joeldg - navigating the surface

above: my keyboard design that I threw together to show what kind of keyboards could be done in touch screens. here is the original image I made before I crammed it into the image with the macbook.

Scenario: You spill beer on a keyboard.
Scenario: You wear off the keys to your keyboard.
Scenario: You are sick of shaking out strange things from your keyboard when upside-down.
Scenario: You have keys that stick.

What are all common threads in those? Yes, the low keyboard, nobody really thinks about the keyboard that we all are sitting in front of, many of you now have your fingers poised above the ‘correct’ keys.

Next time you are in a restaurant or a bar that was established in the last five years, notice something about the systems the people there use, they are all touch-screen. Bar-none, you will NOT find someone punching actual buttons.. They break.

I propose something and actually it is a DREAM of mine, and this something is what I see all around me. Laptops DO NOT NEED ACTUAL KEYBOARDS. And, I mean laptops, not desktops. We don’t need them, and they are the ‘laptop trackballs’ that made a brief, yet abortive appearance a while back, why did we get rid of laptop trackballs? Because like a normal trackball they require maintenance, AND they break. And so do keyboards, if you have not noticed.

I will come out and say it, I HATE KEYBOARDS. The usb one I have now has had most it’s keys worn off and it is one year old, and I have seen that a full pint of beer fits in an iMac keyboard, I have two cats, and right now I know I am typing against a sheet of cat hair inside my keyboard most likely and, in my three laptops while my synaptic pad is great, those buttons are getting stuck and worthless. Let me repeat, I HATE KEYBOARDS, they are filthy and gross and invite a lot of junk to build up, I never like using another persons keyboard and right now I am pissed about my ‘c’ key which is misbehaving on a laptop that is a little more than a year old and I have to press it harder than the others..

Inventors, this is your mousetrap to reinvent, and while I am irritated someone might.

Look at the following ideas, and LOOK at the links, or nothing I say will make any sense, I am thinking of like a 17-inch collapsible iphone, keep that in mind with my comments below:

This one is nice (link)
This one is half-way there (link) but still is thinking “keyboard” which is wrong wrong wrong.
Here is another (link), and the same problem arises, why do you keeping thinking it has to be a keyboard? Do you not own a laptop, get with the times?

Getting closer (link) , but still not really the idea..

These guys (link) are about the closest I have seen.. But, they need to be able to have the INSIDE edge push together to have less of a gap so you can have ONE big screen, and they don’t show the keyboard designs.

Now, while they have great ideas, I think that a perfect laptop for me ‘right now and moving forwards’ would be one that has:
a) dual touch screen, really… the whole damn thing, why waste all that real estate around the keys.
b) a way for me to set up my games to have touch screen, or even automatic in game installation in the “keyboard area”
c) I want it to be spill-proof, which means, no buttons… *maybe* a power button… or just have it turn on when open and skip that one *ewww* mechanical *done ewww* button..
d) I want the keyboard space to BE video/screen space when I fold it down flat and the whole thing is open.. I want that real estate.
e) I want this dead space on my keyboard to hold my calendar my clock, or whatever widget I want. I don’t want it in my work space… who had that dumb-ass idea, it is an aside to have a clock or a calendar next to your document or your code, slap it down in the generally unused space and give us our screen realestate back…
f) I want to be able to flip my laptop around/over and use the ’screen’ as the keyboard, and so on and so forth, this would be handy in a coffee shop or while doing a presentation to not have to ‘turn’ the whole thing, just tilt it over…
g) With the above, I want to be able to put the two halves of my laptop together and turn a 17″ screen with 12.67″ x 11.33″ into double the screen and have a full movie event if I want… and then, have slide-up menu’s for keyboards and controls and have it switch back to the down-side keyboard mode if I pull it back apart. (think about that)
h) I am a programmer and am not addicted to “key-feel” like others, and touchscreen is fine for a keyboard, as long as I can ‘rest’ my hands, fix that shit.
i) I want to have my OWN keyboard layouts (and I am working on some now in my little graphics program to show you what I mean) and if someone is arabic who is with me, I want to see the touchscreen switch on command to their language when I choose it. It has been FAR too long I have been stuck with layouts from people who think one way is ‘the way’ and won’t let me have my own layout ( i.e. I like ergo, but would like the keys further apart and split much further than any keyboard now, for me.. ALL the way to the right and left and leave the middle for something else, also I want my ‘F’ keys on the left side.. NOT on the top, with a modifiable layout I could easily accomplish this, but with a hardware board, and this crap that I am stuck with on my laptops I have NO choice, and it sucks, someone seriously I want to actually redo my keyboard FOR ME)..

These are not little ideas, these are big ideas, but I think that right now the only company that MIGHT get-it is apple, so… If you are listening apple, make my damn laptop and I will be first in-line to buy it and it would be the first apple product I have ever purchased, besides, you guys might make it even better that I dream about.. Until then, I will continue my NO on mac, because to me, you are worse than microsoft, you don’t just control the software you control the hardware as well (and charge *way* too much for that shit, look at the HP site, they have 4GB solid state tablet PC’s with max EVERYTHING for less than $1700.. Apple has NO touchscreen or true tablet PC as of this writing)

Now, that is my dream, and my ideas… Someone make it happen please?

UPDATE 03/11/09:
I was right Apple is having something in the works.