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Can't Apple make some room to put a full sized keyboard on their notebooks?

N

n459umb4786ers

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 9, 2009
157
0
Maybe if they put the speakers on the display wouldn't they have more room to be able to put a full sized keyboard? Or would it make the display thicker?
 
I didn't ask why they are not making netbooks I was asking why they can't make a little more room to put a full sized keyboard on their notebooks.
 
n459umb4786ers said:
I didn't ask why they are not making netbooks I was asking why they can't make a little more room to put a full sized keyboard on their notebooks.
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I am aware and responded to it. They could obviously remove some of the room between the keys and they would likely have to make some keys smaller and rearrange things, but it would also depend on if you are trying to fit it into a 9" or 10" because the extra-inch is a large difference, even if it is diagonally.
 
They (apple) typically are not willing to sacrifice the aesthetics of the machine for a function that is non-essential.

The function you're advocating for (a full keyboard) is non-essential. There you go.
 
n459umb4786ers said:
That's selfish of them.
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I disagree. I would rather have a well designed machine than one crowded with non-essential features that only a subset of the population would use.

If I wanted that, I would buy a Dell. You should consider doing the same.
 
petermcphee said:
I disagree. I would rather have a well designed machine than one crowded with non-essential features that only a subset of the population would use.

If I wanted that, I would buy a Dell. You should consider doing the same.
Click to expand...

This could only be a valid discussion if it specifically asks "why cant we have a numbers pad on 17" MBP"? 13" and 15" are small in size for that even though Apple has no intentions of doing this. Even on DELL -or other WinPCs- the number pad is included with some 16" and 17" models.

For a laptop, it just makes sense to leave the number pad out and let the users buy a USB or BT add-on if they need it for heavy number crunching, etc :D

Wait.... Is there another definition for a "full size keyboard" that I am not aware of?
 
n459umb4786ers said:
Maybe if they put the speakers on the display wouldn't they have more room to be able to put a full sized keyboard? Or would it make the display thicker?
Click to expand...

How do you define a full-sized keyboard? Do you mean like with a number pad on the right side? The keyboard itself is full-sized on the laptops.. I don't think most people have a use for the number pad..
 
petermcphee said:
I disagree. I would rather have a well designed machine than one crowded with non-essential features that only a subset of the population would use.

If I wanted that, I would buy a Dell. You should consider doing the same.
Click to expand...

If Apple ever added a Numeric keypad onto their notebooks I Don't think they would make it so crowded and messed up like netbooks. Apple is smart than that, Aren't they?
 
n459umb4786ers said:
That's selfish of them.
Click to expand...

You can have whatever colour you want, as long as it's black. - Henry Ford

Apple aren't famous for listening to their customers. If you buy a Mac you put up with it, if you don't then you buy a PC. That's just how it is with Apple. If you do a bit of research into Steve Jobs (CEO and co founder), you will see why.

The Times said:
“Jobs is not an engineer,” says the writer Dan Lyons, “he can’t really design anything and he doesn’t know anything about circuits. But he is the ultimate end-user, the guy who is on our side.” Lyons created the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog with a motto that captures the strange Jobs mix of geek fantasy and power: “I will restore your sense of childlike wonder. There is nothing you can do to stop me.” And so, amid the secrecy and geekery, Good and Bad Steves blend to form one, gigantic, mesmerising personality. “He would have made,” said Jef Raskin, the brain behind the first Mac, “an excellent king of France.”

To call Jobs a control freak is to call rain wet. When building the first Mac, engineers wanted to include “expansion slots” into which people could slide kit to customise their machines.

Jobs resisted. The machine was his and it had to be closed and perfect. And he’s still at it: he has made it impossible for buyers even to change the batteries on his latest laptops.

Jobs also has a bizarre obsession with the insides of his machines. He drives his engineers mad by insisting that insides look beautiful, even though his customers won’t see this. This code of impenetrable perfection even extends to Jobs’s view of his own body. He has always been a fussy eater, and health problems have intensified this. His favourite dish was once said to be shredded raw carrots without dressing.

Jobs is, in the words of the psychiatrist and scholar of leadership Michael Maccoby, “a productive narcissist”. To Jobs, the world is an epiphenomenon, a side effect of the existence of Steve. Or rather, it is a pyramid with Jobs at the top, a few bright people just beneath him, and then the rest of us — the “bozos”. The customer bozo is not, to him, always right. In the early days it was said the Apple marketing department consisted of Jobs looking in his mirror and asking himself what he wanted. His customer-relations motto is from Henry Ford: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” In a world driven by technology, only the technocrats know what we want and need.

“The very striking thing about productive narcissists, particularly men, is that they grow up in families where there is an absent or weak father figure. You can see this in narcissistic presidents like Obama, Clinton, Reagan and Nixon. They struggle with their identity and view of the world. So they tend to come up with a very original view of things and are then driven to find followers.”

Later, Jobs dropped out of college. Again, this seems to have been crucial. Alan Deutschman, author of The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, says his lack of a proper education in a world of highly educated people left him permanently insecure, especially in matters of taste. “I think his choice of a minimalist aesthetic comes from his fear of making the wrong aesthetic choice. He was someone who had great wealth from his early twenties. He was worried about not being seen as a brilliant sophisticate, so he had gurus to help him. There was this anxiety about being judged, combined with a natural instinct about the tremendous importance of design.”
Click to expand...
 
The keyboard is full sized. The num-pad is a different storry. And it would offest the keyboard from the centre of the body as it is now, pissing a lot of typists, developers and everyone who has to write fast and comfortably.
 
As mentioned above, what is full size keyboard?
I don't need numeric pad for my notebook. It is a mess...and too big to carry around with a keyboard with numeric keypad.
 
n459umb4786ers said:
I guess it wouldn't be too hard getting used to using the number keys above the letters.
Click to expand...

Or just get an external numerica pad. There are even wireless ones.

I work with statistics and I sometimes have to type numeric datasets by hand. For these rare occasions though I use an external keyboard.
 
No damn number pads!!!

I hate that about 17" PC laptops. The trackpad is off center!

Buy an external number pad if you need one. I'm willing to bet money, most don't.
 
the current flood of cheap 16" 16:9 laptops have number pads beside their keyboards, and they are horrible because the keys become too close together, the rarely used number pad results in almost netbook like key density.
 
I like the Apple keyboard better than the 'standard' one. I find it very hard going back to any other computer.
 
Numberpads suck. Average consumer has no use for them. If you're working with video/picture/music you've got no use for them.

Honestly unless you're like a mathematician or an accountant you've got no reason to use number pads anymore these days.
 
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