
Microsoft turns an obsession with detail into micron-optimized keyboards - deegles
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/26/how-microsoft-turns-an-obsession-with-detail-into-micron-optimized-keyboards/
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joeblubaugh
> _The original Natural Keyboard was the first split-key, ergonomic keyboard,
> the fundamentals of which have only ever been slightly improved upon._

This is just false. Split keyboards and sculpted bowls have been around since
the 70s

~~~
jacobolus
Not to mention the Microsoft version is _very significantly fundamentally
worse_ than earlier designs from the 1960s and 70s... and 80s... and 90s....
and later designs from the 2000s... and 2010s...

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jedberg
> Microsoft may be known primarily for its software and services,

Not to me. I ditched their software 17 years ago, but I love their hardware.
I’ve used a Microsoft ergo keyboard since the first one.

I literally bought a new one yesterday after spilling water on my old one
after having it for the last eight years.

~~~
innocenat
Used to be a Microsoft hardware fan, until my MS Sculpt Ergnomic Mouse broke
thrice in 2 months.

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krzyk
What did break in it? I'm using sculpt since it was released and the mouse is
still alive.

But I can't say that about the USB receiver, it broke after 6 months (it
stopped receiving anything frombmouse/keyboard and the plastic cover just
broke). The replacement keyboard has almost the same issue with the receiver
(loses contact depending ontthe way it is inserted), so I put it in an USB hub
so I won't need to touch it and break the contacts. Besides that I love it,
and I love that the useless numpad is not the part of keyboard (BTW.I why
every 15 inch laptop keyboard is has those is beyond me), I store it in a
drawer.

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amatecha
Dang, I was reading this article, scrolled close to the bottom, and the site
suddenly "reloaded" with completely different articles, removing the entire
Microsoft keyboard article from the page. Why would they implement such a
user-hostile design, making it impossible to access the content I came to the
site for?

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mrich
A/B testing showed that it increased the number of page hits ;)

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bicubic
Hahaha that actually sounds plausible

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AlchemistCamp
I can't agree with the claims of this article.

Kinesis is far ahead of MS's so-called "ergonomic" keyboards. I know because I
suffer from RSI and have tried every model I could get my hands on.

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erlkonig
The wildly more hand-friendly Kinesis model 100 was earlier, ~1992 (from
[https://kinesis-ergo.com/company/about-kinesis/](https://kinesis-
ergo.com/company/about-kinesis/) ), and the ergonomic Matron was pre-1980, I
think.

The Natural has always been a watered-down, cheap feeling keyboard by
comparison to thm, with - it would seem - much more attention being paid to
not looking too weird than to actually being ergonomic, such as not
straightening out the key columns, going convex, putting control keys where
the thumbs can reach them, etc. It's pathetic. The only truly positive
attribute specific to the Natural when compared to other ergonomics keyboards
is that it was cheap, < $100. Although it also felt cheap, wore out relatively
quickly making it more expensive per year of potential use, and had a terrible
key mechanism that may have negated a good part of any ergonomic benefit -
especially after some wear.

I'm biased, of course, I've typed on the "Naturals" and have several Kinesis
Ergos. The latter keyboard style is the only thing that's made typing
comfortable, and in the office I work in, I'm no alone in preferring them.

~~~
AlchemistCamp
One I want to try is the Ergodox EZ. It's basically a mashup of my two
favorite Kinesis (Advantage 2 and Edge). Have you tried it yet?

~~~
IronBacon
Not the OP but I have one that's collecting dust. I've chosen single profile
keycaps for it (the keycaps have the same "shape" for every rows) because I
wanted to use the Colemak layout, but I was never able to get used to it.

To be honest didn't tried too much. I also have an old Kinesis Advantage
model, the one with the rubber function keys (I hate them, the Advantage2 has
new function keys but they still look cheap membrane buttons) anyway I'm quite
satisfied with a TECK 209, it's not perfect but it's more portable than the
Advantage if I'm on the go.

I suppose the next one to try would be a Maltron.

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GavinMcG
I was curious what "micron-optimized" meant but it's just catchy headline
copy.

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onyva
>> I may as well say at the outset that this piece was done essentially at the
invitation (but not direction) of Microsoft...

Bad habits die hard.

Reminds me of the good old days we were fighting Microsoft in Israel, where
the local marketing team would prep journalists (one especially made a career
out of it) in its offices, who would later publish articles explaining why
Linux is so bad for you and why it has no future. The good old “get the facts”
campaign and such.

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jankotek
Micron-optimized keyboard sounds like horrible reliability. Speck of dust and
laptop is ruined (Surface laptops can not be repaired in non-destructive way).

I had 4x Natural 4000 keyboards, they had constant problems due to bad design.
Space bar got stuck. Keyboard wiring was prone to corrosion and shortcuts,
keys would randomly stop working. Had to disassemble keyboard, wash inside
with mild acid and leave it to dry.

At end I did this repair once a month and had multiple keyboards on rotation.
I put up with that, there was no alternative at that time.

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jakobegger
Reading about how diverse their testers are made me wonder: why is the end
result only a single size? Why do they not go all the way and offer their
keyboards and mice in multiple sizes?

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manigandham
Likely not profitable to have so many SKUs.

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bawana
Their soundproof room is NEGATIVE 20 decibels?!

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DoingIsLearning
You could probably hear your own heartbeat in those conditions...

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kwhitefoot
I get a distinct impression from this article that the target user is a
trained typist. It would be interesting to find out if an ergonomist would
think differently about a keyboard to be used by users who do not touch type,
that is, the vast majority of users.

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growtofill
There used to be notebooks with slightly curved keyboards, can’t recall the
vendor (HP? Dell?). I really wish Microsoft (and Apple) would re-set this
trend.

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IronBacon
Yeah right, obsessed with shaving some µm from keyboards but then let's put
laptop style "short travel keys" keyboards on a desk because it looks cool.
And not get me started with using the same horizontal staggered layout that
was necessary 200 years ago on typewriters but it makes absolutely no sense
today.

The fun thing is I've seen "ortholinear" keyboards sold for kids because
horizontal staggered layout is for adults...

P.S. in my personal experience vertical staggered should be the default layout

P.P.S. and yes bikeshedding

~~~
growtofill
Is vertical staggered the same as ortholinear? Haven’t encountered the term
before.

Agree that default physical layout + qwerty as status quo is disappointing,
though.

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CarVac
Ortholinear is no stagger in either direction.

Column stagger is what you see on the Ergodox or Atreus or Mitosis or Iris or
any of the recently vast proliferation of ergo designs.

~~~
growtofill
Thanks for the references! I see that all three of the above favor split-hand
design alongside with vertical staggering.

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jacobolus
Unfortunately, being a big company, they can’t do anything very radical or
work from first principles. Just like every other big company today, all of
their keyboard designs end up being mediocre spinoffs of a basic keyboard
designed in the 1870s which had evolutionaruy changes (not all ergonomically
positive) in the 1920s–30s, and then again in the 60s, then again in the 90s.

The IBM keyboards produced from 1960–1990 are better than anything Microsoft
puts out today: faster to type on, more ergonomic, much more reliable,
sturdier, ... and of course much more expensive to produce. For particularly
nice examples, take a look at these,
[https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Beam_Spring_Keyboards](https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Beam_Spring_Keyboards)

Or pick your favorite other vendor. Pretty much all of keyboards sold in the
70s–80s were better than anything available at mass scale today. Back then
computers were competing head to head with typewriters, and the best
electronic typewriters were really nice to type on. I’m partial to the Canon
typewriters of the early 1980s with nice Alps switches, but e.g. some Olympia
typewriters of the early 80s were deliciously clicky.

For at least the 2 decades from 1980–2000, pretty much every change in mass-
market keyboards was driven by cost cutting. It’s not too surprising that
quality degraded.

Even if we assume we can’t change the basic keyboard shape, one of the
important features that Microsoft (and most other) keyboards have dropped
since the 90s is that further-away rows on keyboards used to be elevated above
the home row in a sort of step-like pattern. This makes it much easier to
reach the tops of those keys, and therefore speeds up typing them. The
original designs from the typewriters of the 60s and 70s were based on
research done by Honeywell and IBM and imitated widely, but later keytop
profiles (including for modern Microsoft keyboards) were designed by people
who didn’t understand the reason for the design, and just imitated a
progressively watered down form. (Indeed an even _more_ aggressive step than
the ones used on those old keyboards is ergonomically preferable for most
typists.)

* * *

All of Microsoft’s fancy lab studies seem to me like A-B testing all of the
possible choices of features for a penny-farthing bicycle without ever
considering adding a chain. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-
farthing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing)

If what we care about is ergonomics (which is to say, reducing static strain
on muscles in the hand/arm while using the strong and efficient part of the
main finger flexors’ range of motion to type, and reducing the finger and arm
motion required to reach the keys), then the Maltron from the 1970s is much
better than any of the dome-shaped Microsoft keyboards
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltron)

Better still, my favorite concept is a never-mass-produced ergonomic keyboard
design called the DataStealth from the 1990s,
[http://web.archive.org/web/20000601172323/http://www.protomi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20000601172323/http://www.protomic.com/products/products_01.htm)
which is in my opinion the most anatomically informed design ever seriously
undertaken, developed by an expert from first principles.

But also check out this awesome IBM patent from 1964,
[https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=63415.0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=63415.0)

Or see the Japanese TRON project keyboards,
[http://xahlee.info/kbd/TRON_keyboard.html](http://xahlee.info/kbd/TRON_keyboard.html)

Or more recently, Keyboardio,
[https://shop.keyboard.io/](https://shop.keyboard.io/)

~~~
dao-
> basic keyboard designed in the 19th century

You seem to mean the 20th century.

~~~
jacobolus
The basic design is from the 1870s.

~~~
dao-
Ah, fair enough. I thought it could be possible but all your actual examples
were from the 20th century.

