I never understood the trend of keyboards without numpad, F-keys or even arrows. Sure, it's nice if you carry your keyboard in your backpack, but on a desk I think it's more useful to have those keys.
It also helps when you need desk space for things other than computer use, but I admit that benefit is marginal.
Also much nicer for playing Civ and other games that don't use WASD for camera control.
I think most keyboards which give the thumb more keys also follow this trend of taking away the numpad, F-keys, arrows; often even the number-row as well. (Maybe just my bias, but I think most keyboards with more thumbkeys are symmetrical, too).
While there's a trade-off "moving hand to a greater number of keys" against "complexity, like layering".. I think the small keyboards make more efficient use of the hands compared to standard keyboards. -- My guess is that people who try designs with more thumb keys then think layering is pretty neat.
Consider that thumb is responsible for 50% of hand function [1]. And we use it to press only one button - the space bar. While pinky is the weakest finger andd we use it for the greatest number of keys...
[1] https://musculoskeletalkey.com/restoration-of-thumb-function...
To me, a "thumb cluster" should be just a single row of 1.5u keys. Any secondary rows above those aren't reachable by thumb, so they rarely get used, and therefore might as well be removed.
Maybe others have a different experience, but I still use my thumb mainly to press the space bar and enter keys. All other thumb keys are modifiers and layer switches.
The problem tends to be in finding commercially-made backlit clicky keyboards without a numpad.
I have binds that directly open browser, Emacs, terminal and even IM so that I don't have to use mouse. Some are more macroable, e.g. I had a job where I had to retype things from images (imagine the cost effectiveness), but because I'm lazy type I made a macro under a key that would screenshot -> OCR, key next to it was opening target app.
I think this video[0] is a great introduction why people who don't take their laptops around enjoy using tiny keyboards.
I never used to use the numpad layout, now I do but on shifted keys and can also use it on my Macbooks and other small keyboards.
(Note, a lot of the keyboard community stuff seems to assume you're going to use one specific hardware keyboard. I do have a bunch of odd keyboards, but I mostly use software to remap the keys rather than firmware, so I can be consistent across keyboards).
Maybe if I was plugging into more weird computers I'd need to bake it in to the keyvoard device, but at the moment software has been good enough for everything I need).
Numpads can be nice in certain situations, but the vast majority of the time they also get little usage from me. For the times when I do need one, I have a discrete numpad (KBDPad MKII) which I can place freely on my desk (so it’s not robbing me of mouse space) and tuck away in a drawer when it’s not needed. Best of both worlds.
Back when I used a 60% and was working in a physical office, I had mapped arrows to Fn + [i, j, k, l]. This allowed me to barely move my right hand, at the cost of holding some other key with my left pinky. Overall, my wrists barely had to move.
Also, it simply takes up desk space. If I don't need it, why have it?
I’d never buy a keyboard without them but the trend is logical.
But... if you're non-technical, then considering you may encounter a situation where you need to use the keys (e.g. "press ctrl+alt+delete"), choosing a keyboard where it's more complicated to press those keys seems a weird choice.
I think the people who opt for small keyboards are more likely to be keyboard-enthusiastic, and go for e.g. vim or emacs as their main text editors.
I disagree. A numpad can be nice to have if you have to input lots of numbers, or use a calculator app. I often use the END-key when editing text to jump to the end of a line, similarly for POS1. So IMO this has not so much to do with being technical or not.
My daily driver keyboard is the older Apple wireless keyboard. There one that uses the AA battery. Mainly because this has the exact same layout as my MacBook Pro. This keyboard plus the trackpad works great for me. I don’t understand why Apple did not revert to the inverted arrow keys on the external keyboard. Now there is no way to get the same exact layout on a MacBook Pro and with an external keyboard from Apple.
For anyone else like me who might not know all the shortcuts, ctrl+l takes your mouse to the url bar! This changed everything for me when I learnt this, ctrl+w is great too!
Now I just have a separate calculator for whatever I’d do with the numpad.