Support for Alternative Layouts
This is a summary of how alternative layouts have been supported by kits such as Colevrak and Homing. It is not a discussion of alt layout performance and development, but if that interests you I highly recommend starting with Pascal Getreuer’s A guide to alt keyboard layouts (why, how, which one?). It’s a concise and comprehensive overview with links to some great sites that go deeper. He also has a separate Links about keyboards page. The Keyboard layouts doc he recommends explains layout goals and metrics in detail, summarizing the alt layouts discussed here as well as more than one hundred others. Sculpted-profile The majority of custom keycap sets are sculpted-profile (Cherry, SA, MT3, KAT, etc. - more on profiles generally here) so let’s start there. Because each row has a unique keycap shape, alt layouts require a unique keycap for each legend that moves off its QWERTY row. At first there were two The Dvorak layout was patented in 1936 by August Dvorak & William L....
Apr 23, 2024
But I really this this is catered to the professionals out there in need of a good macro pad. I can use myself as an example. I am an audio engineer and constantly and working with large format consoles in studios, many of which have their Pro Tools system shoved off in some corner. This means I'm constantly rolling around in a chair back and forth to use the transport controls while mixing/setting levels/etc. This pad will allow me to have my own macros saved (so no use for software on a computer) that I can bring along to mixing sessions in any studio with a long USB cable and will be able to program any keys I want into this pad. For example I can access my separate edit and mix windows, use play/pause/rec easily from the center of the console.
This is just an example for me. Anyone that does any kind of editing (video, photo, audio) rendering, etc can make very good use of this.
Having a nice looking macro pad like this instead of some glowing Razer monstrosity is definitely worth it.
Have you never been part of a community with an enthusiast side before?
Think about it like a tool. You can buy a $5 pop rivet gun, or you can buy a $200 air rivet gun that's 5 seconds faster per rivet and is a little easier on your hands. When you're fixing two pieces of metal together quickly every now and then, the $5 rivet gun works just fine, it'd be an indulgence to buy the $200 gun when you use it maybe once a year. But when you use it every day, when you're putting 1000 rivets into something a day, the $200 gun starts making a bit more sense - it saves you a couple of seconds each time you use it, and you get the luxury of your hands not cramping up every 10 minutes.
That's what the M10-A is, it's the $200 rivet gun to the mouse and keyboard's $5 gun. They do fundamentally the same thing, but one saves a little time for the people using it 1000 times a day, it's well built, and it's a bit of a luxury item too.
Like I said before, to each his own. I won't try to sell you on a lump of aluminum you don't need, and I'm not going to profess that the M10-A is a total necessity and not a bit of an indulgence, but hopefully that gives you an idea of why other people like it and what they're going to use it for :)
Maybe this is one of those things that is super useful for a niche group of people, like recording engineers? Since I'm not in that universe it seems totally alien to me. And why is it teathered with a cable? Seems like a wireless version would be 10 times as convenient.
I simply don't get it. Which is why I'm guessing it's a millennial thing and I'm far too old to comprehend the need.
Pretty much ANYONE that makes a living using a computer in this day and age will not only understand the point of this, but would be able to put it to use. Sure, not everyone will want to drop this much money on something like this, but by the sales already, it's clear that this is a product that people do want.
Wireless is a whole different beast. You immediately have to start worrying about FCC laws, shipping gets a lot more complicated, and using lithium ion batteries further complicates shipping, etc. Its not like you just say "oh, lets make this wireless." Not at all how it works.
If you are just using Netscape to browse the web and Juno to check your email, you obviously don't need this product.
Your condescending and utterly ridiculous phrasing is what's coming across as crass, not your lack of knowledge regarding the product. If you are actually looking for information just read Livingspeedbump's (and @KingRama's , elsewhere) replies, if you're just here to be patronizing and imply 300+ of "youngsters" (wrongfully assumed, maybe you're right though if you're like 85 years old, if that's the case then my bad) are complete idiots just because we happen to not be born before the Berlin wall was built then I suppose you can just continue to ignore the explanations. Your assumptions and colossal narrow mindedness are just uncalled for either way, I figured this was obvious.
@livingspeedbump got it pretty much right on with the wireless stuff, we'd love to make a wireless M10-A, but it's a little beyond us right now. Electronically (my world) it's not too complicated but the regulation and shipping side is a little daunting, and this is our first product on Massdrop so we don't want to disappoint people with shipping delays and cost overruns because we didn't do our regulatory research properly.
Last thing, people seem to be getting super-antsy about the millennial thing, and we're agreed that a good chunk of the people buying the M10-A pad are under 25. Massdrop tends to attract a slightly younger audience on the whole than say eBay or Amazon so the numbers reflect that, but I think it's less an age thing and more a type-of-work thing. I'm likely a little younger than you but squarely a Gen-Yer, and the pad is still pretty useful for the kind of work I do (electronic engineering, programming, CAD). I spend a lot of time at a keyboard and have a bunch of silly-long keyboard shortcuts memorised for doing specific things in the packages I use, that's one of the reasons Rama & I built the pad, it's something we'd both like to use.
If you want another example of a similar idea, take a look at day-trading keyboards or keyboards on POS terminals, they tend to be custom and have keys to do specific things in whatever software package is running on the computer they're hooked up to :)
I read some of the comments about this product and it only makes me even more confused. It's a unicorn brush to me, or maybe an elf comb, but you get the idea.
Bwahahahahhahaha
enjoy being replaced by efficiency.
Also how did you do anything if you have been a developer for 30 years and havn't touched vim or emacs?
Your opinion is fine, you don't understand what this is or what it achieves, unlucky, it has been explained several times in detail and you choose to ignore the benefits as they would not be relevant to you and your work methods (or so you think). Great, you've saved "$150". The way you're wording things is just absolutely ridiculous, your reply to me was acceptable hence I figured it'd best to put the matter to rest but you are relentless. You've said your piece, that's enough, give it a rest soldier.
ªApplying the 21% VAT in Spain, for example.
On the other hand, I do not share teckel's view, well, to be honest I kinda do, but I don't see why is my bussiness to make everyone aware of my opinion, much less to force them to agree with me... If you feel the minipad is worth 100/150 dollars for you... Then it is! As simple as that.
Also hkf57, don't make me laught, those 2ms you shave with this cute little keyboard means little to nothing in the real world... Like I don't, and never will, see people complaning in code reviews because you wasted 2 full seconds of your day coding a solution to a problem/algorithm/app/etc... Once again, if you wanna keep thinking that, it's your right to do so.
The price in Euro as well as taxing is irrelevant as he referred to it as costing $150, there's no argument there, not sure why you'd even bring that up. Exaggerating the price from 100 to 150 is 33.33(3)% increase, that's not negligible, if one does not recall the price and is too busy/self entitled to not flip the page back and check the price (you could set up a macro to do that by the way, faster than using your mouse to slowly move toward the page arrows on the top left of the browser) for the sake of being accurate then that voids any point that person's attempting to make. Better to be quiet at that point.
I'm not defending the product here, this could be an automatic orange squeezer and my stance on the situation would be the exact same. If you are unwilling to accept facts and rather name call for no reason at all then there's a problem that the person needs to face.
I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s replies in this discussion, but it’s starting to get a little off the rails and I’m going to ask everyone to go ahead and let this one go before it becomes a personal insult contest.
Thanks everyone.
Said wormhole should also have a control panel created by Rama. Maybe with some of those rad PBT Milky Way keycaps?.,....