order one around 2014, and canceled--refunded more than a year later.
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msackey said:
I can’t believe it’s been 7 years and the damn keyboard still isn’t out as general release.
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Slartibart said:
I am more or less in the same position
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Surprised not to hear of lawsuits etc. And what happened to Mark Knighton? Oh well… at least I didn’t lose money, though I guess I did technically loan money to them for a couple of years without interest.
 
msackey said:
Surprised not to hear of lawsuits etc.
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I don't believe WT has much to worry about with regards to legal actions, sadly.

First, it appears WT accepted orders from areas outside of the USA. This means buyers are geographically dispersed and subject to many different consumer legal protections.

Second, the TextBlade's purchase price is low enough to put any individual suits into small claims court, assuming the sales agreement does not force all disputes with WayTools into arbitration. Realistically, not many people are going to go through the time and effort required to litigate a small claims court action.

Finally, the limited number of purchasers make it very unlikely that a lawsuit would be granted class status (plus class action law firms only initiate cases that can generate millions of dollars in fees, that certainly wouldn't happen with WT) or that an attorney general would launch a criminal investigation.

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ETA: I think the upcoming version of iOS introduces taptic feedback for onscreen keyboards. So the need for something that bridges the gap between virtual keyboards and full size keyboards will be drastically reduced soon.
 
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KaliYoni said:
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ETA: I think the upcoming version of iOS introduces taptic feedback for onscreen keyboards. So the need for something that bridges the gap between virtual keyboards and full size keyboards will be drastically reduced soon.
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To continue this tangent ... By the late 2010s, I think the use of external keyboards became less prevalent on mobile devices. I occasionally used an external keyboard with my iPad, until I didn't. Partly past Bluetooth unreliability, partly a sticky key, and partly just not wanting to carry an extra thing around (even if its small). Sure, anyone can still use a wireless keyboard if they want -- my desktop has one, but actually good haptic feedback on the iOS keyboard might quietly bring down the peripheral's use further on mobile.
 
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Bump. I am in the same situation. The web site is still there but the contents are mostly empty. Is there any way to contact these folks? They took my money and never sent the product. They had decent coverage on this site a few years back.
 
Me too. I trusted my money to them many years ago. Asked for refund this January, being fed up with the endless wait. Little later, they closed everything. Totally unreachable. I consider this theft. Been thinking of buying a plane ticket to visit Mark's residence and jsut take whatever pleases me from his home. Bastard.
 
I thought of using my Legal Services but as mentioned above it would more likely be shoved to the side as being insignificant. I have a very inexpensive iClever Bluetooth keyboard for use with my iPad Pro 3rdGen. I use it at home but use onscreen keyboard when I’m out and about. It’s sad that companies need to screw people like WayTools did. It was a great idea but my belief is they never intended to make it available for the general public. They sent out enough keyboards to the TREG group, realized it wasn’t going to work, then fell off the earth. Seven years of R&D? It only took 7days to create the world!! I’m out $109. Lesson learned.
 
So, like everyone else here, I bought a text blade around 2015 and have been wondering what happened every since. About 3 years ago, another customer did a lot of digging and this is my memory of the story.

Two guys came up with the idea of the text blade. One of them registered the patent. Then they fell out. The one who didn't have the patent, set up the text blade business, and started negotiating with his ex partner to buy the rights. It's only a patent infringement if you SELL the product, so to keep things going as he negotiated, he would ship out FREE test product.

Personally I would have thought they would have hammered out a deal, but I guess not!

Textblade always (to my knowledge) refunded any payments in full, so there's no legal re-dress to answer. I do think that investigative journalists should have picked this up though!
 
Textblade refunding money may be true but that does me no good. The original credit card I used was cancelled about 5 years ago. Sad really as I would like to have had one. I believe they were trying to make a perfect product before releasing it but that’s not reality. You cannot produce a product like that and account for every scenario that might come up. Maybe someday I’ll get a package in the mail with my keyboard in it. 😹😹😹
 
HedgehogChariot said:
Textblade always (to my knowledge) refunded any payments in full, so there's no legal re-dress to answer. I do think that investigative journalists should have picked this up though!
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They certainly did not refund me! I wrote them dozens of times. No reply whatsoever. That really annoys me.
 
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It was not believable that the guy kept the operation going without a shipping product or fresh income for years on end. Developers, warehouses, cloud services, management even if minimal, all those add up quickly, you have to pay them regularly, unless there's no real operation anymore and you're doing everything from your basement by yourself, there's no "team of developers", just you trying to see how best to disappear.

Maybe one day a developer or someone that worked there at the start will come forward to tell what really happened, as its clear with the months and years mounting that at the end it was all smoke.

At some point I believe they had the intention of shipping, but then it became clear it went nowhere and the guy was just lying straight to your face to gain time.

The latest I could find, it seems some people actually went ahead and sued:

https://www.reddit.com/r/textblade/comments/s7miib
 
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