here is a mockup of the keyboard Apple should have come out with today... maybe we will get lucky and see this on the 3/24 with a black chicklet illuminated keyboard...
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What the new compact keyboard means for iMac and Mac Pro Users
- Thread starter hawaiipoolman
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here is a mockup of the keyboard Apple should have come out with today... maybe we will get lucky and see this on the 3/24 with a black chicklet illuminated keyboard...
I'll just stick with the standard, full-sized wired keyboard that comes with the Mac Pro, I think. 
There's no need for this intermediary technology. We'll have a fully multitouch based GUI with OS XI, and I personally couldn't stand an intermediary solution like this.
There's no need for this intermediary technology. We'll have a fully multitouch based GUI with OS XI, and I personally couldn't stand an intermediary solution like this.
How is this intermediary? I mean, what you see as the final result? If you're inferring what I think you're inferring, uh, no thanks. I prefer tactile keys + a large trackpad = awesomeness.
I would buy this in a split second. Thrice. 1) windows development box at work 2) for my setup at home connected to my 23" ACD/15" MBP and 3) media center.
The death of the mouse in favor of single and dual-hand gestures on a multitouch surface over a screen.
The iPhone, basically. OS XI will be a desktop iPhone OS. It certainly won't LOOK like the current iPhone OS, but it won't look like the GUI that we've had since 1984, either.
That definitely has utility in some scenarios.
For #1 and #3 in my post above, it would be useless. You really have to think about how much of a step _backward_ it is to move your hands to your screen for many activities, and how it can supplement but not eliminate the current model.
I think there is a real good chance of seeing multi-touch for the Mac Desktops real soon, but I just do not understand why the current keyboards have white keys. Apple should have changed the current keyboards to the black illuminated keys today to complement their new unibody MacBooks.
I love Apple, but they flat out suck at making mice and keyboards. Such a shame.
Those chicklet keys are awful. Making the keyboard more like a crappy laptop keyboard...no thank you!
Trackpads are also an ergonomic nightmare and have no place in a desktop system IMO.
Those chicklet keys are awful. Making the keyboard more like a crappy laptop keyboard...no thank you!
Trackpads are also an ergonomic nightmare and have no place in a desktop system IMO.
i agree that the mouse from apple sucks, i've been using a kensington one since my g4 powerbook that has migrated from that to my imac to my mac pro
the keyboard however i disagree with, wired anyways
i have the white coreduo imac with the older white/clear plastic keyboard and i love the new one in comparison, much better looking and perfectly functional
agreed. the mighty mouse is porbably the worst product apple still sells today.
I agree about the mighty mouse being the worse but
tv is close behind for its lack of 1080p content. Yes, I realize why it doesn't have 1080p content but it just cant truly compete.That is basically also what I believe the next generation of "Mac" OS X will be. It'll be…well…
I have some thoughts as to what it may be like but it's hard to put them into words. I think that what Apple has been doing with input devices over the past few years is slowly leading up to this new OS.
You appear to be very convinced of this scenario. But let me ask you a question (later). In OS X, you can arrange and interact with information in a very tight arrangement, because the mouse pointer is nimble and hardly obscures the screen underneath. On your proposed gesture based OS, we would need a lot of extra space just to make sure that we can still control what our large and opaque fingertips are actually manipulating.
In other words, we need to choose between a mouse driven highly detailed interface displaying lots of information (similar to a newspaper page), or a finger friendly screen layout with big UI elements, looking more like a children's picture book.
Finger input on an iPhone or iPod works well, because it is a simple solution for simple tasks. A stylus based touchscreen laptop works too, because the stylus gives you the accuracy you need to work on a complex task. But doing complex work with your fingers alone? Even apes use sticks in such a case.
On top of that, there is of course ergonomy to think about. The only comfortable arrangement I can see is using your touchscreen like a paper notebook - basically lying right in front of you on the table, where the keyboard is now. This means you can only use one input method comfortably at a time (assuming that touch-typing on the screen will remain seriously inferior to a dedicated keyboard). So if you have to switch between finger touching and keyboarding, you need to somehow shuffle things on your desk every time.
So this is the question: from a general Mac user's perspective, who uses his computer for writing texts, drawing pictures, photoshopping, editing videos and so on, does it really make sense to throw away our most important tool (aside from the keyboard) and work with our bare hands?
I hate my white keys on my keyboard it does not match the design of my iMac, if the trackpad does not come out, why dont they update their keyboards with the black keys. Do you think they could fit the illumination in the keyboard as well?
The problem with that is Apple cares about its own image, not someone who went with another manufacturer's (black) mouse. As it stands, the white keys match the Mighty Mouse and the entire setup looks well-coordinated. I can totally see them go with black keys if they redesign the MM to something other than the white color or they include the aluminum trackpad.
The white/alu finish of the Mac Mini doesn't help either, as it matches the current keyboard perfectly.
Prelim: The iPhone OS is a testbed. Think of it this way: It's a beta. Or an alpha. The iPhone OS is an alpha release of OS XI. Apple is testing the feasibility of different aspects of multitouch for a desktop OS. The feedback they receive from iPhone users is put directly into research into optimization of OS XI. When they find a feature that they deem to be crucial, they implement it into OS X as a transitionary measure.
Tap to open.
Pinch to zoom.
Two-finger scroll.
Three-finger swipe.
Four-finger swipe.
Directional assigning of swipes.
We're getting there. It will be slow, sure, as we have about a decade until the release of OS XI if the original OS X timeframe is to be believed, but it will come, and it won't be the shock that System 1 was in the transition to using a mouse.
I believe that it is possible for the interface of OS XI to not require inordinate amounts of extra space to work. The iPhone (testbed) is capable of distinguishing touches very well on even tiny discrepancies in placement.
For example, I can reliably choose to go to the next page of a thread on MacRumors using the widescreen, non-zoomed page view on my iPhone. Moving my finger slightly to the left of that, I can reliably choose to go to a numbered page that is not the next in the thread.
I believe that a consumer end-user will be able to do very many tasks within OS XI with only the use of their fingers. As I said above, the OS will be intuitively written to know what you want to do when you want to do it. A professional end-user, however, who finds that their fingers are not as adept as they require them to be, should very well be able to use a stylus of some sort. The form of holding a pen remains very valuable, obviously, as there are design tablets on the market now, without screens, that people use for drawing and design purposes.
Yes, exactly. These people who believe that the HP TouchSmart is the future need to use actually use one for eight hours a day.
You can't hold your arms up and work for extended periods of time like that; it's absurd. The displays of OS XI will be where the keyboard is now. With the mouse dead, the physical keyboard is next to go.
"Oh, NO! I HATE the iPhone keyboard! There is no tactile feedback!"
Remember Apple's patent a while back? They have the technology to give haptic feedback to touchscreens when it is needed and remove it when it is not. You would call up the keyboard by touching in a text box, and the onscreen keyboard would appear, complete with "push" style keys. A double-tap or the tap of a circled-X in the top left corner would dismiss the keyboard and restore the touchscreen to a smooth surface.
Yes. As I said before, a consumer end-user will be able to use OS XI comfortably with their hands only, doing everything that they can do now and more. Professionals might want a pen-style solution, and that would be afforded to them.
But 10.7 won't be multitouch. Neither will 10.8, nor 10.9, should we get that far.
Tap to open.
Pinch to zoom.
Two-finger scroll.
Three-finger swipe.
Four-finger swipe.
Directional assigning of swipes.
We're getting there. It will be slow, sure, as we have about a decade until the release of OS XI if the original OS X timeframe is to be believed, but it will come, and it won't be the shock that System 1 was in the transition to using a mouse.
I believe that it is possible for the interface of OS XI to not require inordinate amounts of extra space to work. The iPhone (testbed) is capable of distinguishing touches very well on even tiny discrepancies in placement.
For example, I can reliably choose to go to the next page of a thread on MacRumors using the widescreen, non-zoomed page view on my iPhone. Moving my finger slightly to the left of that, I can reliably choose to go to a numbered page that is not the next in the thread.
I believe that a consumer end-user will be able to do very many tasks within OS XI with only the use of their fingers. As I said above, the OS will be intuitively written to know what you want to do when you want to do it. A professional end-user, however, who finds that their fingers are not as adept as they require them to be, should very well be able to use a stylus of some sort. The form of holding a pen remains very valuable, obviously, as there are design tablets on the market now, without screens, that people use for drawing and design purposes.
Yes, exactly. These people who believe that the HP TouchSmart is the future need to use actually use one for eight hours a day.
You can't hold your arms up and work for extended periods of time like that; it's absurd. The displays of OS XI will be where the keyboard is now. With the mouse dead, the physical keyboard is next to go.
"Oh, NO! I HATE the iPhone keyboard! There is no tactile feedback!"
Remember Apple's patent a while back? They have the technology to give haptic feedback to touchscreens when it is needed and remove it when it is not. You would call up the keyboard by touching in a text box, and the onscreen keyboard would appear, complete with "push" style keys. A double-tap or the tap of a circled-X in the top left corner would dismiss the keyboard and restore the touchscreen to a smooth surface.
Yes. As I said before, a consumer end-user will be able to use OS XI comfortably with their hands only, doing everything that they can do now and more. Professionals might want a pen-style solution, and that would be afforded to them.
But 10.7 won't be multitouch. Neither will 10.8, nor 10.9, should we get that far.
Tallest,
I agree with you in the sense of there is definitely a push in that direction.
I don't really see such technologies as haptic feedback as being superior to true mechanical feedback - maybe I'm short-sighted, I don't see how this technology can outshine a real keyboard to the point where it's a more efficient means of input. I would think voice recognition and AI will have to step up their game significantly before the mechanical keyboard is truly a thing of the past, as well as any desk level multi-touch until spacial gestures/rendering hit the scene. On-screen certainly has its uses, but will be a complimentary technology.
Also maybe I'm reading you incorrectly, but by "The displays of OS XI will be where the keyboard is now." are you suggesting the user will be computing all day by looking _down_? That has serious ergonomic issues.
I agree with you in the sense of there is definitely a push in that direction.
I don't really see such technologies as haptic feedback as being superior to true mechanical feedback - maybe I'm short-sighted, I don't see how this technology can outshine a real keyboard to the point where it's a more efficient means of input. I would think voice recognition and AI will have to step up their game significantly before the mechanical keyboard is truly a thing of the past, as well as any desk level multi-touch until spacial gestures/rendering hit the scene. On-screen certainly has its uses, but will be a complimentary technology.
Also maybe I'm reading you incorrectly, but by "The displays of OS XI will be where the keyboard is now." are you suggesting the user will be computing all day by looking _down_? That has serious ergonomic issues.