ThinkPad designer David Hill on unreleased models
theregister.com
theregister.com
For some reason Lenovo has made the ThinkPad keyboard worse with every new generation. They're still better than other laptop keyboards, but my goodness the margin is shrinking.
And while David Hill may claim that Lenovo TPs are as good as (or better than) IBM's, the number of repairs mine have had tell a different story. Since the x230, every single ThinkPad I've owned had to have its mainboard replaced. Sometimes even twice.
That depends on the context. If it also looks cheap and squeaks when you pick it up, the impression is that it's made of junk plastic rather than the wrought iron and solid gold presumably being used by the competition.
Whereas if you can give the feel that the thing is from the future with titanium alloys and carbon fiber (even if it's really still just aluminum and plastic), people get a different impression.
This could probably be engineered around by doing things like holding the battery up against the laptop’s palm rest with a rim of TPU or similar between the battery and the case to deaden vibrations and make it feel more “solid”.
[0]: https://beneinstein.medium.com/how-it-s-made-series-beats-by... [1]: https://beneinstein.com/how-it-s-made-series-yup-our-beats-w...
I don’t know if it’s innate or learned, but I would certainly like to.
By contrast, high end electronics brands like Sony used thicker enclosures that were made with a thicker, less resonant plastic or even metal and focused on miniaturization which naturally lent itself to more dense products. People then associated that denseness with quality.
Think well-made solid mixer, like an old KitchenAid stand mixer, versus a similar thing made of plastic. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as heavy. And it’s obviously much cheaper and wouldn’t feel as solid.
I guess I’m with you that it sort of came from the plastic age maybe? I wonder if it was really much of a thing before that.
then again it’s also easy to tell that a solid oak desk, or some other heavy wood, is better than something made of press-board or balsawood. so maybe it is even older.
No one pedalling a heavy bicycle up hill ever thought it was better made than a lighter one, even if it was.
It’s almost first thing people do when looking at a bike is pick it up for weight.
Heavier aero bikes can be fast. Heavier 4-pot brakes can work better but still we notice the weight and want lighter.
And these laptops are made for enterprise users who actually work on them and aren't dicking around on tiktok all day.
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I don't WANT my laptop to be the Thinnest Model Yet
I want a battery that will outlast the sun, a screen big enough to blind the person behind me, more USB slots than there are apple fanboys in the bay area, a fucking disc reader/writer
[...]
I will pay extra for it to be heavy enough to bludgeon someone to death.
»
https://www.tumblr.com/canadiangold/675666527469568000/i-don...
I understand that different people want different things. Lots of people like thin light laptops. Maybe they're happy with the wireless peripherals I despise.
But can't those with other choices be offered something too?
The sad part is, the Framework 13 has a 3:2 display (with a stupidly large bottom bezel, too, for good reasons), but still uses a bog-standard modern laptop keyboard, including (unlike the ThinkPad) the miserable half-height arrow keys. They did bother to make a Copilot key, though. Just not a better keyboard.
In the meantime, I’m waiting on a display converter board to show up from China so I can install a modernish 1440p display in my T420.
[1] e.g. https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/07/30/hill7.jpg (the presence of a Break key almost makes me cry)
Doesn't this photo show an inverted T?
While half-height arrow keys have become common on laptops, that's probably not what GP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44769440) meant by "normal".
ThinkPads generally use slightly smaller keys for the arrow keys, but still significantly taller than half-height, like for example here: https://p3-ofp.static.pub/ShareResource/560x450/SSNP/4Y40X49...
What people really want is a full-height inverted T like on this Lenovo gaming laptop: https://p1-ofp.static.pub//fes/cms/2025/05/21/uft1eixrszoryp...
There are talented keyboard makers like Tex that already pulled this off, making better hardware than Lenovo itself, and you could instantaneously win most Thinkpad users over, likely permanently.
It’s not a bad keyboard. As far as laptops of the last decade go, it’s even a good one. But the up/down arrows sucked on the MBP and they (though not left/right) suck on the FW13, I expect(?) because a rectangular keyboard ends up cheaper than one with protruding arrows.
Furthermore, my (grandparent) comment was about how vertical shrinkage made the keyboard smaller but the FW13’s taller screen didn’t restore the missing keys, and if half-size up/down arrows just suck to use, Home/End/PgUp/PgDn hidden behind Fn suck to a Pavlovian extent: I didn’t realize how much the MBP trained me out of using them before I had to use an older ThinkPad for a bit that had them on separate keys. I won’t even mention Ctrl-Break except to look in its direction wistfully.
Finally, the Copilot key is of course a distraction. I don’t know what it actually sends on those keyboards, but if I can map that to Compose I couldn’t care less about what’s drawn on it. It’s just sad that, after everything, that distraction is what ended up being the first substantial change to the FW13’s keyboard.
Meanwhile, Apple sold 500+ million HiDPI 4:3 displays on iPads. Do they have a supply chain lock on 4:3 screens?
Hell, Apple shipping millions of 4:3 should keep them reasonable affordable. Same with 16:10 back when those were still a thing (because of the notch Apple now uses 9:5.85 displays to retain a rectangular 16:10 fullscreen).
Whatcha get instead? Garbage like silly rolling-display laptops. Or even worse, The Homer of the laptop world: these bizarre contraptions with two or three foldout displays. It's just missing a cup holder.
Framework borked it here as well. I just don't understand why you waste time, energy and money on developing and building a substandard machine (Framework 12) in an outdated form factor.
I remember many eons ago in the last 2000s to early 2010s when I wanted a 16:10 monitor for my PC and the price difference between 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 or between 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 was massive, that it made no sense to get the few extra vertical pixels of the 16:10 unless you were loaded and money was no issue.
Even 4k 16:9 monitors a few years after launch, were cheaper than 16:10 2560x1600 ones which have already been on the market far longer. Crazy.
TVs got bigger very quickly after LCD took over-- there were a few years where they had ~22-25" sets as the small "dorm room" size models, but you walk into Best Buy and there's barely anything smaller than 32" now.
Conversely, mainstream desktop screens didn't get much above 27" before you started going exotic, so the typical monitors you're putting on a million desktops are not using the same panels as TVs.
I suppose you could say that a "master glass" could be cut into 16:9 panels for both TVs and monitors, but wouldn't it require the two panel sizes to use the same pixel density?
Also they shared the same COGs(chip-on-glass) to drive the TFT panels. That's why laptops had the same HDTV 1366x768 resolutions.
Look at how Apple never went 16:9 except for one model, the 11-inch MacBook Air.
It's irrelevant what you believe if you're wrong. Laptop LCD displays can be cut form the same master glass as TV LCD displays more economically if they share the same aspect ratio and also share the same COGs(chip-on-glass) that drive the exact same TV resolutions 1366x768 and 1920x1080.
>Look at how Apple never went 16:9 except for one model, the 11-inch MacBook Air.
Apple never competed on the price war. For them, $5 extra on the BOM didn't matter at their margins compare to the likes of Acer/Asus/etc.
> old 16:10 Thinkpads with modern displays.
Yes you're talking about the really old 16:10 ones from the mid to late 2000s, right before they switched to 16:9 cause they were cheaper to make due to the HD TV era. Add then today they switched back to 16:10.
So no, it's no BS that scale allows for much cheaper products, but Apple could stick to 16:10 since they never catered to cheap and it would probably cost them more in SW dev and tooling to reengineer their OS GUI and chassis for 16:9 than to keep the production lines as is since their product line back then had like 3 laptops total.
And maybe start with good faith before screaming BS. No need to be rude just because people have different opinions and experiences than you.
1080 pixels is too little vertical space to read documents.
I still use 15+ year old Thinkpads with 1366×768 pixel screens (a bit cramped) and a W520 with a 1920×1080 screen. Twisted nematic screens.
For me, given the 20th century laptops I started on, I think they're great. Not perfect, but good enough to put in 2 weeks working 9-5 on one of them, no problem at all.
For folks who want more in-depth backstory, going all the way back to the beginning and the origin of the "ThinkPad" name see:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/483933.ThinkPad
I really wish that there would be a true heir to the mantle, and a return to some of the original ideas, esp. the early stylus models and variants such as the TransNote --- if Lenovo would do a version of their Yogabook 9i under the ThinkPad brand and use a Wacom EMR stylus and put a Trackpoint on the keyboard it'd be an instabuy for me --- as it is, I use a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 and only get a Trackpoint when using my docking setup w/
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd026745-thinkpad...
(need to find time to buy an updated one (and a spare) w/ USB-C)
I remember picking the first one up and saying out loud, “that’s where the name came from!”
>At the next staff meeting, Kathy Vieth asked Wainwright to report on his progress in naming the new pen tablet. He took the small leather pad with the word _THINK_ embossed on the cover and simply tossed it onto the table. All eyes followed the little black think pad as it sailed through the eair, almost in slow motion and landed --- _PLOP_ on the conference room table.
>
>The team was very excited: everyone was talking. No one was sure whether it was Sue King, or Kathy Vieth, or Patty McHugh, or someone else who first declared, ``Denny, that's a think pad --- a tiny tablet. It's the perfect name. We'll call it a ThinkPad.''
Once you find a TrackPoint keyboard model that you like, buy spares, since you might have a hard time getting a good design in the future.
For example, they went to a lot of trouble to develop TrackPoint keyboard SK-8855, with community input, and then discontinued it. To cries of anguish, scalpers and price-gouging on last remaining stock, and, years later, people selling filthy broken used ones for more than they cost new.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd005137-thinkpad...
I don't think Lenovo has quite the same design sensibilities as IBM ThinkPad team had:
* "You, the user, want to throw away IBM's famed keyboards, and have a chiclet keyboard as the only option." (No.)
* "You want to remove the function keys that aren't necessary for Twitter." (No.)
* "You want to remove the tactile cues from TrackPoint buttons, so it looks more sleek, for your TikTok scrolling." (No. This is not a mindless "content consumer" device. "Think" is right there, in the name.)
* "You want to remove the TrackPoint buttons altogether, from a workstation laptop, so you can get RSI from clicking with your thumb on the touchpad below instead." (No, and now I think you are just trying to sabotage all the smart people who were using ThinkPads before.)
I'm still surprised that IBM was even allowed by the US gov't to sell ThinkPad to China. It was beloved fleet tech of US big business and government, as well beloved by techies ("innovators"). And maybe also a source of technology excellence pride, like fewer companies are now. Imagine the iPhone business being sold to China. Or Cisco being sold.
I bought a used P50 for our son, and while it's allright (even the keyboard -- although it doesn't give that particular feel of the T4x era keyboards), it lacks both of those extra-relevant features. No click on closing, and a mere backlit keyboard. But, that's life!
For me, its the overall sturdiness, the historic ability to more easily swap out components, and the keys and keyboard combo. I haven't had so many Thinkpads as others have had, but of the few i have owned, i think so far the T420 from i think circa 2011 (?) seemed to have the best balance of sturdy boxy goodness and wonderful keys and keyboard. While i would not say that i am a keyboard snob, i can certainly appreciate differences between the different types of keyboards like chiclets, or mechanical dedicated keyboards, etc. I'm sure beyond functional aspects, there is no doubt a nostalgia that i feel for these machines that is solely based on emotion...but who cares, since i always get more value than whatever i paid for them!
On another aspect to this, it feels like Framework laptops has a chance to perhaps capture at least some of the positive sentiment that folks have/had for Thinkpads. I mean, sure, the swap-ability of the components is the most obvious comparison...but, i think Framework has also fostered a following by a community, that, if they play their cards right - and produce good, solid products - can turn into a successor to Thinkpads. I mean, obviously thinkpads are still here and all...but the folks at Framework have a big chance here, and i welcome the competition (since we all win as consumer if there is good, solid choices in the marketplace). Let's hope both Thinkpads and Framework (and any other competitors) keep moving the needle forward to empower users with more options for good solid design, easy/self-repair, component swap-ability, sturdy/dependable hardware, and fair pricing!
+1, comparison of the day for sure!
It's been long enough to say that Lenovo really did right by the Thinkpad name. I recently switched from an X1 Carbon to a Macbook Pro because of Windows issues, and I miss the Thinkpad is built and feels. The case isn't as sharp, I prefer the trackpoint, plastic is weirdly more durable because it can flex, and all the parts are replaceable.
> "There was a giant scare that this Chinese company was going to destroy ThinkPad, and it was going to become cheerful and ruin it and all this kind of stuff," he said.
'As good' can mean different things.
My first two laptops were IBM Thinkpads. In 2000 or so, I was carrying one in my hands down some concrete stairs. I tripped, bounced the laptop down 2-3 stairs, then landed on my knee on top of it. No visible marks, and it booted right up and worked flawlessly for years afterward. This was with a platter hard drive, too. I don't remember the X300, but the current Lenovo Thinkpads don't strike me as being quite as robust as the tanks they used to make.
Don't get married to once-smart ideas that no longer make sense.
Also surprised there was no mention of docking HDD heads when the in-device accelerometer (I think this even predates the Wii and iPhone) detects a drop or the keyboard that had drain holes that bypass the much more expensive motherboard, protecting it from spills.
And I'm glad there was no mention of the adaptive keyboard (touchscreen F keys) that Apple also tried and failed at making a thing.
Sure, but I would have preferred a smaller trackpad.
The lid latch was no longer needed as screens got lighter.
Their solution of ratcheting metal and plastic very tightly limits the lifetime, I'd prefer the latch so I don't have to worry about this in the future.
> Top-of-screen keyboard lighting got replaced by backlighting.
Top of the screen was better for, as another commenter posted, ambient lighting.
Still also prefer thinklight to backlit keyboards but that's less of a necessary
Regular keyboard with stupid trackpad: included Backlit keyboard: +$30 7-row non-trackpad keyboard: +$60 7-row backlit: +$100 All glass programmable touchscreen monstrosity: +$400
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVrpRgKS2x4
The purpose of this design was to allow a small laptop, with a small screen, to have a near full-size keyboard. Once larger screens forced laptops to become larger as well, this design was no longer needed.
ThinkPads are also much more upgradable and serviceable than a MacBook. I popped in 64GiB RAM, 2 TB NVMe SSD, and a WWAN modem and it cost me almost nothing. However. doing so requires a less flat, less glued, etc. system, which requires other compromises. Getting a MacBook with similar memory and storage would cost 5300 Euro (compared to ~1400-1500 for the ThinkPad) and I still wouldn't have WWAN (far better CPU/GPU though, but I especially want the RAM/storage).
I fully agree though that for the price MacBooks have far better screens, cooling systems, and the unibody aluminium case is pretty much unbeatable. CPU-wise, AMD APUs have caught up a lot.
clunky, ugly, plastic, noisy with a crap screen and crap battery life
I think that's not really a fair characterization. There is are wide gap between a good ThinkPad and e.g. a cheap Acer (to which your description would apply). My T14 even gets 6-7 hours on Linux (which isn't exactly known for great battery life), so it would probably do 10 hours on Windows. I only head the fan when I load the system a lot and even then it's fairly quit. And the case, even though it's not aluminium is still pretty nice/robust.
I have M1 Pro and M3 Pro MacBooks to compare to. IMO MacBook and ThinkPads are great in different ways. Ideally I'd want to have a MacBook with the upgradeability/repairability of a ThinkPad that can run NixOS with all peripherals supported.
The Macbook has a horrible keyboard with no travel. The buttonless trackpad is a pain to use; it's very hard to right-click and even with a 3rd party FOSS app to give me 3-finger middle-click, it's almost impossible to do it precisely. I use middle-click hundreds of times a day, but I have no use for trackpad gestures. It has a wretched 2 USB-C ports, one for power. I can't connect a mouse, keyboard, screen and power without carrying a dock. I can't upgrade the RAM. I recently had to remove Asahi Linux because it no longer had enough space to install the latest macOS 15 update -- the SSD can't be upgraded either.
It feels like a laptop designed by and for a tablet user. I am not a tablet user. I don't like them much.
The Thinkpad is a pleasure to use, and I can work on it all day for weeks without feeling especially cramped or anything. It has 2x the RAM and about 10x the SSD space. I've upgraded RAM, keyboard, main SSD, secondary SSD and battery, and it cost me next to nothing.
The only virtues of the Macbook are that it's easy to carry and the battery lasts a long time. It's very unpleasant to actually work on.
It's unclear why you chose the Air then. It's designed as a lightweight entry level portable for people with minimal requirements.
I smashed my right arm to bits in early 2023. I was unable to use that hand for months. I asked for a machine which could take dictation. This is what I got.
And I have to admit, it's now my go-to machine for remote events, conferences and so on; it replaced my Planet Computers Gemini.
But actually working at a desk using the thing is not very pleasant. I regularly see MacBook fans praising the keyboard and the trackpad, but IMHO they are awful.
E.g. I am often told that macOS includes middle-click support, by people who don't know that their mouse has 3 buttons. The existence of this paid app:
And multiple generations of this FOSS alternative:
https://github.com/artginzburg/MiddleClick
... effectively falsify that.
I bought it because I wanted frankly, something different than the Mbps I've had from work for 15 years, and to go Linux-first. OSX annoys me about as much as Linux does, so the software is on par, but the hardware just can't touch Apple hardware. I wish this weren't the case, but it is.
Apple layout works because the most used modifier is "Command". There are two of them, on both sides of Space. You can quickly find them without looking at the keyboard: put a thumb on the (extra-wide) space and move to the side until you get to the next button. That's "Cmd".
Less-used button is Option, there are two of them, next to Command further away from Space, you can find them in a similar manner by moving over two buttons. (Option is mostly used together with Command.)
Even less used is Control, there's only one, and it's even farther away from left Option. Finally, the thing that's hardly ever used is Fn which is stuck in the most remote location -- down-left corner.
On PCs, Ctrl is the most used button, there are two of them, on extreme left and right, you can quickly find them without looking at the keyboard: put a pinky on the "no keys" space outside of keys and move it towards where the keys are. Once you hit the key, it's Ctrl.
What ThinkPad designers did was to break this in the most brutal manner: by putting the least used button in the most used position. If they wanted to ape the Apple layout, they would do great by understanding the Apple layout first.
And it's honestly kinda mindblowing that they didn't get it. You don't have to use a Mac for that long to realize how their layout works and why it works. Likewise they could have used keyboards with the Fn key on the very bottom left and realized instantly it was subpar for Windows based laptops.
It's a furnace in my backpack.
Also why lose the RJ45?
Sadly there is no better laptop.. - ecc - trackpoint +3buttons, could be without touchpad - camera shutter privacy - smartcard reader - 2 nvme (<3 zfs mirror) - big battery
<3 NixOS
Dual ThinkLights appeared on two models - W700 & W701: https://youtu.be/LSHP7VRs0bI?t=658
There was also a dual screen variant, which had a secondary screen that popped out to the right of the primary screen: https://youtu.be/mzhZH9LK1ac?t=26
I really want to see sub-11" notebooks again. They were super cool travel laptops.
> The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product.
Ridiculous. Function must be allowed to win sometimes.
I think they did it that way to make a more usable keyboard for touch typing at that size? The smaller devices like the Win Mini seem to have more like thumb keys.
I wish such devices had hot-swappable plates and key caps to let us choose our own compromises. Key layout seems like such a trivial, almost cosmetic, aspect that can make a device a misery overshadowing much higher complexity/cost tech like the screen and internals.
I find it weird that even framework has gone with a keyboard where a bunch of keys are missing.
(Sent from my Thinkpad T410)
I had a series of think pads. I think the last one was a t61p running Lennox and it was truly glorious. I can't remember if it was that model or an earlier one which had a battery known as the tumor which stuck out the back. You could hibernate the laptop and swap in another battery and turn the laptop back on and keep working without rebooting.
Everything since then for me has been MacBooks or Dell laptops. Neither brings me as much joy.
I've only ever used the original eraser head and the current soft dome, and remember the original being nice because it was tall enough to tilt my finger slightly and push, while the current one is annoying to use because they're too short to do that and my fingers get almost no grip on them and slip around.
Those 4:3 screens and T4x series keyboards are really hard to let go, and if your activities allow for more text-oriented operating systems (I installed 9front on mine, but used to be a dedicated Tinycore Linux user, and the T42 is also nice with the various open source DOSes we have these days), they're still perfectly capable machines for 90% of relevant tasks. CF cards make very nice poor man's SSDs, so the machine is also very quiet with this setup, so far the fan rarely turns on.
As for my previous T42, I think I really squeezed a lot out of it, including using it to produce (and, on a few occasions, record live) 1-hour radio shows for my country's public broadcasting (honored to contribute to a "landmark" series where high production quality is a must). It was always fun to think that here I am, working on a 30€ 15-year-old machine, whereas other guys are doing their exact same montages on 2000€ Macbooks -- and regarding the resulting production, the radio listener will notice no difference whatsoever. :)
Obviously, though, this is a geek thing, those Macs probably do make a lot of sense for serious audio production.
It's completely crazy, though, how you can get a more or less perfectly working (!) Thinkpad for 25-30 euros, whereas that same brand new machine cost something like 2k in 2007.
I swear that the ThinkPad z61p I got in July 2007 had Lenovo branding on it.
Only the largest players-- the Dells and HPs and Acers-- really made much design decisions with custom cases and peripherals, but their teams might have some interesting stories to tell. It might be hard to turn it into a mainstream appeal story, rather than a industrial design tech-journal one.
I know the trackpoint was popular but I could never get used to it; the pressure I felt I needed to apply eventually hurt my fingertip.