Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It’s disappointing that there’s so little innovation. Surely, we must have learned more about ergonomics in the past half century?

The DataHand was a new interesting “keyboard” design in the 1990’s, about 25 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataHand

Btw, Xahlee has a great article on keyboard switches:

http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_switch_mechanisms.html



There's some innovation but there are also aggressive patent holders who are holding things back.

For example, Matius was stopping one-handed keyboards for a while.

http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000021.html

There were things like the Frogpad or the HandyKey Twiddler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmzYovAMHE4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciQVBNHrKKA


It is also, like many things in hardware, a software problem. The purpose of a keyboard is to interact with software. And that software is biased towards certain layouts. It is hard to change the layout too much without quickly becoming a niche product. Add to that the barrier to entry to making a hardware product is still quite high, and relatively costly.


I tried to see if I could make a keyboard with slightly larger keys for my upcoming live music performances and I was thoroughly disappointed:

https://old.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/9g0e24...




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: