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Filing the corners off my MacBooks

kentwalters.com

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Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#691

Post by Kaibeezy »

jacobolus wrote: post #519
jonhohle wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25 years ago one of early engineering courses included a case study about Ingersol Rand (IIRC). They went out to work floors and saw how all the workers had modified their air wrenches in the same way, adding padding with tape in various areas. They realized they could probably make a better wrench if it had some of those ergonomics built in. Maybe the next phase of Apple could return to flowing shapes and save our w…

> save our wrists If your wrist is in contact with the edge of the laptop while you are actively typing, then your typing style has a good chance of giving you RSI. You'd be better off trying to fix that than trying to make the fast path to RSI more convenient.

After RSI years ago, I switched to an X220 and had 100% the opposite experience. The curve at the front of the case was a perfect resting point for the heel of my (average size) hand to allow easy reach of the keys. I replicated this geometry by sanding a pine 1x4 and wrapping that in soft leather for a wrist rest with a procession of mechanical keyboards (currently a Lenco Majestouch 2). Literally decades later, all is well.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#692

Post by NetMageSCW »

encom wrote: post #626
Greed wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have mentioned: battery, build quality, Linux-ish ecosystem. If I could get all three in another laptop I would go for it, but nothing comes close at the moment. There was a very brief moment in time where the XPS came close, and then the M series rolled out and eradicated the competition on performance + battery life.

>Linux-ish ecosystem You cannot be serious. It's the most proprietary locked down system of them all.

You’ve never used a macOS computer, have you?

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#693

Post by NetMageSCW »

wolvoleo wrote: post #316
wraptile wrote: post #310

I used a macbook for almost 2 years and genuinely don't understand how people can tolerate these machines. My wrists would be cut up all the time to the point where I looked like I was self harming myself and the glary screen is entirely unsuable anywhere but a darkest basement. Not to mention the terrible keyboard. To this day I'm perplexed how macbooks have such high desirability by full time developers when they'r…

Oh yeah I hate those sharp edges on MacBooks. The old pre-unibody macbooks were great but I can't stand anything that came after it. Always had red lines on my wrists. These days I'm completely off Mac luckily. And yes the keyboards are terrible too. Up to 2015 it was OK but I can't work with the butterfly ones and the "new and improved" scissor ones that came after that. They still have a lot less travel than the on…

If you are creating red lines on your wrists you should really reconsider your typing position.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#694

Post by denimnerd42 »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #581
denimnerd42 wrote: post #25

I hate those sharp edges. I've contemplated taking a router with a carbide roundover to mine many times.

I just asked an LLM this exact question; it said "sure, but use cutting fluid, ensure the bit is carbide, slow the router speed down to 10-16k rpm, go slow, and clean off the flutes if they get gummed" And dont climb-cut

yeah. gonna be a huge mess so I havent

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#695

Post by buildsjets »

mmsc wrote: post #343
buildsjets wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How comfortable are you working with chromic acid and boric-sulfuric acid in your home?

As long as it's not hydrofluoric acid...

I have an experiment at work that is generating gaseous hydroflouric acid at 800 degrees F. It's inside a triple containment system that takes a full day to set up and take apart, and we have all sorts of quality checks to validate that it is safe to access and has been fully titrated after the experiment has run. We accidentally ruined a very expensive ion chromatography machine a few weeks ago... Acid gasses are just no fun to work with.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#696

Post by rbanffy »

necovek wrote: post #688
rbanffy wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only complaint is with the EN-international keyboard my company prefers - there is no way to reverse the tilde key position back to the same place next to 1 on the US keyboard. The OS knows what keyboard the laptop has and refuses to change it.

I am using XKB layouts from Linux recompiled for Macs and loaded with Karabiner: I am sure something as simple as rearranging the tilde key is possible, but maybe management software from your company will prohibit it.

The approach from @zith works, but I haven’t found the key codes. I’ll try to cobble up a utility to make that less cruel.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#697

Post by mikey_p »

rbanffy wrote: post #657
mikey_p wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filing vs. CNC doesn't make one bit of difference.

With a CNC you can make sure you'll get a uniform curvature.

You can get uniform curvature when filing. Ever hear of filing buttons? Or checking your work with a radius tool until you are in compliance? Stop talking about what filing can't do if you don't know anything about filing.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#698

Post by lobati »

brianpan wrote: post #548
kpil wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the f are you supposed to type? Ideally I'd like full support for my arms from the elbow to the wrist. In my first job - i think it was in 1997, I had my own small room with an L-shaped desk with a rounded corner. That gave a few inches of space for resting my arms - both when typing on a quite reasonable Pentium laptop, and especially when using the mouse. Since then, the desks and the chairs has become shittier…

Like a person playing the piano. If your arms are resting, then your fingers and wrists are doing the maximum amount of reaching as you type. If you use a wrist rest you are encouraging your fingers/wrist to reach up (bend in your wrist) instead of neutral or reaching down (more natural position).

There doesn't appear to be good evidence that this is better for RSI. I found one study that shows greater shoulder and back strain when doing the hover hands approach. It might make more sense for piano since you need more mobility up and down the keyboard, but for typing your hands don't need to move nearly as much, so resting should be just fine. The do suggest some sort of support under your wrists, though.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15145291/

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#699

Post by danans »

GuB-42 wrote: post #669
danans wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing this to a work computer seem a bit questionable from the ethical standpoint. "Ethical standpoint" seems like the wrong choice of words. I think you mean "equipment ownership standpoint.". Ethical implies a set of values, vs contractual terms of equipment use. You can't be unethical to your employer, only to people like your coworkers and customers, or other living beings that your business activity impacts.

Why can you be ethical to your coworkers and not your employer? You boss is a living being too, and he is working for the company just like you are, even if his status is different. And your coworkers are the ones who make up the company, so being ethical to your coworkers is being ethical to your company. And if filing your computer causes a problem to your IT department for whatever reason, and you do it without ap…

> You boss is a living being too, and he is working for the company just like you are, even if his status is different

Your boss is your coworker. The corporate entity is not

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#700

Post by jacobolus »

kbutler wrote: post #690
traceroute66 wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but hovering like a pianist is not good for extended computer use. Why ? If you were taught piano by any teacher worth their fee, then your position is natural, effortless and your wrists are limp without tension. Exactly the same position as an ideal computer keyboard position. Piano position is the best keyboard position. Your fingers are doing the work.

Constant change in position, dynamic motion, strong & brief muscular exertion of whole hand and arm, even including the shoulder vs constant static position w/ small repetitive motions, where the fingers really are doing almost all the work.

You should try to avoid continuous static load on your muscles, especially the smaller ones. So you should find a typing position where that doesn't happen. You also want to use your muscles in the strong and comfortable part of their range of motion, which depends on the entire chain of joints, because tendons have to stretch past several joints to get to whatever bone they attach to – so for fluent finger motions, you want to keep wrists and hands in as neutral a position as you can.

If your wrists are not straight while typing a lot, that's really bad. I constantly see people typing with their wrists either significantly flexed or significantly extended; doing that a lot is a fast road to RSI, and even doing it a little is pretty unpleasant and inadvisable.

If you are going to type a whole lot at a stretch (say, as a programmer or writer), you want your arms to be mostly passively supported from the shoulder. Having your arm bent at the elbow doesn't cause much strain, as long as the upper arm is hanging loosely down with your shoulder relaxed – so bring the keyboard relatively close to your torso. Resting your wrists, palms, or forearms on some surface and then typing generally causes more strain than having your wrists and palms "floating" above the keyboard while actively typing. You can rest the fingertips lightly on the key tops if you want. You can rest your palms on a palmrest or arms on an armrest (or table, or lap, or whatever) while you are taking a break from typing. It's generally a good idea to take regular breaks.

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