Amazing website and the quality of the keyboard looks exquisite.
Not sure how I feel about a coiled c-c cable. That might be too hardcore for me.
All in all, great design!
I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
211–220 of 688 posts
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#212Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…
This. The traditional keyboard standard may not be perfect but it used to be standard. I had muscle memory that served me. Now my client laptop, employer laptop, personal laptop, home gaming/photo desktop, media computer, etc all want to have wildly different, completely unique layouts, usually with massive compromises. "you just have to get used to it" assumes I'll have a single keyboard for prolonged period of time…
The only thing that my next keyboard probably won't have is the numpad, because I don't use it, and having the mouse closer to my right hand would be a welcome convenience.
Other than that, a couple more keys, like for example a Hyper key or a higher-level Shift would be very welcome.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Only people who didn't WFH much, or didn't have jobs involving any data entry at all could do without a numpad. I'm (mostly) a software dev for 15+ years and I've never felt the need for a numpad. I'm curious now - have I been really lucky that none of my gigs have ever involved any substantial numerical data entry? Do other devs have to constantly do that so it justifies the larger keyboard (which is off-center an…
Entering TOTP codes, bank accounts, spreadsheeting is much more convenient on a 3x3 grid than a row of numbers. It's also nice to have a +- button in the rightmost column.
That's the reason why I have a numpad layer on my 46 key split ortholinear keyboard.
Your use case doesn't mean you need a physically separate set of keys for this.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#214Looks striking, but does this actually exist, or is this (so far) just a design project? There's a lot of promises here - recycled materials, machined aluminum, assembled in London - but I don't see any evidence that a single keyboard has actually been built yet. I know, you gotta fake it 'til you make it, but I think it's important to be honest with your customers. We've all seen plenty of speculative designs that s…
I'm not a member of the team, but was contracted for the PCB design as an external freelancer - I have one of the PCB prototypes sitting in a shelf, and the designer has a fully functional prototype with aluminum case and keycaps already. Bit dusty, but here's my proto with a ridiculously oversized battery (that would probably run for a year or so without charging): https://mpwr.xyz/blog/2022/pcb_1.jpg This will most…
How much does a pcb like this cost for a small prototyping batch of 1 or 5 for example?
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#215Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…
> ... without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys ... My laptop has Home/End/PgUp/PgDn as the Fn function on the Arrow keys, and its actually really good. So good I've actually setup other machines with the same shortcuts wherever I can.
Yeah, I use Home/End/PgUo/PgDn constantly, so much that having to use any modifier for it is just not acceptable to me. A secondary factor is that there are often keyboard shortcuts that combine Home/End/PgUp/PgDn with (combinations of) Shift/Ctrl/Alt, so having to add another modifier to those just makes it really inconvenient.
There is a sweet spot of the number of keys available for use without modifier keys, and that sweet spot may be different for everyone, but it is closer to 100 for me.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#216Beautiful, but it’ll be a pain to find contract manufacturers willing to do that keycap design. From the render I can already count 8 different injection molds required, which doesn’t sound feasible for a low-volume production run. You'd either have to price it very aggressively or be advised by your manufacturers during DFM to use standard low-profile keycaps instead. For folks curious about keyboard manufacturing,…
Is it known why the molds have not gone down in price? Or is it another chicken and egg problem? (customers don't order molds because it is expensive and look for off the shelf components, companies don't invest in making molding more affordable, because there is not enough customers...)
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#217Nice, I'm fond of the spectacular and meticulous designs. Subscribed to the mail list and hoping to get at least two finished product (I'll probably buy both UK and US layout).
Aesthetics resembles me a mix of Apple and Sinclair (especially Sinclair QL), two of my favourite design perspectives with a breeze of eighties. Linear switches another plus point for me. Maybe a different font for alphabetic keys would be nice and consistent with design, font of numerical keys is very good and maybe a good candidate for alphabetics too, nice typewriter era lines. Other than these; recycled materials, aluminium monobody, low-profile keys, etc. nice touches for me. I'm sold. :-)
I hope all goes well!
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#218Everyone is different, but personally I won’t buy a keyboard without separate Delete and Backspace keys, without Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert keys, and without a dedicated Menu key [0], for any kind of serious work. I’d also imagine that one is prone to bump into the rotary knob if one is not fully conditioned to that keyboard. I applaud the T-shaped cursor block and the full-sized function keys, although it would be us…
This. The traditional keyboard standard may not be perfect but it used to be standard. I had muscle memory that served me. Now my client laptop, employer laptop, personal laptop, home gaming/photo desktop, media computer, etc all want to have wildly different, completely unique layouts, usually with massive compromises. "you just have to get used to it" assumes I'll have a single keyboard for prolonged period of time…
I disagree. I've switched primary keyboards many times: from cheap pc keyboards to standard apple keyboards, to minimal mechanical, and now the advantage. I also routinely use a windows workspace from a linux host which totally throws off my keybindings.
One thing I think helps: I've had blank keycaps for the better part of the last decade. There's at least no visual cue saying this key does that thing.
And now, I switch between my primary advantage layout to laptop keyboards (I have a few) all the time. I think all the switching between layouts just makes you better at whatever. I'm a pretty fast typer wherever I end up and getting used to a new environment is kindof fun.
I would totally buy this keyboard if i was still using a standardish layout. I love the advantage so much i can never go back.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#219From a design perspective, it irks me that the numbers are so much larger than the letters. Why? This would seem to indicate that the numbers are somehow more important which doesn’t make any sense to me.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#220It's a very artistic website, but it's awful for getting a good look at the actual product - you do not have a single static shot showing the whole keyboard in a size that means I can get a grasp for what it looks like at 1920x1200.
edit: in fact, you have better shots of the keyswitches you're using and your theoretical recycled bottle than you do of the keyboard itself. It's baffling.