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Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

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Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#201

Post by cafebeen »

dbalatero wrote: post #162
cafebeen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, agreed. Beautiful keyboard, but when I heard "magic" I hoped to find a touch ID. That sensor so useful that even though I use a mechanical keyboard, I keep an apple magic keyboard off to the side of my desk just for the touch ID sensor. What I'd love to have is a standalone touch ID sensor that I could attach anywhere -- mechanical keyboard, side of the monitor, under my desk, etc. I guess this is bottlenecked b…

I've built a few boxes: https://www.printables.com/model/355924-clickable-touch-id-b... https://gist.github.com/KhaosT/1406a6b6bea38f59e059c2afcb39d... You have to carefully tear down and extract the touch id sensor, and then remount it in a box. I went the battery route so it could stay wireless. The tradeoff is the box is bigger.

Thank you, just what I was imagining! I would prefer a bigger wireless box as well.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#204

Post by ary »

ary wrote: post #49

To everyone who is about to pile on regarding the lack of a fingerprint sensor: you know it's not possible, we all know it's not possible, the creator of this project knows it's not possible. What are you adding to the conversation when you complain about it? So it's a dealbreaker for you, don't buy it. To @aemerson_: Congratulations on taking a risk. On first look this is great work. The attention to detail on both…

Since I can't edit this comment: obviously I mean a Touch-ID sensor.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#205

Post by allenc »

aemerson_ wrote: post #168
allenc wrote: post #151

I've built about 10 mechanical keyboards so far, including a bunch of split ergo ones and low profile variants too. From that, I know the layout matters a lot, as well as the switches themselves; the programability and other features to me are nice but ultimately can be worked around. I'm curious about the switches you're using. On the tech specs it says: "Dual steel arm scissor switch w/ retention spring, 40gf actua…

The switches feel like a M-Series MacBook with a decent amount more travel and more "snappy", tactile feeling. They feel quite different to, for example, Choc switches (which we used on our previous keyboard).

That's really interesting. Hmm... it's too bad that there's no easy way to try out the keyboard and its unique switches before committing. But it's intriguing nonetheless.

Can you share how long you're looking to run the preorder/early bird special?

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#208

Post by jonasmst »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #93
jonasmst wrote: post #77

I love it when people obsessively iterate over something seemingly trivial until it's exactly what they want. This looks amazing, congrats on the launch. I love mechanical keys, but I keep coming back to the Magic keyboard because mechanical keyboards are so clunky. I would order this in a heartbeat if it was available with a nordic layout

> ... but I keep coming back to the Magic keyboard because mechanical keyboards are so clunky For a laptop or for a desktop? For a desktop the keyboard sits its entire life on the... desk? And a laptop happens to have its own keyboard. The only people I know who use an external keyboard with a laptop do it precisely because they want a particular mechanical switch / keyboard layout. Are there people taking their Magi…

Clunky might have been the wrong word for it. Chunky? They're almost always too tall for my liking. I rest my palms on the desk while I type, I don't get how people do that with 20mm tall keyboards without straining their wrists. And I don't think people use mechanical keyboards for the switches themselves, but for the tactile typing experience the switches provide. Hence the appeal of this design: Mechanical, yet slim.

Re: Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard

#210

Post by vincent-manis »

waffletower wrote: post #169
numpad0 wrote: post #137

I don't even know if this is going to be a big or a tiny ask, and I don't know if I'm going to end up with this beautiful product at all, but just in case it's going to be trivial to do so, could you add an option or extra keycaps to have Caps Lock key physically engraved as "Control"? IIUC the ctrl-caps swap itself isn't so rare, but actual keycaps engraved as such seem to be relatively rare. It's apparently a UNIX…

Caps Lock is such a tragic throwback. Even after decades of ridicule "Caps lock is cruise control for cool" keyboard designers don't get that we don't want it.

I for one really appreciate Caps Lock. I always remap it as Compose.
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