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OLED keyboard
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You quoted before I added multilingual, which is how my quest started. Apple does not sell full latin script keyboards.
I don't think you understood quite correctly then.
Learn to touch type correctly and you will never need a physical layout of the keys, regardless of the language. This would defeat any need for screen-embedded keycaps for the sole purpose of learning a new layout, because to learn how to touch type, you need to INGORE the layout.
More cost efficient, more practical, more useful.
I want a color reconfigurable keyboard, regardless if I settle on one better layout and then learn to touch type in it.
And having only an external is not acceptable, as it's confusing to switch between computers. Please don't say touch type again.
Then the answer is simple: All tech companies, not only Apple, will never implement such an impractical idea unless they aim to win some modern design award.
It's not impractical thanks to technological progress.
Attractive design is a main factor influencing purchases.
Power consumption, loss of tactile feedback, excess use of CPU power for a gimmick, eye strain, little visual appeal, loss of brightness over time, and hard-to-remove keycaps for cleaning and maintenance.
Not to mention excess weight, fragile keyboard, expensive keyboard repair, overall rise in the cost of the laptop, increase in thickness of keyboard (by today's standards), frequent dead pixels from burn-out caused by 95°C CPU, and again, loss of usefulness once one attains touch typing.
Yellowing of clear plastic covering the OLED, eventual wear and degradation of keycaps due to bodily oils, scratch-prone keycaps, proneness to water damage, proneness to static...
This is actually pushing the limits of tech pretty far. You have to have a 52x52 px screen in >100 keys, and the processing and battery power to run them all.
While we have progressed enough to make it, the technology is nowhere near cheap or feasible enough to mass produce millions of times.
I mentioned e-ink, too. There's color e-ink too, and lighting solutions.
With that attitude, we would still be living in the stone age.
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They are many very little screens, not one big screen.
Canon said in 2015 they will start making cameras completely by robots, for example.
Updated list:
Power consumption, loss of tactile feedback, excess use of CPU power for a gimmick, eye strain, little visual appeal, No backlighting, and hard-to-remove keycaps for cleaning and maintenance.
Not to mention excess weight, fragile keyboard, expensive keyboard repair, overall rise in the cost of the laptop, increase in thickness of keyboard (by today's standards), frequent dead pixels from burn-out caused by 95°C CPU, and again, loss of usefulness once one attains touch typing.
Yellowing of clear plastic covering the e-ink, eventual wear and degradation of keycaps due to bodily oils, scratch-prone keycaps, proneness to water damage, proneness to static...
Many little screens = proportionally more wires and connectors
One big screen = one big bundle of wires and connectors
There's more to a screen than the display itself.
Canon's robotic factory is practical. It can make more cameras that way. But even by 2050 this screen-embedded keyboard idea will be impractical.
Unless e-ink doesn't use electricity and is high resolution, and does refresh through conventional methods, it will have an overall effect of increased power consumption and eye strain.
I think you don't know neither what e-ink is nor the concept of multiple displays.
(they call it "electronic ink" for a reason *wink wink*)
Do you? Because I do.
Uses electricity to move molecules of pigments through the same concept as xerography. It's practically reversible xerography with a white and black pigment contained in a clear capsule which is laid out in arrays of pixels. Creates a display without backlighting. Useless in the dark.
(whatever you're trying to do, it's not increasing the practicality of this idea)
Do you know about light waveguides, ambient light sensors, extremely extremely low refresh rate, permanence?
E-ink does not have permanence...once the charge is lost, the charged pigments diffuse and lose the image.
Ambient light sensors have nothing to do with a keyboard which does not produce light.
Extremely low refresh rate is countered by the obnoxious way in which E-ink refreshes.
Waveguides are, again, completely useless without a source of light.
Who said no source of light? MBP keyboards today have a light source.
That's the point of the ambient light sensor.
All this was about low power.
No, all this was about E-ink.
You're making less and less sense.
E-ink is a solid opaque display pane which light cannot shine through. This nulls any backlighting possibilities and thus any need for the keyboard to use the light sensor.
Just what are you trying to argue? I've made my point over and over again that electronic displays of any kind are unsuitable for use in keyboards.
What, it's made of glass and is see-through now?
Because then I'll throw my money at Amazon right now.
Who knew how popular a pane of glass could get!