I wish there were more laptops out there with the old style ThinkPad keyboard on them :(
I'm not sure what to do apart from not using the laptop keyboards (both 2013 style and 2016 style)
Mechanical solved this for me instantly.
Avoiding mechanical keyboards all my life and never got one of these typical programmer health issues.
But seriously, I never understood the craze for these clunky things. Almost all devs I know use them and most of them have issues with their arms/hands.
Other reasons people like them usually are about customizability. If you think of it as being roughly similar to how some people can be about noodling with cars, you won't be too far off-base.
- With the right firmware, they are fully customizable - you can remap things how you like, create macros, whatever, and config is stored on the board.
- You can customize the switches - there are a bewildering array of switch options. People also spend lots of time customizing switches in various ways to change how they feel.
- Layouts - keyboard nerds have produced a huge array of different layouts.
- Looks - you can buy your own keycaps. Those, too, come in a wide array of profiles and appearances. Some people make really nice boards out of metal, wood, sometimes odder things (I heard about someone trying to make cases out of Corian at one point). If you like that sort of thing, you can have them covered in blinky LEDs. There's a whole tiny art scene making keycap-sculptures that go for a ton of money, relatively speaking.
And that's before you get to the crazy stuff that leads to people paying $1k+ on a keyboard.
Really, it is like anything else - people do a lot of things as hobbies that look odd from outside.
I just wish someone would make a version of this keyboard with decent key switches for say, 90€ (the 4000 is around 36€ here).
Warning, if you end up getting this keyboard you will need to take some time to learn how to type on it due to non-standard design. I personally think it's worth it but for others that is a non-starter.
If you don't mind non-standard layouts, here are some excellent keyboards that give your thumbs more to do. :)
https://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/truly-ergonomic-mechani...
For people who like to hit their keys hard, I can see it being a problem. For most though, give it a week and you'll be back up to speed and won't want to trade back.
I'm currently living abroad, but ideally I'd be able to bring my Macbook Pro into the Apple store next time I'm in the States and get all the keyboard switches replaced.
Is that possible?
I had the same kind of reaction to the new keyboard (albeit nowhere near as strongly). It's great now though. The small travel, the sound of it, it's quite effortless for typing. It's definitely an improvement over the old one, in my experience.
I've been using my 2016 MBP TB since near its release and it's my favorite laptop keyboard I've ever used.
In my experience it just creates more hard to clean grooves for bacteria and dirt. Not exactly a challenge for microbes.
I only care because I worry the effect the Apple RDF will have on other manufacturers. For example, I can no longer buy a mobile phone without a glued-in battery.
I think it's fair to say that typing style can be worse than the keyboard, but I also suspect that a keyboard where you "never have to even lift your fingers" causes more RSI than one that requires more activity.
Macbooks have reached a point where they are too thin to be good notebooks.
Yes, I know the layout has changes and seems weird at first, but I honestly think it works great, after having used it for a while. And I have a T420 as my personal laptop, the last T-series with the original 7-row keyboard.
Everyone shits on the E series, but since they got rid of the CD Drive and put the old trackpad back, they have been nice cheap pcs.
I just ordered an old X230 and plan to spruce it up and use as my home PC. Might even try to dualboot MacOS.
I actually only came to it because I was so frustrated with the new Dell XPS 13 my company provided that I went and grabbed an old Lenovo out of storage.
Are you expressing sarcasm here? Using the nub mouse is an infuriatingly frustrating exercise in trying to navigate the cursor to a point on the screen with some semblance of speed, and without overshoot. It's minimally five times slower than using a mouse.
Furthermore, middle mouse button + trackpoint scrolls as well, so scrolling really isn't an issue.
My job entails writing emails most of the day, Salesforce, and internal communication tools. I love not having to take my hands of home row. I haven't been able to quantify any speed improvement. But, I feel more focused and in the "zone" more often. Could all be my imagination. It could also be that I find ThinkPad keyboard wonderful to use too.
I do use the Adobe CC Suite for the occasional video, presentation, or mock up. No issue using the trackpoint there either.
But isn't that a good thing? Why would you expect every single Apple product to suite you personally, to the point where if just one device isn't right for you, you won't even look at any of the others?
That said, when I used Lenovo Yoga for a while, I was just surprised how bad a keyboard could be. I love my Latitude.
EDIT: and I miss the TrackPoint, although with a touchscreen it doesn't matter so much.
If we had statistics on what percentages of the time macbook owners are using just the trackpad vs either keyboard or both at the same time, I suspect a large population would primarily use only the trackpad.