The *Ping*

[ohaimark]

Sponsored by:

Vote in this round for a chance at winning carrying cases and a GH60 package from FalbaTech!

Round 3 rules:
Vote for the worst input device related experience of 2016.

The final round ends on Saturday 10 December, 20:00 UTC. You can change your vote until the end of the round by resubmitting the poll. The winner and full results will be released soon after the vote closes.

Official nominees:

The Fold-2000 flexible keyboard
Chyros explains everything with creative obscenities and a mellifluous voice in the video below.

Gurgling ***** trumpet.

The Apple Touch Bar
Apple is busying itself with shenanigans by, once again, giving users something new. Their products were innovative in the past. They had panache. iPods, Mac computers, and iPhone variants anticipated what people were looking for in tech products. Now Apple's lineup innovates with emoticon shortcut bars. Give us our Esc key back!





Razer
You might expect them to be on the cutting edge of technology, but you are wrong. Oh so wrong. They set the keyboarding world back more than a decade by releasing the Razer Ornata. It "combines the soft cushioned touch of a membrane rubber dome with the crisp tactile click of a mechanical switch." In other words, they're selling you a rubber dome rainbow vomit keyboard with a minuscule tactile leaf for $100 US.

Not exactly the Topre thock...

berserkfan
The Titanic was majestic when it sank. Berserkfan's moving sale ran into a similar iceberg. Items were sold twice, funds were sent via non-refundable channels, and delivery was a near-total failure. The full story is too long to post here. Was berserkfan a scammer, or just incompetent and stressed? I don't think we'll ever know for sure.



IvanIvanovich
IvanIvanovich was a GeekHack moderator and group buy organizer. Communications with Ivan gradually tapered off during several active group buys, eventually ceasing entirely. IvanIvanovich ultimately disappeared with the money. PayPal buyer protection failed to save any funds; too much time passed. Ivan's breach of trust deeply shook the keyboard community.

[OutragedPudding]

I'm glad to see that Cooler Master hasn't made the final round as both best modern company + The Ping

[Findecanor]

Fold-2000: I wouldn't vote for the flexible keyboard. While it is absolutely horrible to type on, it is not new, it is not unique (there are many similar ones) and there are applications where it makes sense.

Apple: It's an old idea and yet again, Apple was the first ones to engineer one that works. For that they could be commended. However, being an old trodden idea and being well-engineered does not magically transform it into a good idea. Lenovo had already tried it on the 2014 ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which had bombed, and Apple should have learned from that.
Concerning Emojis, I have a personal disdain for emoticon codes in Unicode. There has been for many years been a perfectly good existing encoding of emoticons in Unicode that works well and which encourages users' creativity: using existing characters - and unlike those symbols on the touchbar, those can be be touch-typed!

Razer: The point for a switch being tactile and/or clicky switch is to provide feedback to the user at the actuation point within the stroke that the key has been actuated.
By having the feedback higher up in the stroke and requiring the user to bottom out, Razer totally misses the point. They have made a switch that merely emulates a tactile/clicky switch. It is a mock-up, a fake!

[Norman_]

I might be biased, but then again, i lost a not insignificant amount of money because of IvanIvanovich

[vivalarevolución]

I am hoping this one goes to Apple. Berserkfan also would be a fitting winner, I saw that one coming with all his erratic posts over the years.

[DirtierDan]

Another tough one. The only reason apple beat out razer is because other companies tend to copy apple, and this could be a bad sign for the future if keyboards.

[JarateKing]

Fold-2000: I wouldn't vote for the flexible keyboard. While it is absolutely horrible to type on, it is not new, it is not unique (there are many similar ones) and there are applications where it makes sense.

Unless you're typing underwater I can't think of any real applications. Though I agree, an uncommon idea that isn't very good imo doesn't hold weight to either people that have actually stolen/mismanaged the community's money or things that are tricking unsuspecting buyers into the wrong things at the cost of quality keyboards.

[Techno Trousers]

Not to take anything away from the poor souls who were scammed, and I'm no Apple fanboy, but Razer had to be the worst of the year. Charging $100 for crappy rubber dome boards should have ended years ago. They are clearly exploiting their reputation in the gamer community to sell high margin junk to Ill informed consumers.

[ohaimark]

In alphabetical order, the top two contenders are:

Spoiler:

The Apple Touch Bar
IvanIvanovich

Please remember to vote!

[JarateKing]

They are clearly exploiting their reputation in the gamer community to sell high margin junk to Ill informed consumers.

At this point isn't that their reputation? Having a small handful of good products out of everything they've ever made, and then everything else being cheap and subpar in basically every way other than the LEDs and the marketing.

Most people I know with Razer products only got it because buying from a local store is more convenient than ordering good peripherals online.

[dlightningd]

I was amazed that the Apple Touch Bar made it to Round 3, until I tried one in real life. Oh wow, what a disaster.

[Chiovatto]

After reading the Ivan story more likely to vote on him, at least Razer dont do these things...not on that way I guess

[Findecanor]

I was a little bit surprised that the Lenovo Yoga Book did not make it to the final round.
I went to a store today where I tested that and the Apple TouchBar. The Yoga Book's keyboard/trackpad combo was absolutely horrible - not only is it a touch-keyboard - like a touchscreen, it also has a rubberized coating with a little bit of give which also made the trackpad feel weird. There is no visible feedback like on a touch-screen - there is a vibrator, but you won't feel it if you type fast enough. If you would linger on a "key" long enough to feel the vibrator you linger long enough for the key to repeat.

Apple's touch-bar has a nice screen and it provides spelling suggestions a'la touchscreen keyboards. The volume control slider can be popped up, with its close button in the same place as the key you had used to to activate it.
There is visual feedback when you press a "key", but the keys are smaller than regular keys so you can't see that and there is no haptic feedback. The Esc button is right above the boundary between ~ and 1, I.e. offset 1/2 key to the right.
Ultimately, it feels like the Apple current keyboards are not made for typists - they are made for people who hunt and peck and look at the keyboard while they do. The touchbar-equipped MacBook "Pro"'s keyboard is a slight improvement over last year's Butterfly mechanism for sure (I went back and forth to compare) but it is definitely not a good keyboard: it is not something that you would be able to type very fast and accurately on anyway even as a touch-typist.

[mecano]

I guess it's they work around for their failure to provide touch screens, like 'hey we won't give you full estate screen touching with multiple levels for drawing or manipulating objects, instead we'll give you a touch, dock like, bar', junk merchants.

[kekstee]

The thing about Ivan is that I would have named him as one of the most reiable guys to run a buy just a year ago. And he started the GMK custom hype with his purple mods. Or was there something going on before that?

[BimboBB]

The thing about Ivan is that I would have named him as one of the most reiable guys to run a buy just a year ago. And he started the GMK custom hype with his purple mods. Or was there something going on before that?

Can remember there was an Originative story before which could have been likely a "ping"-thing as well. But yes, Ivan was the first who went community GB style with GMK. My vote goes definitely for him. Sad story though.

[dlightningd]

That's a very good point about the Lenovo Yoga book. Especially for a company famed for their good laptop input devices, that whole device is really awful. Granted, it's a first gen product, but if they think that kind of input is acceptable, it's terrible news for laptop buyers.

[bhtooefr]

To be fair, Lenovo's lost their way almost entirely.

ThinkPad engineering is in the toilet, they've shipped freaking malware, group buys are sometimes faster at shipping product...

Nobody's following Lenovo except for maybe the Yoga hinge.

[vivalarevolución]

To be fair, Lenovo's lost their way almost entirely.

ThinkPad engineering is in the toilet, they've shipped freaking malware, group buys are sometimes faster at shipping product...

Nobody's following Lenovo except for maybe the Yoga hinge.

Hey, they still got the trackpoint! Which is basically a subset of a subset of the market.

[Shihatsu]

berserkfan. It was just to evil.