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I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

electronicmaterialsoffice.com

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Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#261

Post by what-imright »

Hendrikto wrote: post #248
what-imright wrote: post #234

Really nice especially the moulded keys, but two eyesores, the logo and the whatever knob in the top right. You’re never going to be able to slip that into a bag with the knob sticking out. And nobody uses those. Well nobody that can pay $120 for a keyboard. As for the logo, that’s a vanity thing. I know you’re very proud of making the product but if you put a stupid logo on front it kills the minimalist vibe and red…

Counterpoint: I like the knob snd it‘s design, and I would definitely have multiple use cases for it. I agree that it makes the keyboard less portable though.

But it’s a portable keyboard, that’s the product. That’s the point, a slim fits in your bag portable bluetooth keyboard. The whole design is optimized based on that constraint. Then some nut comes along and says “hey you know what would make this stand out?” a big orange knob. See this is why you can’t take the english seriously in technology design. they have no clue

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#262

Post by ajross »

seanbarry wrote: post #229

There's a lot of criticism in the comments here, some of it feels very negative. I can imagine reading it as the OP is quite demoralising. Personally I think what the OP has achieved is very impressive. The design looks beautiful, and there's a very "Apple-esque" feel to the website. I love that sustainability has been made a requirement as part of the design. I think some of the other comments give good feedback abo…

The problem is that these things are deeply personal. And this one is really, really close to what I'd want myself. Yet... I still wouldn't buy it. Here's what I'm using right now (actually I have the wireless version which they recently stopped producing): https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/keyb...

But I couldn't deal without the trackpoint, which I use regularly for simple mouse actions even when I have a mouse just inches away. Also my right pinky actuates the emacs "meta" key using the key immediately below "/" (it's the RCtrl on the Lenovo), and on the Altar I that key is offset from the row above, which would be a muscle memory collision[1]. And there are no volume control keys mapped, which I find I use very regularly in the post-pandemic world of constant online meetings. (But it does have display backlight buttons? Why?! You don't use external keyboards with laptops. Seems like a weird choice.)

(Also, a nitpick: the backspace key on the US layout is marked "del" on the keycap. I REALLY hope this is a typo and that the key doesn't send Delete instead of BS when pressed!)

Beyond that though, this really does look great, and if I wasn't wedded to the thinkpad keyboard I'd definitely consider it. But... I'm a really small market, and even I'm not quite onboard.

[1] And this is the primary reason why I've stuck with Thinkpads for more than a decade. This isn't a standard key position, but Thinkpads (not even Lenovo generically, most of their other keyboards mess this up) do it best for what I want.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#265

Post by layer8 »

Festro wrote: post #2

Looks really nice BUT: There's a split between what people online post pics of on fancy desktop setups and what people prefer to use as their daily driver. Minimal keyboards are for minimalists, and people who like to show of their setups. Just like desktop vanity posts typically have speakers, yet everyone uses headphones. Anecdotally there was a post recently on some PC subreddit asking what keyboard people preferr…

It would be nice if there was a standard for snap-on numpads, or even the cursor-plus-six-key-block-column, to be connected to either side of a keyboard.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#266

Post by aemerson_ »

pimterry wrote: post #63

Love it, I would 1000% buy this. I see so many awesome mechanical keyboards but it's rare to see one that looks great _and_ comes in an ISO layout! Will it be possible to pick switches, or will it be hotswap to change them later? This says linear, but I'd much prefer tactile. I'd echo the other comments about the rotary encoder looking fragile too.

Thank you for the kind words.

For now it is just linear switches but it may be possible to offer a choice of switches down the line. I'll look into it.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#267

Post by amrox »

Beautiful. I have a couple of the NuPhy [1] keyboards so I'm definitely in the target market.

The Rotary Encoder is a dealbreaker for me though. I want something slender that I can easily slip into a case or backpack. If it was optional, you'd have a customer!

[1] https://nuphy.com

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#269

Post by philistine »

It’s very impressive, but you’re in a crowded market. If I have one piece of advice, it’s go international if you’re having sale problems. No one is really selling anything but US keyboards. I had to resort to custom designed keys to get a Canadian Multilingual.

Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

#270

Post by tsuujin »

peace4all wrote: post #240

I like it being low-profile. That's why I didn't buy ErgoDox. So all the best wishes to the author. But there are some tradeoffs why I probably not buy it. 1) I'd suggest a column of home/page up/page down/end (top to bottom in this order) on the right side, like some laptop makers do. They're very convenient. That's absolutely necessary for text editing or navigating in various windows. (Sure one can use combos, but…

I use a custom built corne keyboard which staggers the columns based on finger length, but not the rows. I don’t think I will ever go back to a standard layout keyboard after having used this for a few months.

https://imgur.com/a/kEEIRhf to help visualize.

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