Apple Researching Keyboards With Adaptive Displays on Each Key

[xms]

Apple has been trying to do this for years.

Apple reportedly in talks to buy dynamic e-ink keyboard company Sonder

According to sources close to the negotiations, Apple is in talks to acquire Australian startup Sonder, which produces a unique e-ink keyboard with distinctly Apple-inspired design sensibilities.

finance.yahoo.com

Please leave our keyboards alone Apple. To paraphrase great Steve Jobs, what if we don't want a joystick for our cars? Steering wheel is good enough as it is!

Please don't make us pay for something we don't need/want!

 

[MiamiBeach]

Apple has been trying to do this for years.

Apple reportedly in talks to buy dynamic e-ink keyboard company Sonder

According to sources close to the negotiations, Apple is in talks to acquire Australian startup Sonder, which produces a unique e-ink keyboard with distinctly Apple-inspired design sensibilities.

finance.yahoo.com

Please leave our keyboards alone Apple. To paraphrase great Steve Jobs, what if we don't want a joystick for our cars? Steering wheel is good enough as it is!

Please don't make us pay for something we don't need/want!

I’m guessing they would still offer regular keyboards, kind of like the Touch Bar vs non Touch Bar MacBook Pro’s, no?

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

There's some merit to this comment. Take volume/power controls in cars. Will anything EVER beat a knob that you press for power and turn for volume? I don't think so.

I never ever want a touchscreen, buttons, slider, or a rocker switch for volume. NEVER.

At some point you reach an efficient simplicity that may truly be impossible to improve upon.

But for a company like Apple that hangs its hat on revolutionizing by minimalizing and/or fashionable changes, the quest to keep seeking fruit to pick in a tree that's been basically picked clean can bite you (the consumer) in the butt...iOS7...butterfly keyboard...bendable iPhones....arrow keys that aren't in a T-formation just for the sake of uniformity of appearance....hiding the mouse charge port under the mouse for appearance's sake and rendering the mouse unusable during charging--which happened to me while writing this post I swear to God!)

Let's hope we keep the basic keyboard layout but only certain keys one day enable this type of feature....like adding a light to a car's power/volume knob to indicate whether it's on or off, while retaining the knob.

Differing subject: As far as Apple's keyboards, one of my biggest pet peeves with Apple is their rendering the use of function keys primarily for control of the hardware. Probably 10 times a day I miss not being able to use function keys in Microsoft Excel the way they are usable on a PC. Maybe there's a way to enable that when using Excel but in typical Apple fashion it's not at all obvious but hidden away under a google search.

what you are describing is the Touch Bar.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Assuming you're talking about the butterfly keyboard, that was neither an innovation nor anything like this. It was a decision to adopt a known short-throw mechanical keyboard. This, by contrast, could be done either in the form of a mechanical keyboard (including one with the same mechanism used now, which people seem to like) or a digital haptic keyboard (which differs completely from the butterfly keyboard in that it is virtually impervious to damage from crumbs and the like). This is re-imagining what the surface space of the key could show. How the keyboard works is extremely important but entirely separate.

I was also referring to the Touch Bar. And the second generation of butterfly keyboard.
and the third generation.
And the fourth generation.
Finally, in late 2019, they got it right. The touch bar is cool, but we still need a physical escape key.
But even then, what I would appreciate more is using this technology described in the article, keep the majority of the touch bar as physical buttons that can change what they do, and then have a little bit of space in the middle for sliders and such.
So basically, ESC, F1-F6 are all physical buttons that can change what is shown on them, and there’s a small space for sliders that is a touchscreen, and then 4 or five more physical buttons on the other side of the tiny tiny Touch Bar for volume and brightness.
It would eliminate a lot of the problems that people have with the Touch Bar.

 

[ErikGrim]

Now show me where the “buy” button is. It’s been vapor ware for over a decade now.

It was sold. And it sucked ass.

 

[Malithion]

This would be funny if it showed any understanding of why people hate the Touch Bar.

Hint: the problem with the Touch Bar is not that it is a display. It’s that it’s non-tactile, with keys moving around, not requiring any pressure to activate, and not providing any tactile feedback to indicate that there has been activation.

I understand I use one daily, was a joke silly.

 

[shamino]

The optimus Maximus doesn’t actually exist.

Not true. It shipped. It shipped in very limited quantity, was insanely expensive, and wasn't a very good keyboard. But it was quite real.

See two posts above for a YouTube review of it.

 

[adib]

While Apple is (still) "researching", someone else is executing..

 

[deevey]

While Apple is (still) "researching", someone else is executing..

Looks interesting until I saw it only has 20 hours battery life. I would have thought e-ink would have been more efficient.

Please don't make us pay for something we don't need/want!

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

- Henry Ford (possibly)

The potential for this kind of keyboard is out of this world if devs get on board to optimize their apps for it and not require users to create layouts.

The main drawback of the current crop of customizable keyboards is the amount of work it takes to program even just a single app beyond basic functions.