Laptopland: where crimes against Keyboardery worsen with each generation.

[depletedvespene]

I don't think anyone will be surprised with the low esteem I hold laptop keyboards in.

Last Sunday, a certain relative came in with his new laptop. Good reviews, good specs, good price... I expected the keyboard to suck, but I was negatively surprised.

Right half of the keeb.

vivobook.jpg (410.49 KiB) Viewed 3559 times

• Stupidly small keys in the top row? Check.
• Flat chiclet-like keys? Check.
• Short travel? Check.
• Cheap-ass pad-print? Check.
• Legends sporting the usual typographical mistakes and atrocities? Check.
• The Ñ legend in a notoriously smaller font for no good reason? Check.
• Sub-1U keys in the alphas? No. Wait, what? Waitasec...

Oh, there they are: the numpad got 'em now. And the arrow keys, too.

AltGr is 1U while RCTRL is oversized for no good reason, taking up space needed by either RALT or the arrows.

Typing on the main area of the keyboard is the usual uncomfortable experience, but both the arrows and the numpad are unusable for me, given my unacceptable habit of being an adult with adult-sized hands and fingers; I can barely type in numbers without pressing neighboring keys. FFS, this laptop would have been better off with a TKL keyboard, plus one extra USB port to plug a numpad in whenever needed.


But that ain't all. You'll remember how I like to diss NeXT keyboards as "endless" for the obvious reason. But... it's one thing to be inappropriate due to a stupid design choice:

Endlessly stupid.

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... and quite another to be so due to inexcusable evilness:

Endlessly EVIL.

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Yeah, that key does as advertised.

I didn't get a chance to see whether that abomination can be changed or deactivated in the BIOS/UEFI/etc., but I can only hope that it's indeed an option. If not... let's just say I'm thankful this is not the laptop assigned for my work.

[Muirium]

End? The NeXT has no Home or Page keys either. That’s a media block, lad! Keys entirely unknown to the PC (or Mac) masses during its era.

I’ve always been a fan of chording mods with the arrow keys for cursor control. Why wander off to another island just to come right back? Besides, doomscrolling the web hadn’t been invented yet. It took one of those NeXts!

[depletedvespene]

End? The NeXT has no Home or Page keys either. That’s a media block, lad! Keys entirely unknown to the PC (or Mac) masses during its era.

Those are volume control (a nice addition, IF the hardware supported it) and screen brigthness (completely out of place in a keyboard) keys, plus a Power button. Those keys were placed where the Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, Insert and Delete keys were supposed to be, and the elimination of the physical key that corresponds to the fourth of those is what gives the Next keyboard its moniker. Then again, Jobs' strength was never on the computer design side of things, much less on Keyboardery. Even accepting those four additional buttons, when considering their expected frequency of usage, they are definitely misplaced (a leftside column would have been better).

I’ve always been a fan of chording mods with the arrow keys for cursor control. Why wander off to another island just to come right back? Besides, doomscrolling the web hadn’t been invented yet. It took one of those NeXts!

No, but by that time CUA was already a thing, so Shift-chording with the eight nav keys to select text while moving the cursor was already commonplace, and so was Ctrl-chording for faster navigation (prev/next word, top/bottom of screen and top/bottom of document). Did NeXT even support Command-chording the arrow keys to do Home, Page Up, Page Down and End?


In the end, NeXT keyboards were rather defficient, but at least were quite stylish. Laptop keyboards nowadays... are, at most, faux-stylish ("stilish"?), and their ever worsening defficiencies are inexcusable. I have to wonder how many times I'd have accidentally turned OFF that laptop while writing this reply.

[Muirium]

… screen brigthness (completely out of place in a keyboard)…

Works as nicely now as it did back then in the glowing future of 1989.

I've not used a NeXT. Rare machines. Only ever recall seeing one (in Edinburgh Observatory while touring as a kid) back in the day. But the Mac's supported Command and Option + arrow movements since at least System 7 so I bet NeXT did, too; making Home etc. as redundant as the Num Lock light always was on the AEK!

[Obin]

And it's not just the keyboards either. The function-follows-form school of hardware-design has been copying step by step every last usability-sin Apple pioneered on their god-awful overpriced glue-fest they call Macbook.

Everytime I try to look for a new laptop these days I end up with the conclusion that everything is unusable Macbook copycat crap today (except for the actual Macbook which is unusable boarded-up golden-cage crap). It's all glued batteries, soldered RAM, shitty keyboard, no IO, no storage, undercooled and overpriced garbage. Similar thing just worse with smartphones. But look how shiny and pretty they are (for they one and a half years until I get a new one).

Honestly, I'd still be using mobile hardware from around 2010 (like the Thinkpad T420 and the Nokia N900) if there was any way it wouldn't immediately disintegrate into smoke the first time I'd open any "modern" Javascript-infested website. Seriously, has anyone tried to use the "modern" web with old pre-2010 hardware? It's no joke.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the one who has gotten old and inflexible. But fuck that! It's "normal people" being a horde of capitalism-indoctrinated unthinking mindless consumerist drones that shouldn't be trusted with technology if their life depended on it. It's their fault we can't have nice things anymore.

[Muirium]

Your opinion, man. Personally, I know which laptop of mine I prefer. We are in a golden age. Fast as oiled fuck, cool and silent. Beautiful!

But yeah, PCs right? Pointless copying Apple if you can't have that processor. x86 wants its high flow fans back.

[Obin]

But yeah, PCs right? Pointless copying Apple if you can't have that processor. x86 wants its high flow fans back.

For me it's less about the processor, but the impractical built-to-break package it comes in and the attached boot that keeps stamping on your face forever.

But I guess to each their own and to you your consumer crap that irreparably stops working one month after warranty when you have opened and closed the lid one time too many. And have fun getting blamed for "holding it wrong" afterwards.

[Muirium]

Whatever narrative of projected suffering floats your boat. The Mac's a hell of a lot better now than it's been in years, and I'm delighted for it.

I'm sure there's still a way to "build" a desktop computer entirely from free and open source yadayada. Do that, if your beliefs dictate it. But remember they are your beliefs. I'm under no illusion that I am any more than merely a user of this technology, not its author. And that's fine by me, always has been.

[Findecanor]

Those keys were placed where the Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, Insert and Delete keys were supposed to be, and the elimination of the physical key that corresponds to the fourth of those is what gives the Next keyboard its moniker.

Those keys were introduced with the IBM Enhanced Keyboard, which came to the PC in about 1987.
You're forgetting that the NeXT keyboard came out at about the same time, before the IBM keyboard "set the standard", and that NeXT was a competing platform. NeXT was more related to the Mac, in its culture and user interface.
The Atari ST (1985) and Amiga 2000 (1987) keyboards also have cursor keys in-between the alphanumeric and numeric sections, and also different keys above the cursor keys.

On the Amiga, we did Home/End/Page Up/Page Down by pressing Shift-Left/Right/Up/Down, and we liked it!

No, but by that time CUA was already a thing,

An IBM thing !! Why the hell would NeXT adopt customs of an inferior platform, together with the allocation of the Alt key away from its proper use as a second-level shift for accessing symbols‽
It is because of the CUA that European PC and now also Unix layouts have two different Alt keys, and murricans can't type µ or × even if their lives depended on it.

The Apple Extended Keyboard (1987) that had the IBM Enhanced Keyboard's nav cluster (except Help instead of Insert) was not the standard keyboard: it was an option, intended for people running MS-DOS on PC co-processor boards.
And in macOS to this day, the Home/End keys still have different meanings in most programs than they do on the PC.

[Obin]

I'm under no illusion that I am any more than merely a user of this technology, not its author. And that's fine by me, always has been.

The only thing that's an illusion is you thinking you have no ability to take charge of your own computer usage. You can choose to remain in ignorance, but at least own it and name it as such and don't act like it isn't a choice.

As Kant said:

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless gladly remain immature for life.

[Findecanor]

The Mac's a hell of a lot better now than it's been in years, and I'm delighted for it.

Yes, but you can't deny that Mac hardware has had some dark years until fairly recently.

In 2011, I thought that a MacBook Pro was one of the best laptops you could get. Later models removed ports, got "butterfly" keyboards, got touch bars, and if you follow Louis Rossman's YT channel: you would have heard about some pretty harebrained internal hardware choices as well.
It was first with the introduction of the M1 Macs that I think that Macintosh laptops got interesting again, and first with the M1 Pro Macs and the M1 Max Macks Macks Macs that a new Apple laptop again had a decent set of ports.

[Muirium]

Aye. The nadir was 2016, not very long ago at all in a platform that's been running since 1984. I skipped that whole era of laptops as well: my last Mac before this one was a 2013 MacBook Pro with ports every-which way and a keyboard I used for seven years without issue. But the future was looking very bleak for a long while there. No matter how well I treated my 2013 Pro, no computer can last you forever, not connected to the rest of the world.

You can well picture my relief, when I grabbed this M1 in person at the Apple Store on launch day! Magnificent!

[hellothere]

My laptop is a better looking version of this:

Spoiler:

IBM 5140.jpg (110.12 KiB) Viewed 3340 times

Really. I'm typing on the keyboard I swapped switches in (SKCM brown Alps) and that laptop is all of 6" away from me.

If I had a lot more cash than I do now, I could make a modern laptop with just about any key switch I'd like. The reason why about 90% of laptop manufacturers and I don't is because it'd be a fairly heavy device with poor-ish battery life.

My main work machine is currently a 2017 MacBook Pro with the butterfly switches. I'm not a fan. I also don't think I've ever used it outside my office.

Hmm. I wonder how much micro ATX motherboards are selling for these days ...

[Muirium]

That's the spirit!

[depletedvespene]

Those keys were placed where the Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, Insert and Delete keys were supposed to be, and the elimination of the physical key that corresponds to the fourth of those is what gives the Next keyboard its moniker.

Those keys were introduced with the IBM Enhanced Keyboard, which came to the PC in about 1987.

NOPE. The Enhanced layout, with its dedicated Ins+Del+HUDE keys, started being sold for PCs on April 1986 (not to say anything of Industrial PCs, which preceded them by about nine months). Before that, their functionality existed in a layer of the numpad, and even before that, variations of those six keys, dedicated or not, existed in previous layouts in other systems as well.

You're forgetting that the NeXT keyboard came out at about the same time, before the IBM keyboard "set the standard", and that NeXT was a competing platform. NeXT was more related to the Mac, in its culture and user interface.
The Atari ST (1985) and Amiga 2000 (1987) keyboards also have cursor keys in-between the alphanumeric and numeric sections, and also different keys above the cursor keys.

On the Amiga, we did Home/End/Page Up/Page Down by pressing Shift-Left/Right/Up/Down, and we liked it!

The NeXT keyboard came out later than both the Enhanced layout and CUA, (and the preceding Ins/Del assignments for cut/copy/paste, for that matter).

As per the Amiga systems... I don't remember those implementing CUA, so it ain't the same.

Single chording isn't too bad on scarcely used keys... but's is a serious nuisance on frequently used ones, and double chording is so uncomfortable one ends up crying for dedicated keys.

No, but by that time CUA was already a thing,

An IBM thing !! Why the hell would NeXT adopt customs of an inferior platform, together with the allocation of the Alt key away from its proper use as a second-level shift for accessing symbols‽

A good thing that others quickly copied. Even Apple, to a degree.

Also, don't confuse defficient national layouts (Murrican) with defficient navigation keys (on all national layouts).

It is because of the CUA that European PC and now also Unix layouts have two different Alt keys, and murricans can't type µ or × even if their lives depended on it.

Don't forget I've always treated the overloading of RALT as AltGr as a big mistake on the Enhanced layout, one in sore need of correction, especially in the present.

The Apple Extended Keyboard (1987) that had the IBM Enhanced Keyboard's nav cluster (except Help instead of Insert) was not the standard keyboard: it was an option, intended for people running MS-DOS on PC co-processor boards.

The lack of an Insert key is another proof of the bad principles in Apple's design — a computer to mouse around, not to write stuff in.

And in macOS to this day, the Home/End keys still have different meanings in most programs than they do on the PC.

Yeah, and that's another of Apple's sins. In almost all systems, including those preceding the PC architecture, the Home and End keys mean the same thing (which is why it took them as-were). But Jobs needed to make changes for change's sake. Too bad the concept of a "duck" hadn't come up yet at that time.

[Muirium]

The lack of an Insert key is another proof of the bad principles in Apple's design — a computer to mouse around, not to write stuff in.

Sing it, brother! Who could possibly write on a computer with a resident mouse? Real men have Wangs.

The Insert key only ever ERASED writing: when you’d belatedly notice it had somehow triggered in the last minute or two and your text cursor just chewed through umpteen words of whatever you were just transcribing, if you were lucky, or lines you’d need to compose again if you weren’t!

As for Steve having anything to do with Home and End being different on the Mac, nah, I don’t buy it. Sure he was a world class control freak and a jerk, but that was too nerdy a detail for his taste. The typeface on those keys? You bet! But the function? He was happiest when they were gone, as with the original Mac and most of them this century, since notebooks attained hegemony.

The Apple Extended Keyboard has another jerk from Apple history written all over it, future father of BeOS: Jean Louis Gassée. He was, and remains, nerdier than Jobs.

[depletedvespene]

The lack of an Insert key is another proof of the bad principles in Apple's design — a computer to mouse around, not to write stuff in.

Sing it, brother! Who could possibly write on a computer with a resident mouse? Real men have Wangs.

I don't have a Wang.

And I don't think it'd be a good idea to wander around asking "Have you got a Wang to spare, brother?"

The Insert key only ever ERASED writing: when you’d belatedly notice it had somehow triggered in the last minute or two and your text cursor just chewed through umpteen words of whatever you were just transcribing, if you were lucky, or lines you’d need to compose again if you weren’t!

And that is why all command line interpreters, text editors and word processors had and still have differing shapes for the cursor, so insert and overstrike modes can be easily told apart. Now, if you can't be arsed to look into the screen every now and then while writing something, well... that's your problem. It's not like the Insert key was in an inappropriate place where it could be pressed by accident, is it? (like the Power button in the laptop originating this thread)

Also, the "UNDO" functionality is rather old, too. Almost as old as either of us.

As for Steve having anything to do with Home and End being different on the Mac, nah, I don’t buy it. Sure he was a world class control freak and a jerk, but that was too nerdy a detail for his taste. [...]

The nipples on the D and K keys beg to differ.

[Muirium]

Were they like that on the Apple II? If so, then yes it was probably him. Apple was so much smaller then. But if it was later and was Frog Design’s doing, then no. They were John Scullery’s hire: Apple outsourced its industrial design to them for many years.

[depletedvespene]

The early(-iest) Apple II computers seemed to have no home row indicators whatsoever. The Apple IIc and III did have the "Danish nipples" (D and K).

[TNT]

My laptop is a better looking version of this:

Spoiler:

IBM 5140.jpg
Really. I'm typing on the keyboard I swapped switches in (SKCM brown Alps) and that laptop is all of 6" away from me.

If I had a lot more cash than I do now, I could make a modern laptop with just about any key switch I'd like. The reason why about 90% of laptop manufacturers and I don't is because it'd be a fairly heavy device with poor-ish battery life.

I need pictures

[Findecanor]

Those keys were placed where the Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, Insert and Delete keys were supposed to be, and the elimination of the physical key that corresponds to the fourth of those is what gives the Next keyboard its moniker.

Those keys were introduced with the IBM Enhanced Keyboard, which came to the PC in about 1987.

NOPE. The Enhanced layout, with its dedicated Ins+Del+HUDE keys, started being sold for PCs on April 1986 (not to say anything of Industrial PCs, which preceded them by about nine months).

Started. It was nowhere near considered the "end-all-be-all" that you think it is. Things take time to gain influence.

I'd say that the DEC LK201 was a much more influential keyboard at the time, and while it also had a cluster of 3×2 keys, those keys were different. Designers would have recognised the IBM keyboard as a copycat, and had seen that IBM had come with new keyboard layouts multiple times in recent years, so they could not know then that it would get the staying power that it got later.

The NeXT keyboard came out later than both the Enhanced layout and CUA, (and the preceding Ins/Del assignments for cut/copy/paste, for that matter).

Now you're being ridiculous.
The CUA was a proprietary thing from IBM. There is no way that a competitor would refer to it as being any "standard" for their system. Especially not when the competitor has as goal to be novel, better and different than outdated text-mode systems.

The CUA started being developed in 1987 and was published that year. Many people at NeXT had come from Apple. Jobs' Apple had started the idea of having human interface guidelines for personal computers. By 1987 they had already published multiple editions of The Apple Human Interface Guidelines, with the first in 1978 for software on the Apple II !
It was natural that the NeXT would copy Apple Macintosh first, which they did.

[depletedvespene]

Those keys were introduced with the IBM Enhanced Keyboard, which came to the PC in about 1987.

NOPE. The Enhanced layout, with its dedicated Ins+Del+HUDE keys, started being sold for PCs on April 1986 (not to say anything of Industrial PCs, which preceded them by about nine months).

Started. It was nowhere near considered the "end-all-be-all" that you think it is. Things take time to gain influence.

The IBM PC came out. Within a few months, many clones of its keyboard (what we now call the F XT) had come out (the computers themselves would take time to be actually properly compatible), down to copying the mistakes.

The IBM PC AT came out. Within a few months, many clones of its keyboard (what we now call the F AT) had come out, down to copying the mistakes.

The Enhanced Keyboard came out. Within...

Back in the day, IBM's stuff was copied/cloned as soon as possible, so the "time to gain influence"... wasn't long, really.

I'd say that the DEC LK201 was a much more influential keyboard at the time, and while it also had a cluster of 3×2 keys, those keys were different. Designers would have recognised the IBM keyboard as a copycat, and had seen that IBM had come with new keyboard layouts multiple times in recent years, so they could not know then that it would get the staying power that it got later.

No one in his right mind will deny the obviously obvious influence of (what we know call) the DEC layout in the Enhanced layout... down to making the mistake of placing the nav keys in a less than ideal fashion, to keep that 3×2 block. And, given the Enhanced keyboard was: a) made by IBM; b) IBM made replacement units for the then still common PC and PC XT computers; c) cloners would clonely clone it, it was an easy guess that the Enhanced layout would be around for, at least, a rather long time.

[Muirium]

Which is NeXTs fault because… underpants?

I count myself as an IBM keyboard snob, too. But their layouts were just as arbitrary as their choice in outsourced operating system vendors for their rushed entry into the PC market. Sure, they were influential among clones—clones clone—but neither Apple nor NeXT were cloning IBM PC “compatibles.” And, as we all know, IBM lost control of their own platform to the clones when the PS/2 era proved the market didn’t care about the IBM brand any more. IBM had to tuck tail and clone the clones!

The Model M layout could well have been to keyboards what Micro Channel architecture was to card slots! These things are not as apparent when happening live.

[depletedvespene]

Which is NeXTs fault because… underpants?

I count myself as an IBM keyboard snob, too. But their layouts were just as arbitrary as their choice in outsourced operating system vendors for their rushed entry into the PC market. Sure, they were influential among clones—clones clone—but neither Apple nor NeXT were cloning IBM PC “compatibles.” And, as we all know, IBM lost control of their own platform to the clones when the PS/2 era proved the market didn’t care about the IBM brand any more. IBM had to tuck tail and clone the clones!

The Model M layout could well have been to keyboards what Micro Channel architecture was to card slots! These things are not as apparent when happening live.

Two separate things (also, the Enhanced layout was firmly established before the PS/2 debacle came in).

The real sin by Apple/Next, regarding our particular subject, was the poor regard for keyboard navigation, and this IS, undeniably, Jobs' sin, Danish nipples and all. Remember who insisted on removing all those keys to force the user to navigate with the 1-button mouse; remember also that the M0110A replaced the M0110 practically as soon as Jobs was forced out, mitigating in part, but not entirely fixing, that sin... and that partial mitigation then went on to the NeXT keyboard (which was then subjected to further sins).

Wacky or arbitrary keyboard layouts existed back then, and "new" stuff did come out often during those years, but the idea of simply omitting the HUDE keys (dedicated or in a layer) was already known to be a bad one at the time. So there's really no excuse for entirely omitting them, and much less to place (comparatively infrequently used) media keys where they were supposed to go.

[Muirium]

Infrequently used? People jab their brightness and volume settings all the bloody time! Even people who have literally no idea what Command or Option even mean (welcome to my family…) or ever touched Home or End back on their PC.

I remember very clearly everyone I ever mentioned the Touch Bar to lighting up in rage about… you guessed it… their missing brightness and especially volume keys. It was a thing, wisely ended now.

[depletedvespene]

Infrequently used? People jab their brightness and volume settings all the bloody time! Even people who have literally no idea what Command or Option even mean (welcome to my family…) or ever touched Home or End back on their PC.

I can understand the need (in the present) for continuous adjustments of the volume (thanks for nothing, youtube, spotify et al!), but the brightness makes little sense nowadays, and definitely NONE back when NeXT computers were in production. Volume back then wasn't supposed to be constantly changed, either.

I remember very clearly everyone I ever mentioned the Touch Bar to lighting up in rage about… you guessed it… their missing brightness and especially volume keys. It was a thing, wisely ended now.

You'll note I've not mentioned the Touch Bar. Especially placing the Esc key there. On a system that's a warped version of Unix (much in the same way orcs are a warped version of elves). That one sin outsins them all, to the point it shouldn't be talked about in polite company.

[Muirium]

I tweak brightness a lot. (I’ve unusual eyes. Been writing, reading and browsing in dark mode since PowerPC, baby!) But all laptops you see out and about in use have mobility in common. You tweak the display when the light changes. Even Apple’s ambient light sensor can’t read eye strain like we can ourselves.

[LambdaCore]

Yikes! You know, I'm genuinely shocked no one has put those low profile switches into a keyboard... I've heard nasty things about them but they've got to be better than the scissor switches

[depletedvespene]

Yikes! You know, I'm genuinely shocked no one has put those low profile switches into a keyboard... I've heard nasty things about them but they've got to be better than the scissor switches

They felt bad, but not unexpectedly bad (this is a new laptop, after all). What does genuinely go off the rails is the "numpad on a diet" and the arrow keys... the Power Off button is, however, above and beyond in terms of evilness.

[LambdaCore]

Yikes! You know, I'm genuinely shocked no one has put those low profile switches into a keyboard... I've heard nasty things about them but they've got to be better than the scissor switches

They felt bad, but not unexpectedly bad (this is a new laptop, after all). What does genuinely go off the rails is the "numpad on a diet" and the arrow keys... the Power Off button is, however, above and beyond in terms of evilness.

I've had an FK 2001 with a power off key, worst yet it was fidgety on my board and would sometimes register for the hell of it. On scissor switches though, that's just pure evil with how easy those are to actuate on accident