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Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

A general takeaway from this is that there were a number of innovations that made sense at the time, but as the landscape changed, they lost their utility. The butterfly keyboard wasn't needed once screens got larger. The switch to widescreen mean the 7th row of keys competed with the trackpad for real estate. The lid latch was no longer needed as screens got lighter. Top-of-screen keyboard lighting got replaced by backlighting.

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.

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> The switch to widescreen mean the 7th row of keys competed with the trackpad for real estate.

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.

I'd take a Thinkpad without a trackpad all together - I always disable mine in the bios anyways.

Still also prefer thinklight to backlit keyboards but that's less of a necessary

Considering how big a thing custom keyboards are on desktops, I could see a very viable market for more keyboard options as an upsell. If they swapped out the entire case top (or at least a large panel including the trackpad and keyboard) as a single FRU, the options could be impressive.

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

I question why the butterfly keyboard wouldn't be needed once screens were larger. I use a MNT Reform and a mechanical keyboard is still vastly superior.

You may be thinking of butterfly keyboard switches, which aren't what is being discussed here. The Thinkpad "butterfly keyboard" was a design which moved pieces of the keyboard around to make a keyboard wider than the laptop pop out when the laptop was opened. This video has a demonstration:

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.

Ah yes! My mistake. I didn't realise that was what that was called. I did have one of those for a little while as a lab computer as it beat the size requirements allowed into the lab. I mean it was old for it's time when I used it but plugged in, it would do text files and csv.

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