Give it a trackpoint and take my money.
You've already got the thinkpad palette on a modern form factor, all that's missing is the central, red nipple.
I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
581–590 of 688 posts
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#582This is the first qwerty mechanical keyboard I've seen with four keys to the left of the spacebar, properly mimicking a MacBook layout. I'm far from a connoisseur in the space, but I have done some serious looking. Thank you thank you thank you. As others have mentioned, the Teenage Engineering influence throughout is evident and welcome. I've long wished they would take a stab at an OP-1y TKL. While I don't love the…
I just noticed your typography section. Cool that you included that. I actually love GT Flexa in isolation (used it on a project just a few weeks ago!). Goes to show how different type can look in context. I think I just don't love particularly wide or narrow characters on keys.
GT Flexa was super fun to work with. The numerals on Altar I are, as you can imagine, the widest and thinnest that Flexa would go! I also added a custom Egyptian "I", rather than the default "I" since it reads less like a lowercase "L".
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#583First off, I love the design. I signed up for updates, etc. To me, this is missing an opportunity to be ortholinear - a grid instead of the standard finger straining zigzag pattern. That’s an ergonomic feature you can fit in a low profile keyboard. I think the grid would harmonize quite well with your design aesthetic while adding another feature on top of “pretty and slim”. I am the sort of person who buys every vag…
> the large PRODUCT NAME on top of the product is a little much
if OP's on the fence, remember that this year's MacBooks don't have white lettering that says "MacBook" below the screen anymore. You don't need an icon if you are one :)
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#584This is the first qwerty mechanical keyboard I've seen with four keys to the left of the spacebar, properly mimicking a MacBook layout. I'm far from a connoisseur in the space, but I have done some serious looking. Thank you thank you thank you. As others have mentioned, the Teenage Engineering influence throughout is evident and welcome. I've long wished they would take a stab at an OP-1y TKL. While I don't love the…
> four keys to the left of the spacebar...thank you
Hah, my gripe is that it is like this, instead of three keys. shrug
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if you learn to type 50% less? Incidentally you might discover that you're a better programmer as a result too. I have a simple rule I refuse to type any word longer than 3 characters. Copy and paste is your friend.
Did you copy and paste most of the words in this comment? Where from?
Sorry I meant while coding
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#586It's a beautiful keyboard, no doubt, and I'm sure a lot of care and thought went into making it. For me, having no page up/down buttons (and you do have space for them), is a deal breaker. I can forgive the weird mac-like squiggle button on the top left although it's completely useless to me (and most people I assume), but not the lack of Page Up/Down. I actually use those.
Perhaps the rotary thing could be mapped to Page Up and Page Down. Then you could twist your way through a document with both speed and precision.
Now that's a constructive idea.
I still like my Page up and down though but that's not a bad idea either.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...)
Because you are designing and producing a one-off items. Basically, you are engineering a tool which allows you to shoot molten plastic at high pressure into tiny cavities, with tolerances smaller than a tenth of a millimeter for the end product. That's not at all trivial and therefore unaffordable, unless you are building molds which will be used to create tens, if not hundreds of thousands of copies. The cheap opti…
I have a keycap in mind, but what scares me is a mistake in the design. I give the model to the manufacturer, they create a mold, do a sample run and it turns out e.g. the stem is 0.1mm too wide, so it is too loose. Then make another mold, this time it is 0.05mm too narrow etc.
They gave me advice to create a model and order a 3D print to ensure it fits right, but I am not sure if 3D print will have a good enough precision.
When I was 3D printing at home I was never able to get exact dimensions - print was either 0.99999x scale or 1.005x scale etc.
I fear that a simple thing could turn out into multiplies of £10k and months of back and forth.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#588It's a beautiful keyboard, no doubt, and I'm sure a lot of care and thought went into making it. For me, having no page up/down buttons (and you do have space for them), is a deal breaker. I can forgive the weird mac-like squiggle button on the top left although it's completely useless to me (and most people I assume), but not the lack of Page Up/Down. I actually use those.
There’s nothing discernibly mac like about the squiggle button, it’s a section sign: §. I think tilde is used more often for sure, but § is particularly common in legal applications.
There is everything mac about it. It's on every mac keyboard, and only on hybrid external keyboards catering for pc and mac users. Never understood why they add THIS button but not page up/down.
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#589I 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.
Cool, how'd you get started? Something like this still accurate? https://www.reddit.com/r/crkbd/comments/esv3i8/guide_corne_d...
Re: I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard
#590This looks awesome. I just finished my search for a low profile mechanical keyboard last month; landed on the Nuphy 75 and my only complaint is i dont like the style, i much prefer the style you went for. Very happy to see more entrants into the low profile territory.
Tangential: i really like the mac keyboard (laptop and magic) and while it took about a month of regular use, i now prefer my mechanical keyboard. I was skeptical i ever would.