Looks this would be perfect as a "sofa keyboard" for controlling a home media center or similar. I guess that the main difficulty would be not pressing the keys while using it as a touchpad, but I imagine it would be possible to get used to that.
Their proposed use-case of e.g. phones and tablets (see: already touch-enabled devices) makes me wonder... why use an inferior touchpad on a keyboard when you could just reach up and touch the screen to begin with? Especially with the things they're demoing: moving your cursor to click on something (just tap it) or scrolling (just... scroll normally?). I use a laptop with a "real" touchpad and still prefer just reaching out and touching the screen for most of these tasks already; if I'm not going to use a real touchpad for these kinds of things, why would I use a worse version built into a keyboard (which also probably prevents the keyboard from being as good of a keyboard)?
Using this for a non-touch device or from longer distances (like from your couch) makes so much more sense... especially when you consider how awful mice (and separate touchpads) are on e.g. couches.
The laptop approach of the touchpad close to and rigidly coupled to the keyboard is a big improvement as you can move thumbs from the spacebar and back without looking. This is why I use the internal keyboard even when an external keyboard would be otherwise convenient.
This device could be a way to reduce even that friction. Though I think we're better off encouraging people to make sure their apps can be completely controlled from the keyboard (unless of course the app really is appropriate for a pointing device, such as some photo editing).
TrackPoint. You want a TrackPoint.
But the thing in the post might be a better solution if both the keyboard and the touchpad work well. A great illustration of the classic principle: good design compromises in a contradiction, clever design eliminates the contradiction.
[0]https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ [1]https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/
Is the Microsoft All In One any better?
Its even worst in my experience... both are trash. I reverted to a regular wireless keyboard & trackball for sofa use.
this looks like it's half the size of those two... so that's at least somewhat better.
Even basic things like palm rejection is done in software and for this one to switch between keyboard and trackpad in the fly you’ll need very good software that can predict just what you were intending to do.
Palm rejection is a thing that kinda makes sense to handle in software. For this thing, I'd expect firmware to be actually a bit beefer than usual.
Because better is subjective.