Live data from Hacker News

Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

tipykeyboard.com

31–40 of 47 posts

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#31
post #8

It's a rather unusual layout. Matias makes an even more expensive one handed keyboard that's essentially half a keyboard and then holding space lets you type the other half. I'm not sure why it's still so damn expensive.

Randall Munroe has a write-up on a mirrored layout where Caps Lock is the modifier key for the right half: https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...

This is a really good approach if you can already touch-type. I found I was able to type one handed immediately though it took some thinking and it became second nature after a few weeks. The ease of adapting a regular keyboard to one handed typing makes it very hard for me to wrap my head around learning a completely new layout.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#32

Is this product strictly for people missing a hand? I can’t see any other market. Sure it looks and feels cooler to type with one hand, but that is not nearly enough benefit to cut your typing speed in half.

It seems like a good control surface.

For example in an electronic music context.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#33
I am, in fact, slowly progressing towards this concept on my own with a split keyboard (Quefrency / Sinc).

I am doing it so I don't have to move the right hand off the mouse, or put the coffee cup down or just feel like supporting my chin with the right hand while I am reading.

What I did so far that helped with productivity was:

1. Map the Capslock to activate 2nd layer when held.

On the second layer then:

2. Use the 1-6 number buttons on the second layer so I can type in all 0-9 numbers with just one hand

3. Map the QWSADE (along with HIJKL which is at this point a given) to arrows and PgUp/Down/Backspace

4. Map Z to Enter/Return (So Capslock + Z) is Enter/Return.

I was toying with an idea to map the right side letters to the left side, but that learning that may be more trouble than it's worth. If I need to type more than 1 word it's usually worth using both hands.

On a separate note I am continuously surprised there isn't enough advancement yet by means of AI to make a rock-solid autocorrect for typos.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#34
post #8

It's a rather unusual layout. Matias makes an even more expensive one handed keyboard that's essentially half a keyboard and then holding space lets you type the other half. I'm not sure why it's still so damn expensive.

Randall Munroe has a write-up on a mirrored layout where Caps Lock is the modifier key for the right half: https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-ke...

I don't like the idea of using caps lock frequently as a modifier. To me a frequently used modifier should either be on a thumb or on the opposite hand.

I recently started trying to learn a one handed layout to give my injured right wrist some rest and have been reasonably happy with the space bar doing double duty. (Tap is space and hold is flip.) Though this isn't something that most keyboards can be configured to do.

So far I'd say the flip style is OKish to learn, but I'm still at a tiny fraction of my normal speed. It will take a lot of dedicated practice for me to be anywhere near as fast.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#35

It's really tricky to find an audience of people willing to spend a lot of money and spend the time to relearn typing. By going for a one-handed design, you constrain your audience even farther. This problem is then exasperated by the thriving community of keyboard design enthusiasts that have recently had a huge burst of productivity, thanks to cheap accessible 3D printing. I wish this company the best of luck. They…

I would say that the thriving of the (mechanical) keyboard community is exactly a counterexample of the problem you pose. There's clearly a sizeable and well funded market segment for all kinds of keyboards, both traditional and unorthodox.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#36

It's really tricky to find an audience of people willing to spend a lot of money and spend the time to relearn typing. By going for a one-handed design, you constrain your audience even farther. This problem is then exasperated by the thriving community of keyboard design enthusiasts that have recently had a huge burst of productivity, thanks to cheap accessible 3D printing. I wish this company the best of luck. They…

I would say that the thriving of the (mechanical) keyboard community is exactly a counterexample of the problem you pose. There's clearly a sizeable and well funded market segment for all kinds of keyboards, both traditional and unorthodox.

Even in the custom keyboard community the vast, vast majority don't require relearning typing. Whether it's 60%, 75%, split, ortholinear, typing is still basically the same.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#37

I did some patent research on alternative keyboards about 30 years ago. Frankly, even then, there was an unusual density of innovation in this technology. To be clear, there was about 5X more variants on the keyboard than I would have expected prior to my deep research. As a former patent attorney, working in various industries, a good rule of thumb is that only 1 in 3 inventions ever get implemented commercially. Ba…

> You have to break a lot of ingrained 'finger memory'

That seems obvious but it's not true:

Your brain can easily learn different habits. For example, look at musicians playing and switching on various similar music instruments (between keyboards, different guitars like banjos or bass, kalimba (Thumb-Pianos) with 8 or 12 keys and different tuning, etc.).

Don't forget also that you can learn something fast when it gives you a quick benefit. For example, learning the french alternative keyboard layout "Bépo", takes only 2 or 3 weeks, because after one or two hours of exercises you are already typing frequent words easier and faster. I learned at the same time, the ergonomic Typematrix keyboard, and frankly the ergonomic part of the layout was easy to learn. Of course I didn't forget the other layouts, and I can type on classical Azerty or Qwerty keyboards without much thinking.

Human brain plasticity is very high.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#38

I did some patent research on alternative keyboards about 30 years ago. Frankly, even then, there was an unusual density of innovation in this technology. To be clear, there was about 5X more variants on the keyboard than I would have expected prior to my deep research. As a former patent attorney, working in various industries, a good rule of thumb is that only 1 in 3 inventions ever get implemented commercially. Ba…

> You have to break a lot of ingrained 'finger memory' That seems obvious but it's not true: Your brain can easily learn different habits. For example, look at musicians playing and switching on various similar music instruments (between keyboards, different guitars like banjos or bass, kalimba (Thumb-Pianos) with 8 or 12 keys and different tuning, etc.). Don't forget also that you can learn something fast when it gi…

It's also counterintuitive in that learning a new skill will not override your learned muscle memory. Your brain is awesome at incorporating context, so you won't lose any proficiency with regular keyboards. You might actually get better, if there are any mutually beneficial motions that are reinforced.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#39

I did some patent research on alternative keyboards about 30 years ago. Frankly, even then, there was an unusual density of innovation in this technology. To be clear, there was about 5X more variants on the keyboard than I would have expected prior to my deep research. As a former patent attorney, working in various industries, a good rule of thumb is that only 1 in 3 inventions ever get implemented commercially. Ba…

> You have to break a lot of ingrained 'finger memory' That seems obvious but it's not true: Your brain can easily learn different habits. For example, look at musicians playing and switching on various similar music instruments (between keyboards, different guitars like banjos or bass, kalimba (Thumb-Pianos) with 8 or 12 keys and different tuning, etc.). Don't forget also that you can learn something fast when it gi…

It's always been crazy to me how adamant people are that they can't learn things like this. I know not everyone is the same, and yes it will be harder for some than others, but I have 3 different keyboards in use with slightly different layouts, and it did not take me that long at all to start using them, or to get back up to full typing speed (for the record I code so having symbols easier to access is so so nice). Further I rarely have issues switching back to a normal layout (my only problem is i remap capslock to control on everything and will sometimes hit that instead).

The two things i've seen that prevent people is, first, an expectation of instant success, which just isn't realistic. It'll take a few days, but once you've done it once it's quite trivial to swap back and forth as needed.

Second, there's a shocking amount of people who just cannot touch type? Even in IT/Dev environments I've seen hunt and peck or other strange forms. Not blaming them but I really think it's a major failure on our society that with tech so integral we don't do a better job teaching these skills.

Re: Tipy – One Hand Keyboard

#40
I love the idea and product. I would have bought one.... BUT then I saw the price...

350 EUR???? WTF ????

Excluding VAT and shipping ??

Who the fuck would want to fork 500 EUR for a damn keyboard ?

What size is the market at that price ? This is ridiculous.

Is there any cheaper alternative to this ?

No fucking way that I spend that much cash for an unproven keyboard

Post reply on HN