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Comment by harel | Hacker News Reader

It's a beautiful keyboard, no doubt, and I'm sure a lot of care and thought went into making it. For me, having no page up/down buttons (and you do have space for them), is a deal breaker. I can forgive the weird mac-like squiggle button on the top left although it's completely useless to me (and most people I assume), but not the lack of Page Up/Down. I actually use those.

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I'm not sure what you're referring to by "mac-like" squiggle button. The button to the left of the 1 is the standard button on both EU and US keyboard layouts. As a programmer, I'm using ~ daily. I don't use the § which is standard on EU layouts, but it is commonly used in the legal profession.

It's not standard, I've only ever seen it on a Mac UK keyboard. According to Wikipedia the section symbol is only a physical key on a few keyboards: Mac UK, ISO Switzerland and ISO Sweden [0] Most standard ISO keyboards don't have it, including ISO UK.

> The button to the left of the 1 is the standard button on both EU and US keyboard layouts

It's very different on different standards and different languages of those standards. Mac UK and ISO UK are completely different, Mac US and ANSI are similar so I'm guessing you are using an ANSI layout.

> As a programmer, I'm using ~ daily

On UK ISO ~ is to the left of the return key i.e the majority of keyboards in the UK, not the 1 key (aha pun) which is where ANSI puts it.

The OPs keyboard is a Mac UK layout (most easily identifiable by the completely difference positions of @"\#~`), so the GP's comment is fairly accurate, weird mac squiggly thing indeed. They should really consider offering an ISO layout unless they are only targeting Mac users.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_sign#Keyboard_entry

If you scroll about 2/3 of the way down the page, you’ll see the comparison between the ISO and ANSI version. The ISO version has the § key, while the ANSI version has a ~ key.

There’s nothing discernibly mac like about the squiggle button, it’s a section sign: §. I think tilde is used more often for sure, but § is particularly common in legal applications.

There is everything mac about it. It's on every mac keyboard, and only on hybrid external keyboards catering for pc and mac users. Never understood why they add THIS button but not page up/down.

> It’s on every mac keyboard

I have owned or been issued well over 8 macs and none of their keyboards had a section symbol.

Perhaps the rotary thing could be mapped to Page Up and Page Down. Then you could twist your way through a document with both speed and precision.

I'm using ctrl pg up/down to move across tabs in my browser all day long. I can't see myself rotating a knob to do that. It's a very different movement and it's not discrete, too easy to move too far.

I didn't notice all the missing important keys.

~ del pgup pgdown ins home end

And cmd and opt have no place in a Windows or Linux machine. There should be alt and windows/super there. Seeing cmd and opt constantly remembers the owners that they are using a keyboard for Macs. Maybe they'll build one for Windows and Linux if they'll be successful at selling this one.

Now that's a constructive idea. I still like my Page up and down though but that's not a bad idea either.

I have a Chromebook where Page Up/Page Down is Alt-Up Arrow and Alt-Down Arrow. It might be the OS doing that mapping, rather than the keyboard (have never really investigated). Works OK.

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