homing bumps on other keys!

[sth]

so i recently built a 60% alps board designed to use apple extended keys, which, if you know ONE thing about apple keyboards, the homing bumps are on D and K instead.

some people switch those keys into the F and J position (of course, not remapping, just physical key swapping) but I wanted to give it a shot as the keys were intended.

the result is that after switching back to my hhkb, i found that I had really quickly gotten accustomed to having the bumps on D and K! since i have blanks on my hhkb, i thought I'd switch the keys on it as well and now it feels totally natural.

has anyone else tried switching their homing keys to an alternative location? how did it work out for you?

[Muirium]

Unusual as it is for me to say kind things of Apple during the wilderness years, but D and K make sense ergonomically. Which are your longest fingers? When putting your hands down to type, those index fingers are naturally enough the ones that want to touch down first.

F and J seem natural to us now because of ubiquity. If IBM did it, the world did it. But back when Apple chose D and K, IBM PC keyboards didn't have homing bumps at all.

Speaking of which, I have XT caps on my SSK. No homing bumps there. And it feels just fine to me. Spend enough time on Model Fs and you wind up not needing home bumps or dips at all. They're nice to have, sure, but not necessarily essential.

[sth]

Unusual as it is for me to say kind things of Apple during the wilderness years, but D and K make sense ergonomically. Which are your longest fingers? When putting your hands down to type, those index fingers are naturally enough the ones that want to touch down first.

F and J seem natural to us now because of ubiquity. If IBM did it, the world did it. But back when Apple chose D and K, IBM PC keyboards didn't have homing bumps at all.

Speaking of which, I have XT caps on my SSK. No homing bumps there. And it feels just fine to me. Spend enough time on Model Fs and you wind up not needing home bumps or dips at all. They're nice to have, sure, but not necessarily essential.

i've considered going bumpless as well but haven't tried it quite yet. interesting details though!

[hoichi]

Bumps aside, I think it would be nice to have deeper dishes on D and K.

[sth]

Bumps aside, I think it would be nice to have deeper dishes on D and K.

that's the one thing i really like about cherry keys - deep dish just feels so right. bumps/bars are ok (i prefer bumps to bars) but they don't give you that comfortable feeling like deep dish.

plus it makes me think of pizza

[faycheung]

Just curious. How many people actually don't use homing bumps? Or is it just me?

[hoichi]

You mean, saw them off? Or just not buy anything with bumps?

[faycheung]

Well my Model F doesn't have any homing bumps. I got used to it, and I've bought blanks from Unicomp for both my F and my M, and I don't put the homing keys on either.

[hoichi]

Well, I think I could live without bumps too, it's just that they're already there on a lot of keyboards and I probably wouldn't go out of my way to get rid of them.

[faycheung]

The keyboards look quite pleasant without them, but I understand completely why they are desired.

[DanielT]

I don't care about homing keys, never needed them. Maybe because of the way I type, but I've never had an issue with this.

[pcaro]

while touch typing I really need this reference of where my hands are.

[Muirium]

Just curious. How many people actually don't use homing bumps? Or is it just me?

Evidently not! I said this a few posts before you even asked…

Speaking of which, I have XT caps on my SSK. No homing bumps there. And it feels just fine to me. Spend enough time on Model Fs and you wind up not needing home bumps or dips at all. They're nice to have, sure, but not necessarily essential.

For me, symmetry is a huge deal. I don't have any fullsize keyboards in regular use without homing keys (must try my XT again) but with TKL and 60%, my hands already know where they're going without bumps or dips.

Of course, it's a different story when the homing bumps are there, but on the "wrong" keys! That can fool me if I'm not wary.


@Sth: Deep dish is indeed the best homing marker. It's perfect on sphericals. Cherry's deep dished cylindricals are okay, but I tend not to even notice the dip on those. (Not a problem, as a practised Model F user.) Something about sphericals makes the deep dish feel real to me. Cylindrical deep dish is a pale shadow of that.

Call that a dish? <pulls out Granite>



That's a dish!

[hoichi]

That picture is exactly what got me curious how would deep dishes on D and K feel.

[mr_a500]

Who came up with this homing bump idea anyway? I don't see it on the original Mac or PC. The earliest keyboard I have with it is - surprisingly - a Commodore 128 from 1985 (on "F" and "J"). It's also on a 1985 Amiga 1000, but later Amigas just went with a deeper dish cylindrical "F" and "J".

I don't think there's such a thing as a vintage spherical with homing bump. More than half of my vintage (pre-85) spherical keyboards have deeper dish on "F" and "J", the rest just have regular keys. UNIVAC actually has deep dish on the entire home row:

[mr_a500]

Oh, I missed the 1984 Apple IIe and IIc. They did have homing bumps - on "D" and "K". I wonder why they didn't put it on the original Mac. They're on the later Mac Plus.

[gogusrl]

I never used them, I do my homing on the sides of the main block (capslock to enter) and then kinda slide in position. Can't really tell because if I pay attention to what I'm doing, it doesn't work

It's the main reason why I could never use a 70% or similar. I consider the lightsaver to be the best looking custom I've seen but I'd never be able to use one.

[Muirium]

Oh, I missed the 1984 Apple IIe and IIc. They did have homing bumps - on "D" and "K". I wonder why they didn't put it on the original Mac. They're on the later Mac Plus.

I see a pattern. Steve didn't have anything to do with the Apple II after he got on the Lisa and then Macintosh projects. And he was booted out the company in 1985 before the Mac Plus keyboard came out. Where there was no Steve: there were homing bumps. Where there was Steve: there were none.

Back in those days, he actually lived up to his tyrannical reputation. I wonder if anyone who worked on the M0110 keyboard is out there and can tell us the story of when the bumps were nixed!

[mr_a500]

I was going to say you're right, but then did a bit of research and discovered homing bumps on the Apple III, a project Steve Jobs was very involved with:

Apple III keyboard.jpg

I'm unsure if there were multiple versions of the Apple III keyboard or if it was on the very first 1980/81 keyboard or a later version. I saw there were homing bumps on the Dec. 1983 Apple III Plus, but it took a while to find a clear photo of the bumps on the original Apple III because the keys are darker and the bumps are harder to see clearly.

Apple III Plus:

[mr_a500]

Yes, it was on the original 1980 Apple III keyboard. Here's a clip from a July 1980 BYTE magazine review:

BYTE 1980.png

If there's no other earlier example, then we'll have to conclude that Apple invented the homing bump and that the original keys were "D" and "K". Edit: Apple did NOT invent the homing bump. Previous example found.

They're not on the original Lisa though. Also, the original NeXT keyboard (a Steve Jobs production) did have the homing bumps, but on "F" and "J".

(...now somebody put all this useless trivia in the wiki )

[Muirium]

Didn't IBM deep dish F and J on the Selectric or beamsprings? I'd check my 3276, but the caps are off (and some are in Matteo's care for 3D scanning). I know IBM deep dished the entire homerow — leaving G and H alone — on the "data entry" models. Surely before the Apple III?

Speaking of which, the Apple III was a legendary clusterfuck. I wouldn't be the least surprised if Jobs had given up on it by the time keyboard minutiae were worked out. Sure, he was the source of the notorious cooling problem, but that machine was such a turd it's hard to reconcile with him having final cut over the whole design, as he absolutely did on the Macintosh 128k.

[mr_a500]

Of course deep dish predates this. We were talking about bumps! Pay attention, damn it.

[Chyros]

How about keyboards with no homing bumps or deeper dish or any modification at all? :p

[Muirium]

We already went on about that recently. I routinely type on Model Fs and an SSK with XT caps, with no homing markers at all. So don't think you're elite!


@A500: Seems an academic difference to squabble over. Especially as one so clearly informed the other.

Bugger, there goes my defence for D and K; assuming F and J were already the standard before the early 80s. Who invented homing markers of any kind then? And what keys did they mark? I want to know who was being the dick: Apple or IBM!

[mr_a500]

@A500: Seems an academic difference to squabble over. Especially as one so clearly informed the other.

Well obviously one informed the other, but I thought the whole point of this conversation was who first introduced the "homing bump". There's no point in finding out who introduced the deep dish, since it came from typewriters before computers existed.

[Kurk]

I give you the Kinesis Advantage: a whopping 4 deep dish homing keys for each hand. Thinking of it, it's more like one "non-homing" key for each half. Anyway, it works nicely.

[Findecanor]

I have found that my left hand is a bit dependent on feeling for 1) the gap between Ctrl and 'A', 2 ) the left edge of the keyboard. It is my left pinky that is doing the homing.

A few weeks ago I started a new job where I was issued a Sun keyboard that has a non-stepped Control/Caps Lock key and a two-column fun cluster on the left side of that. Those throw me off quite often when I am homing in to start typing.

[Muirium]

I get that too. If my desk is too cluttered, without a bit of airspace around the left edge of the keyboard, I start homing badly with that hand. Nubs or not!

[mr_a500]

I still can't get used to the "bumps" (raised lines) on my MacBook Pro. Half the time I start typing, then see I'm typing gibberish because my fingers are on the wrong keys. I never have that problem using the beam spring. Those deep dish keys are much easier to get right.

I've been checking typewriters and I don't see the "deep dish" on any of them, not even the Selectric. The earliest example of home row deep dish I can find is on the 1964 UNIVAC Uniscope. (all home row keys, not just F and J)

[Muirium]

The new quest: which came first: F&J or D&K? And who invented each of them?

So far, we know full homerow deep dishing was a thing IBM and indeed Univac got up to in ancient times. And Apple was gung ho for D&K in the early 80s (except for whenever Steve dropped in), while IBM didn't put bumps on the 1981 IBM PC at all, but eventually went for F&J on the Model M in 1985 or so.