deskthority

Let's talk about Bluetooth folding keyboards, shall we?

I'm typing this post on a Targus AKF001US, and it's downright awful. I mean, I was expecting the mediocrity of scissor-stabilized rubber dome, but not like this. The layout is badly compromised due to them cheaping out on the hinge (basically, the two keyboard halves don't slide together), but that's far from this keyboard's worst problem. No, that would be the fact that the scissor stabilization is just horrible and frictiony, and the rubber domes are especially mushy.

Wonder how much interest there would be in something better. Even Cherry MLs are better, although they're far from my favorite (Cherry doesn't really seem to get tactility).

It sounds like the low profile Alps aren't great.

How thin can a short-throw Topre board be?

And, if push comes to shove, there's always buckling rubber sleeve (basically, a giant rubber dome with a hole in the top so the key stem can hit the membrane directly), which actually feels pretty good as far as rubber goes, and IBM claims 11 mm thickness for the variant used in the Model M4 and M6.

I'm thinking a nice 60% could be done, 18 mm pitch, at somewhere around 140 mm wide, 90 mm tall, and about 25-30 mm thick, when folded, with decent switches. Thinking something like this for the layout: http://goo.gl/NxqyfK

Why folding? I'd think that a thin 60% keyboard, with a protective cover over the keys, would be easily transportable. The folding aspect introduces a lot of complications.

Because a pocketable 60% would have tiny keys. The widest I can see as reasonably pocketable would be 190 mm wide, and that's 13.1 mm pitch assuming that it's 14.5 U wide.

I agree with Jeff: folding introduces a lot of constraints. Although necessity could make for an artful design.

What's so much worse about going for MX and standard (say DSA) caps? At least for a prototype, it's much easier to source parts. And the lessons learned will likely be valuable for a more specialised design, using ML or whatever else.

How does something like this grab you?
http://kbtalking.cool3c.com/article/15301

Not sure which Alps switches you're referring to. This is Alps's answer to Cherry ML:
[wiki]Alps ultra low profile[/wiki]

Clicky, too, but that is the only time that they have ever been seen. That's a 1992 keyboard, and the switches are not in the Alps 1994 catalogue. Too bad that I would have to fly out to some remote part of Japan to get to try them out!

Personally I consider the tactility in Cherry ML to be more than adequate; the problem is the scrapy sound and feel you get from them.

The best scissor switches I've used were in a Dell Latitude E4310, but I don't own or have any access to the laptop and I haven't got a clue who made the switches. My question for anything involving domes is what the odds are of being able to maintain a consistent feel from batch to batch, year after year, and at what price.

Speaking of Alps and oddity, I was just reading this article about Steve Jobs' friendship with veteran Alps engineer Yasuyuki Hirose:

http://nobi.com/en/Steve%20Jobs%20and%2 ... -1211.html

Yasu worked with Apple right back at the beginning on a Shugart floppy drive clone, and then on the originally planned floppy drive for the Mac (the "Twiggy") before skulduggery and functional superiority won for Sony.

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?st ... s_Desk.txt

There is a keyboard angle in the story: Steve invited Yasu to the iMac launch in 1998, after decades apart, and while the iMac was famously floppy-free, he did, unusually, point out to the press that the keyboard was made by Alps.

Hmm. Pity it was that keyboard!

Before messing with the layout became cool:

ah man bearable advertising.. so soothing