I should have mentioned in my last post this is my current situation. The 2016 vintage MacBook is accompanied most places I go by the Keyboardio Atreus. As you allude this setup works satisfactorily. The keyboard on the Macbook is so-called butterfly switch design which actually gained some measure of notoriety amongst its users to the unreliability, but on the plus side it is so thin and light the penalty of dead weight is minimal.
The problem is that as an Apple user already, I am customer of a firm that already has an acceptable range of thin laptops. As such I find myself hanging on for the opportunity of a laptop with Atreus as a built in keyboard to justify the effort of switching OS. I can afford to be super-picky, and if I canāt get exactly what I want brand new I feel it better for the planet just to keep muddling on with what already exists.
You might have guessed from my hardware choice I am not what would be termed a āpower userā and quite happy to keep a laptop for a very long time which makes the Framework mission of repair rather than replacement quite tempting.
I have had a Thinkpad with a point stick a several years ago, I remember it being perfectly usable at the time but perhaps did not really take it seriously as being preferable to the trackpad which seemed at that time to have āwonā the competition between these pointing techniques. I now know of course this victory may be just as much due to ease of packaging as to user preference. I do not know how much depth this device adds to the input deck but probably more than discrete key switches would.
Nobodyās going to ask for a worse feeling one! In fairness there is nothing wrong with membrane designs, if they were so bad businesses worldwide would not be inflicting them on millions of highly paid office workers in an environment where RSI and other ergonomic health and safety liabilities matter. In some respects I feel that the better feel is a side effect of more tangible hobby manufacture and repairability benefits.
One reason I put quote marks around āmechanicalā in my posts in this topic is because for many, āmechanicalā automatically means full height MX pattern switch and is IMO an ignorant marketing term. I think ādiscreteā is a better description but am forced to adopt terminology that exists.
i apologize for a very small derail, but i flinched at seeing you call your macbook vintage. in preparation for trying to be sure i can have a framework 16, i ended up needing to build a lift assist rig, and to load it properly to validate ācan i use a heavier computer with this equipmentā, i repaired a mid 2012 macbook pro.
whatās the boundary between āvintageā and āarchaicā? iām sure my old apple 2s are deep in the latter category, but thereās a pretty large range available there.
i think this is a valid point; a lot of people get caught up in specific aesthetic or ergonomic assumptions that not all mechanical keyboards meet.
itās something thatās frustrated me in particular, since all the rush to replicate the experiences of the kinds of keyboards that damaged my hands makes it hard for me to find assistance finding/designing a keyboard that wonāt make things worse.
truth be told, high quality membrane keyboards hurt my hands less than any mechanical keyboard iāve ever been able to place my hands onā¦ but i havenāt been able to actually try low actuation force linear switches for real yet, and i donāt want to build a custom keyboard for myself if i canāt at least get it the right size.
Interesting discussion, I am happy that we have the opportunity to have it.
My first real job, in 1986, the computer was an IBM 286 AT of some sort, I much enjoyed its firm and heavy keyboard.
Later on, I had NorthGate keyboards.
I guess I am just a fan of such a feel.
I actually donāt have a problem with the keyboard on the 11th Gen, batch 1 Framework 13in that I purchased. I find it perfectly useful. There are some times when I do a stretch of numeric data entry, and for that, I prefer a numeric keypad on the keyboard. Yes, I have tried separate keypads, but then, I just put them away, somehow, just not satisfactory.
Iāve heard of those butterfly keyboards, and when my daughter wanted a MacBook in 2020, I tried to research whether the MacBook Air she ended up with had one, as best I could tell, it doesnāt. She is happy with her device, so I am also.
If you get a chance, try Cherry Brown and Gateron Pro Brown switches ā theyāre non-linear, but not clicky, and pretty light. With enough use to develop muscle memory, Iāve found I donāt bottom out the keys that much, at least not with much force, when typing, as the tactile bump is close to the actuation point of the key.
Most keyboards give me some mild joint pain in my index fingers. Iāve had the best luck with the Gateron Pro Brown switches on this Keychron K2, second best with Cherry Brown switches on an older similar keyboard, forget the brand name.
the standard cherry pattern switches donāt lend themselves to low profile or lower key pitch, though. and while i havenāt tried gateron pro i have encountered cherry brown and still found it more uncomfortable than high quality scissor switches.
my current ābestā for actuation feel is the typematrix someone ended up with by accident and went ādo you want to try it?ā so I did, and to my surprise it is the least straining keyboard iāve usedā¦ the layout is weird, and the key pitch is still larger than i want, and obviously it lacks a numpad( i have an external attached which sucks but at least works) but the switches are good. second after that is the ancient (found a word between vintage and archaic, go me) macbook pro. which also obviously lacks a numpad and cannot easily have one attached
iāve stared contemplatively at choc spacing, thoughā¦ but iām utterly unprepared to design my own keyboard, and nobody as far as i can tell makes full keyboards out of those kailh choc switches. they always appear to be utterly minimalistic. frustrating. (plus i havenāt been in a position to see how the switches feel without either buying a keyboard i absolutely cannot use due to missing half the keys or somehow arranging for one to be made)
so honestly, what i probably really want is effectively a good full laptop keyboard with 18mm pitch keys. iāve only encountered mediocre 18mm pitch keyboards for the last fifteen years, though. (laptop or otherwise)
Speaking of āchocā switches, perhaps you will be suited by the MNT Reform laptop? The keyboard uses this type and can be popped out and installed into its own chassis to provide a more ergonomic typing experience. The laptop is however a very uncompromising design for those who value repairability and privacy. We do have a staunch advocate of the Reform here in this Forum with @2disbetter who will probably better champion its design than I can. Perhaps MNT will leverage its undisputed success with the Reform to design a more rounded laptop in future, one that competes more squarely with Framework?
I myself am interested in the MNT Reform, particularly the Pocket Reform, it is ARM based and the Reform documentation page lists lots of interesting operating systems like Genode, Plan 9 (9front), and OpenBSD but not, ironically considering its the one I want, Haiku.
while that is helpfully a full keyboard as far as actual key presence, this makes no mention of key pitch/spacing anywhere that i can find, so iām forced to assume itās the standard 19.some mm.
when i mentioned āchoc spacingā, itās a specific referrent i came across in research earlier this year, for a specific subset of the mechanical keyboard hobbyist community focusing on an 18mm x 17mm key pitch layout commonly found with specific kailh choc switches and appropriately sized keycaps. but all the people building keyboards for that specific substandard are trying to make keyboards with as few keys as possible (with definitions for āas few as possibleā varying, but generally vastly fewer than i actuallyw ant). thereās also minimal interest in low profile designs there, for some reason.
I like the Reform and I ordered a Pocket Reform as well, but this is more because I really liked the design of the products versus seeing a real need for either. The Pocket Reform has a real need for me, but my own efforts on a Framework Mainboard project are going to make that perhaps moot.
That said, in the beginning I used to wonder WHY Framework went the thin and light route. I used to think that doing so was contrary to their goals of making things last and be durable. There is no question that a thicker case would be more durable, but I think that many on this forum have demonstrated just how durable the design really is.
On the other hand, the reasons for the way things are designed are very well researched. There are reasons for everything that Framework does from a design and engineering standpoint. The sheer complexity of their design here is a huge risk for Framework. The more points of failure there are the more issues you will have, and the costs of those issues are really incalculable. SO all the good ideas in the world have to be tempered by whether the risk is worth it or the consequences of that risk can be mitigated or weathered.
Trying to understand WHY options x wasnāt done is important to really understanding products from Framework.
The Framework 16 is a laptop that is modular like a desktop. It has been engineered and designed to be exactly what it is. What I think you really want is for someone to take the mainboard and make the perfect enclosure you are looking for. Frameworkās design and ethos make that totally possible.
I am working on my own pocket computer thanks to this very thing.
Vintage can also be synonym for the year that something was produced, in addition to the definition that you are flinching at. Traditionally used to refer to wine, but itās slipping out into more common usage nowadays here in the UK.
Thatās the way I understood the original post. Likely not immediately obvious if English isnāt your first language.
It hadnāt occurred to me that anyone would prefer a lower-profile switch, or even tighter key spacing. Somewhere in the back of my head, I assumed those were always compromises owing to space constraints.
I donāt think many people are looking for 104-key layouts these days. Iāve given up on finding even the 75%~ layout I wantā¦ good luck to you.
most of my hand damage is related to straining to using keyboards slightly too big. i know there are other people out there with smaller hands, and in japan and some european nations, key pitch is frequently listed in the tech specs. but no, here in murica, everyone has original gen 1 xbox sized hands. or ā¦ something.
i donāt strictly need a 104-key layout exactly, iād be happy enough with something similar to the layout we can get on the fw16 (with numpad), as long as, well, it was sized appropriately. (obviously iāll be living with the fw16 keyboard for a while regardless, since a custom keyboard wonāt magically appear. and if a custom keyboard is happening, well, i obviously wouldnāt MIND more keysā¦)
itās just, weirdly, the people making things in the spacing i want all seem to restrict it to barely more than alphanumeric. i donāt understand that.
I imagine you already aware of, and tried, using āstickyā modifiers to avoid having to spread the fingers when using Shift, Ctrl, etc? It is available in the Apple accessibility settings, so probably other OS too. Also can be programmed via keyboard firmware such as Kaleidoscope.
I agree that this would not be a substitute for keyboards the correct size. Equipment such as bicycles are available in different sizes to fit almost all customers, including crank lengths and handlebar width, and we should expect office equipment to be the same.
Itās all speculation, but I bet the majority of people who go for smaller key sizes are aiming for compactness for aesthetics rather than ergonomics, and theyāre probably already a tiny subset of computer users. I bet the ergonomics-interested subset hasnāt intersected with the aesthetics-oriented hobbyist subset too much. A lot of them seem to talk about keyboard switch noises, as far as I can tell, because thatās communicable with a close mic in YouTube videos, whereas feel isnāt so much. The hobby-associated media is only capable of incentivizing looks and sounds, I mean. Itās a pet theory.
Might just be raw population numbers, too, on the broader keyboard market side of things. I feel like Iāve got small hands relative to most people, and standard keyboard widths and heights are no problem for me, while smaller keyboards are are an affront to muscle memory.
I feel you though: I do tend to have a lot of hand and arm movement while typing and itād be really uncomfortable if I didnāt. The usual Alt key placement is the reason I declined to ever use emacs. (Iād be curious to watch an emacs userās thumb joints, honestlyā¦ speaking of niches.)
For myself, a 10-keyless is good, although a number row along the top would be ideal. However, Iāve started using the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard v2 with the mod/fn layers for things like arrow and page up/down/home/end/etc keys, so being able to program in similar types of layers/combos could very much work for me, without needing those specific keys on a keyboard.
No, it would not be sick so much as thicc. The ULP is a very different beast, see link in first post. Also why I was reticent to use the term āmechanicalā to describe using discrete switches.
