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Comment by calbear81 | Hacker News Reader

I’m sure someone has suggested this at some point but why not physical keys with an lcd underneath each key? This would allow those keys to be fully customizable and be worthy of the “Pro” designation.

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Because it’s expensive, bulky, and unnecessary. Something like this already exists: the Optimus Maximus keyboard. And while it’s a cool concept, it’s not without its rough edges. [1]

[1] https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/maximus/

Wasn't the Maximus made with tech that is now 10 years old? I can imagine that costs have decreased by at least an order of magnitude by now, now that oled is much more mainstream.

I wanted one of these when I first spotted it, but in hindsight it would be too dependent on software to work and I'd probably end up spending ages setting it up when the right thing to do would be to get blank key caps.

"Keys" on the touch bar are more dynamic. Buttons can have different width, you can show text, sliders for e.g. volume. It's not a 1-to-1 mapping.

Reminds me of a phone I used to have: https://gizmodo.com/samsung-alias-2-e-ink-flip-phone-review-...

The keyboard was fully E-ink, so it changed based on the app or orientation of your phone. It was pretty awesome!

How about e-ink instead? Having 100 individual LCDs seems like it's be energy expensive.

The problem with both of these is they'd just be expensive, period. And solving a problem I don't often have.

I'm sure there's a prototype of this sitting around somewhere in Apple headquarters, either waiting for some patent to expire, or some key component to become cheap/thin/reliable enough.

You can't put a big control on a single key.

Or even both the touchbar and the physical keys on the pro models? 7-row keyboards are a thing.

Fixed, inflexible keys defeat the purpose of a screen that can show anything.

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