Comment by ramanujan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ramanujan | Hacker News Reader

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Hmmm. Strongly disagree with this.

As a hacker rather than a gamer, the concept of a programmable set of LCD keys next to the standard keyboard is extremely interesting for native app development. I hope that particular feature is copied into a subsequent Macbook Pro release.

It's really bringing the innovations pioneered by the iPhone (programmable UI rather than built-in keyboard) back to the laptop.

Among other things, you could have custom glowing save/search/email keys within Word to increase the accessibility for the average joe. They might not be able to find control-F, but they can see the key in their top 10 list.

For Mail.app, Keynote, etc. you'd have different sets of keys (show presentation, download attachments, etc.)

It could get even more interesting if different keys are available in different modes within the same app, like tooltips to the nth degree. For example, each new emacs mode could light up 10 hotkeys for useful functions associated with the mode (compile, jump to, view in browser, and so on).

tl;dr: programmable LCD keys are a very interesting way to combine the best of iPhone-style programmable UI and keyboard-style haptic feedback.

Agreed - can't wait to use this in a technical context, and write some custom apps for that touch pad. I do hope there is an option to skip the neon-green accents though, and throw in a SSD.

When my MBP hits the two-year-old mark, I would really like to replace it with something along these lines and finally get back to running Linux natively on some respectable hardware.

One more thing, I really liked the magnesium alloy case on my Actius MM10 - wish I could have that on a full-size machine. Maybe we'll get there if this thing sees some sales.

I wanted to do the same thing, but boy is it hard to ignore all the little details that OSX gets perfectly. Back to old MBP.

"As a hacker rather than a gamer, the concept of a programmable set of LCD keys next to the standard keyboard is extremely interesting for native app development."

If you are a developer and you want programmable keys, don't sit around waiting for an expensive keyboard, reprogram the ones you've already got in front of you. As far as I know, all major OSes can already arbitrarily remap keys to any keystroke you like, and it's easy to pick up software to turn any keystroke into any action you like.

Are you really using PrintScreen, or SysRq, or ALT-PrintScreen, or any of the other combinations you've got unmapped and waiting to serve you?

I would be surprised if his current keyboard had LCD keys.

I am and was aware of that. You don't need LED keys is my point. Just take control of what you already have. You can do it right now.

People have this huge blind spot around their keyboards for some reason. Every keyboard is "programmable" nowadays. The symbols on the keycaps are only suggestions. Don't pine, do.

(And before anybody brings up the usual objection that your customizations travel to other people's machines poorly, bear in mind that today we're discussing a custom hardware keyboard. Software keyboard configurations travel better than that.)

> And before anybody brings up the usual objection that your customizations travel to other people's machines poorly...

I'd say that's unimportant compared to other people traveling to your machine's configuration poorly, when the displayed UI does not reflect the actual result. Imagine, if you will, someone sitting down at a keyboard configured as anything not QWERTY, but still labeled in QWERTY. They're going to ask how to fix it. In contrast, an accurately labeled keyboard will at least allow them to hunt-n-peck.

Even Apple's customizations of the trackpad travel poorly to other users. A familiar scene: a user taps it several times, then has to ask the owner how to click.

Even accurate UI needs careful design. The standard bad example is Microsoft's menus that automatically "simplified" themselves by hiding infrequently used items, making life more complex for everyone.

It turns out in practice not to be a huge problem.

As you might guess, I'm speaking from experience. I don't need to "imagine" or theorize, I'm living it.

It also turns out that if you really want to, it's easy to make your keyboard flip back and forth between QWERTY and whatever customizations you like. (In my environment, "setxkbmap us" and "jerf_keyboard" (setxkbmap dvorak & an xmodmap) does it. Bind a key to it if you like. I used to use xosd to pop up which mode just turned on when I was sharing a computer with my wife.)

I reiterate, people have a huge blind spot here and are so busy hypothesizing about how it might not work that they miss out on the fact that it does work, and there's no need to wait for fancy keyboards... that, by the way, your coworkers will still be intimidated by, so it's not as if your argument actually affects anything in any direction anyhow. Reap the benefits of these keyboards now, if you like.

Your experience isn't universal. I have people using my computer sometimes that I have to change the keyboard back to QWERTY for them, because they can't find the keyboard icon to do it themselves, even when they have directions. It really is a pain, in my experience.

Of course you and I configure tons of hotkeys, but we're hackers here and can't expect normal people to do that!

What I found interesting is the potential of LCD keys to make program features more discoverable for first time users and more accessible to the masses.

It seems to me that that role is pretty well served by icons in the regular UI that the user's already looking at.

But those need to be clicked with the mouse. Having a top 10 list of extremely common hotkeys in an app is just a lot more discoverable (for the non-expert or first-time user) and much faster (for all users) than finding the right icon to click.

You don't remember all the cardboard keyboard overlays that used to ship with software?

But also comes with a cost and complexity including users having to sometimes look onscreen for functions and sometimes on the keyboard.

Apple's done this with great success in their re-use of the f-keys as system control buttons (as have other manufacturers.) I'm not sure most Mac users are even aware those are f-keys any more.

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