7 ms·

Reinventing how we use computers

44 points by ploum 4y ago

eimrine 4y ago
I have similar thoughts, but closer to having a decent keyboard than having another computer. My idea is to fit the keyboard into a pair of gloves, which can either serve as a normal wireless keyboard for a device with a screen, or a wired keyboard for a computer tucked away somewhere in a pocket with headphones instead of a screen. From a previous discussion, I was told that Johnny Mnemonic had such gloves, but I did not see their work on the video. I appreciate author's thoughts on how our screens are shaping us as computer users, and I think an audio interface will make our computing experience feel more like intimacy: most people are fine with 20% of the screen offering you adware (because the rest of the screen still serves on purpose), but no one will listen to even one second of adware for 59 seconds of content. This is how I see the future of portable computers: the keyboard or brain implant as the main input source, sound or another brain implant as the main output source, the FLOSS operating system, and the ability to be the keyboard for an unlimited number of computers with or without a screen.
- Nzen 4y ago
  If you want a wearable keyboard, take a look at tap strap [0]. It is a series of connected rings, for one hand, that sense tapped chords as keyboard presses or mouse movements. To be clear, I don't have personal experience with it. I disagree with Ploum that we should expect or hope for ergonomic keyboards with laptops. The market for people who desire and can afford them is too small for a production run. I say this as someone who typed this with an ergodox and followed that conversational space for several years. [0] https://youtu.be/owg3-LZpsSI?t=20 https://youtu.be/owg3-LZpsSI?t=20 [1] https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=68 https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=68
  - eimrine 4y ago
    From what I have seen from your [0], this thing still has a requirement to have a table which is exactly what I am trying to get rid of. Second link shows me another not friendly to touchtyping requirement, you can see how he types some digits on 1:46 or via direct link: https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=106 https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=106 The gloves I am talking about needs to have some clicking experience for being able to provide a touchtyping experience with no need to see anything. Experience I am talking about has to be compatible with walking, with riding a bicycle and even with driving (despite a steering wheel might be an excellent keyboard if to place keys on that part of ring on which your fingers are situated most of time).
gizmo 4y ago
Computers are consumption devices because of the internet, not because of screens or bad keyboards. For what it's worth, I think modern keyboards and screens are fantastic for creative work, but to each their own. A chunky keyboard can easily contain a raspberry pi, a computer good enough to last a lifetime. Much of modern tech is bloated ad-infested garbage, but you can just opt out. You don't have to spend your life consuming content and gluing libraries together.
- Grumbledour 4y ago
  But having the computer of your dreams means either making sacrifices (Running a VM atop a bloated OS, on a tablet for example, while lugging around an additional keyboard) or building it yourself from the ground up. Having something else, something more simple and often having something more text oriented is a wish I have now seen often at different places on the internet. Maybe there is something missing, maybe just a place to tie it all together, leadership, or maybe its just that everyone wants something so slightly different, that there can be no concerted effort? But certainly people with such wishes would benefit if there was some groundwork laid. And I also think showing instead of telling what we could have could also positively impact the rest of the ecosystem.
- eimrine 4y ago
  > Computers are consumption devices because of the internet, not because of screens or bad keyboards. Could you expand on this statement? If some websites or services are too insisting on consuming (apps, youtube, news websites, telegram publics) than you may just not use them. But if your computer has no keyboard than you can not effectively produce text which is (and always was) the very basis of human civilisation. What if possible to create if 97% of people are not working with either text or anything analog? Various spam like Youtube videos and photos for social networks?
- kkfx 4y ago
  Mh, modern desktops instead of being desktops (witch means production and consumption devices) are mere modern awfully complex, limited and limiting dumb terminals not because of internet (witch is NOT the web) but because commercial evolution locked and demolished the original desktop concept from Xerox PARC to initially dumb machines just a bit "electrified" to keep a slow evolution instead of a revolution, after when the revolution can't be stopped, they push dumb machines aiming a crafting a virtual "metaverse" mimicking the real world office organization instead of a revolution again, than again they choose to trap all PARC innovations in commercial services to arrive to actual GAFAM. That's nothing to do about "computers" that's just about those who implement them commercially, making a cartel who is closely similar to classic Sicilian mafia. Those who in the west are commonly known now as GAFAM, yesterday as IBM, then Microsoft, Yandex in Russian Fed., Baidu in China and so on. Their development diverge from the concept of an unique integrated environment, interconnected with peers, the Desktop, to push first "individual applications" who are like "promoted functions" the end users can't really change nor combine, than "individual services". So today if I post in HN from Firefox directly I can't get 2+2 = 4 whith the = 4 computed, because that's "a function" done by some other programs, while in Emacs I can compute easily because a function is a function, no barrier exists and such function do not need specific design, package, install, distribution, update etc might be just something like (defun eval-math-expr (beg end) "Quickly run calc on a region (from BEG to END)." (interactive "r") (require 'calc) (let ((result (calc-eval (buffer-substring beg end)))) (save-excursion (goto-char end) (insert " = " result)))) witch can be bound to anything I like. And in the same way anything is done in the same environment. That's the "end user programming" and the "end user glue" of anything where the barrier between code and data do not exists and so it's possible to produce anything on a desktop, with reasonable effort.
borbulon 4y ago
I have a couple of thoughts on this but they're more parallel than in complete agreement: 1. I don't think we need a phone and a home computer. There's really very little reason at this point why they can't be one and the same. A device that plugs into a dock at home and becomes a home computer, and when you undock it it becomes a phone. And I don't mean the ham-handed attempts we've seen, I mean a full-on contextual OS switch. 2. I think the next major evolution in phones should be removing the screen. We need to develop a voice assistant technology which retains context and can "understand" in a more conversational style, but I think that once we've jumped that hurdle there would be plenty of people—for whom phone-staring is currently an act of boredom or filling time—who would willingly get rid of that screen in favor of a voice assistant.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  I think Samsung DeX is not half bad for your point #1. The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. But I think generally it's pretty underrated. It had done really annoying issues in the beginning but right now I could imagine doing a working day on it. I don't because I am really a power user, but for someone with normal office use I could see it being viable. I wish this feature would make it to mainstream AOSP because right now it's too obscure to really take off. They made a developer thing with Android 10 but didn't take it the whole way after that.
  - pornel 4y ago
    On the hardware side, it's getting close. iPad Pro and MacBooks are basically the same hardware. If only iPadOS wasn't like wearing mittens…
  - bzzzt 4y ago
    > The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. Since we're fantasising about future computers I hope there won't be more than 8Gb necessary to multitask. I remember running Windows and Office in the 90s on 16Mb. Seems like the 1000-fold increase in memory was mostly negated by wasteful software engineering...
samsquire 4y ago
For computers to be used forever, we must accept that the code written for a computer can be outlived by the form factor. So what persists throughout time is not necessarily code but ideas. So I want people to create whitepapers and document their learnings of their project and industry projects so others can learn from their lessons. The good ideas should be passed on through time. For example, NES/Playstation/Switch/Xbox/PC game sourcecode are essentially one-shot projects, the code is not mutated much after release except for bug fixes whereas general purpose computing the code must be adapted over time to cope with changes in the world. The lineage of code written for these game consoles and old PCs, amiga and commodore are all ending. But the ideas behind that code persists. For example, the code of Pentium Windows 95 tower probably doesn't resemble the code of Windows 11 anymore. And the tower CPU is very similar. You can probably see ideas in the code there but everything else is different. All the lessons of DOS, Amiga, Commodore and other old retro computers and minicomputers such as PDP-11 and IBM mainframes should all be learned and passed on. We want software ideas that are durable and last forever. File systems are an idea that are durable. Processes are an idea that are durable. I do wonder how many young people possess the capacity to writing an operating system today. The skills have been long fought by Linus and other operating system developers throughout time. I want people to document the lessons and implementation notes of various low level system services. The UNIX POSIX API is durable. I'm writing this on an Intel 10th generation NUC and it is plenty fast for running Ubuntu virtual machines and running IntelliJ on Windows 11. It has an Intel Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10710U CPU @ 1.10GHz, 1608 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s) I suspect I can get a lot of usage out of this computer and move homes more than once if need be. The computer is only 4 inches by 4 inches so it is easily transportable. Another idea that needs to persist is the idea of archive quality formats. PDF, JPEG, Markdown shall probably be readable in 10 years time. But other document formats maybe not so much.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  > For example, NES/Playstation/Switch/Xbox/PC game sourcecode are essentially one-shot projects, the code is not mutated much after release except for bug fixes whereas general purpose computing the code must be adapted over time to cope with changes in the world. The lineage of code written for these game consoles and old PCs, amiga and commodore are all ending. But the ideas behind that code persists. This doesn’t sound right to me. Sports games for example reuse much of the old game (NHL 2022 reuses a lot of code from 2021). Additionally almost all games use a standard game engine (in-house or external) and that engine is reused across many titles. That engine incorporates those learnings. It’s very hard to build anything if you’re constantly starting from scratch. I think you’re heavily discounting just how often existing code is reused.
323 4y ago
> Why haven’t we seen a single computer with such a built-in keyboard? Because computers are not built to type any more. There are built to consume content. Interesting how casually author dismisses the millions of people filming themselves and posting on Instagram/TikTok as "consuming". There's more to "creating" than just writing code in a terminal. > You own your input (your favourite keyboard and trackball) Same thing again, author doesn't even mention microphone/camera as "input". > We forgot that a computer should not hide how it works to be easy but instead allow its user to learn gradually about it. Shall we make the same argument about cars? Should cars gradually introduce you to mechanical and electrical engineering? What about your bathroom fixture? Should it try to steer you into becoming a plumber? Some say plumbing is as critical to our civilization as computing.
- hulitu 4y ago
  > Shall we make the same argument about cars? Should cars gradually introduce you to mechanical and electrical engineering? you need a driving licence to draw cars. Now there are some BMW and Audi drivers who never touch the turn signal.
- vel0city 4y ago
  > Some say plumbing is as critical to our civilization as computing. If I had to choose between personally owning a computer or running water and flushing toilets, I'd pick the pipes every time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
petegordon 4y ago
I would like to give up the physical keyboard in the next ~5 years entirely. I like touch, pencil/pen, voice/microphone for input and screens with speakers for output.
- hulitu 4y ago
  > I like touch Wait until your fingers starts complaining.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    Touch + Active Digitizer Pen is very good in my experience. Handwriting recognition has gotten much better this decade, and having 'fingers" allows for pinch-to-zoom and finger-point to scroll. The pen allows for copy/paste, selection, and "hover" allows you to access Alt-text. Touch + Active Digitizer seems to be an acceptable replacement for a mouse, and even functions as a very crude keyboard with handwriting recognition. The only issue is that I type several times faster than I write, so the keyboard is still my preferred entry method.
- jll29 4y ago
  The opposite: I'd pay much more if I didn't have to touch glass ever again in a computing & communication device.
marcus_holmes 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand the objection to the clamshell laptop here. You can easily close (or almost-close) the clamshell, add an external keyboard and/or an external monitor. The clamshell is exactly what the author describes from their Forever Computer, except that it also opens up to have a screen and keyboard that are usable if you need them.
signa11 4y ago
dupe : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33867537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33867537
ThePhysicist 4y ago
Hard to imagine to own a computer for 80 years, technological progress moves so fast. Like the author, I also have a couple of typewriters at home and even there it's obvious that you wouldn't want to keep using let's say a model from the 60s if you had access to one from the 80s, as it's a world of difference in terms of ease of use. It's also hard to imagine how you would non-destructively transform the 60s model into the 80s one, as everything is so different (size, key layout, materials, etc.).
throwaway4aday 4y ago
I don't intend to be mean but this is technological fetishism. The HIDs that currently define the computer being talked about here are simply attempts to fit the device to the environment and purpose for which it is used. Screens, mouse, trackpad, keyboard are all simply the best we can do with current limitations. These limitations are felt more in some domains than in others. If your domain is writing then the typewriter does feel like a natural ideal for what a computer should be and a keyboard is a natural successor. If instead you are a 3D artist then the form of a typewriter becomes antithesis to how you want to interact with your computer and even the best peripheral options we have are inadequate. I look forward to a time when the limitations of screen and keyboard are obsolete. When I can move freely through space and populate that space with shapes, images, text, scenes unbounded by tiny rectangles. Where I can interact with that overlay by conversing with it, touching it, wielding all manner of physical and virtual tools. I'll carefully place my old keyboard on the shelf beside the typewriter and will only take it down to use it from time to time out of nostalgia.
- yetihehe 4y ago
  > Where I can interact with that overlay by conversing with it, touching it, wielding all manner of physical and virtual tools. And if I want to listen to one radio channel or song without switching it (or opening garage doors), will I have to stand still in the middle of the room?
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    This is a non-sensical reply to me but I'll answer anyways. I think the ideal interface for this already exists, you just say "Play [song] by [artist]" and the song starts playing.
    - yetihehe 4y ago
      This was reply inspired by some description I think I've read in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Voice interfaces are not yet perfect, have problems with understanding users and could misinterpret some sentences spoken to other people as spoken to it. Also when you have interfaces everywhere, you risk stumbling on and activating some controls you didn't even know exist, common troupe in films where someone presses one button and everything in a room goes crazy, along with shaking bed. My reply was not directed at you specifically, just for general class of zealots of touch (or even touchless) interfaces.

44 points by ploum 4y ago

I have similar thoughts, but closer to having a decent keyboard than having another computer. My idea is to fit the keyboard into a pair of gloves, which can either serve as a normal wireless keyboard for a device with a screen, or a wired keyboard for a computer tucked away somewhere in a pocket with headphones instead of a screen. From a previous discussion, I was told that Johnny Mnemonic had such gloves, but I did not see their work on the video. I appreciate author's thoughts on how our screens are shaping us as computer users, and I think an audio interface will make our computing experience feel more like intimacy: most people are fine with 20% of the screen offering you adware (because the rest of the screen still serves on purpose), but no one will listen to even one second of adware for 59 seconds of content. This is how I see the future of portable computers: the keyboard or brain implant as the main input source, sound or another brain implant as the main output source, the FLOSS operating system, and the ability to be the keyboard for an unlimited number of computers with or without a screen.

Nzen 4y ago
If you want a wearable keyboard, take a look at tap strap [0]. It is a series of connected rings, for one hand, that sense tapped chords as keyboard presses or mouse movements. To be clear, I don't have personal experience with it. I disagree with Ploum that we should expect or hope for ergonomic keyboards with laptops. The market for people who desire and can afford them is too small for a production run. I say this as someone who typed this with an ergodox and followed that conversational space for several years. [0] https://youtu.be/owg3-LZpsSI?t=20 https://youtu.be/owg3-LZpsSI?t=20 [1] https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=68 https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=68
- eimrine 4y ago
  From what I have seen from your [0], this thing still has a requirement to have a table which is exactly what I am trying to get rid of. Second link shows me another not friendly to touchtyping requirement, you can see how he types some digits on 1:46 or via direct link: https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=106 https://youtu.be/UzRjtvMQds4?t=106 The gloves I am talking about needs to have some clicking experience for being able to provide a touchtyping experience with no need to see anything. Experience I am talking about has to be compatible with walking, with riding a bicycle and even with driving (despite a steering wheel might be an excellent keyboard if to place keys on that part of ring on which your fingers are situated most of time).

gizmo 4y ago

Computers are consumption devices because of the internet, not because of screens or bad keyboards. For what it's worth, I think modern keyboards and screens are fantastic for creative work, but to each their own. A chunky keyboard can easily contain a raspberry pi, a computer good enough to last a lifetime. Much of modern tech is bloated ad-infested garbage, but you can just opt out. You don't have to spend your life consuming content and gluing libraries together.

Grumbledour 4y ago
But having the computer of your dreams means either making sacrifices (Running a VM atop a bloated OS, on a tablet for example, while lugging around an additional keyboard) or building it yourself from the ground up. Having something else, something more simple and often having something more text oriented is a wish I have now seen often at different places on the internet. Maybe there is something missing, maybe just a place to tie it all together, leadership, or maybe its just that everyone wants something so slightly different, that there can be no concerted effort? But certainly people with such wishes would benefit if there was some groundwork laid. And I also think showing instead of telling what we could have could also positively impact the rest of the ecosystem.
eimrine 4y ago
> Computers are consumption devices because of the internet, not because of screens or bad keyboards. Could you expand on this statement? If some websites or services are too insisting on consuming (apps, youtube, news websites, telegram publics) than you may just not use them. But if your computer has no keyboard than you can not effectively produce text which is (and always was) the very basis of human civilisation. What if possible to create if 97% of people are not working with either text or anything analog? Various spam like Youtube videos and photos for social networks?
kkfx 4y ago
Mh, modern desktops instead of being desktops (witch means production and consumption devices) are mere modern awfully complex, limited and limiting dumb terminals not because of internet (witch is NOT the web) but because commercial evolution locked and demolished the original desktop concept from Xerox PARC to initially dumb machines just a bit "electrified" to keep a slow evolution instead of a revolution, after when the revolution can't be stopped, they push dumb machines aiming a crafting a virtual "metaverse" mimicking the real world office organization instead of a revolution again, than again they choose to trap all PARC innovations in commercial services to arrive to actual GAFAM. That's nothing to do about "computers" that's just about those who implement them commercially, making a cartel who is closely similar to classic Sicilian mafia. Those who in the west are commonly known now as GAFAM, yesterday as IBM, then Microsoft, Yandex in Russian Fed., Baidu in China and so on. Their development diverge from the concept of an unique integrated environment, interconnected with peers, the Desktop, to push first "individual applications" who are like "promoted functions" the end users can't really change nor combine, than "individual services". So today if I post in HN from Firefox directly I can't get 2+2 = 4 whith the = 4 computed, because that's "a function" done by some other programs, while in Emacs I can compute easily because a function is a function, no barrier exists and such function do not need specific design, package, install, distribution, update etc might be just something like (defun eval-math-expr (beg end) "Quickly run calc on a region (from BEG to END)." (interactive "r") (require 'calc) (let ((result (calc-eval (buffer-substring beg end)))) (save-excursion (goto-char end) (insert " = " result)))) witch can be bound to anything I like. And in the same way anything is done in the same environment. That's the "end user programming" and the "end user glue" of anything where the barrier between code and data do not exists and so it's possible to produce anything on a desktop, with reasonable effort.

borbulon 4y ago

I have a couple of thoughts on this but they're more parallel than in complete agreement: 1. I don't think we need a phone and a home computer. There's really very little reason at this point why they can't be one and the same. A device that plugs into a dock at home and becomes a home computer, and when you undock it it becomes a phone. And I don't mean the ham-handed attempts we've seen, I mean a full-on contextual OS switch. 2. I think the next major evolution in phones should be removing the screen. We need to develop a voice assistant technology which retains context and can "understand" in a more conversational style, but I think that once we've jumped that hurdle there would be plenty of people—for whom phone-staring is currently an act of boredom or filling time—who would willingly get rid of that screen in favor of a voice assistant.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
I think Samsung DeX is not half bad for your point #1. The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. But I think generally it's pretty underrated. It had done really annoying issues in the beginning but right now I could imagine doing a working day on it. I don't because I am really a power user, but for someone with normal office use I could see it being viable. I wish this feature would make it to mainstream AOSP because right now it's too obscure to really take off. They made a developer thing with Android 10 but didn't take it the whole way after that.
- pornel 4y ago
  On the hardware side, it's getting close. iPad Pro and MacBooks are basically the same hardware. If only iPadOS wasn't like wearing mittens…
- bzzzt 4y ago
  > The only real issue with it is that the current generation of their smartphones doesn't come with enough memory. Only 8GB (S22) or even 6 (S21FE). You need more for decent multitasking. Since we're fantasising about future computers I hope there won't be more than 8Gb necessary to multitask. I remember running Windows and Office in the 90s on 16Mb. Seems like the 1000-fold increase in memory was mostly negated by wasteful software engineering...

samsquire 4y ago

For computers to be used forever, we must accept that the code written for a computer can be outlived by the form factor. So what persists throughout time is not necessarily code but ideas. So I want people to create whitepapers and document their learnings of their project and industry projects so others can learn from their lessons. The good ideas should be passed on through time. For example, NES/Playstation/Switch/Xbox/PC game sourcecode are essentially one-shot projects, the code is not mutated much after release except for bug fixes whereas general purpose computing the code must be adapted over time to cope with changes in the world. The lineage of code written for these game consoles and old PCs, amiga and commodore are all ending. But the ideas behind that code persists. For example, the code of Pentium Windows 95 tower probably doesn't resemble the code of Windows 11 anymore. And the tower CPU is very similar. You can probably see ideas in the code there but everything else is different. All the lessons of DOS, Amiga, Commodore and other old retro computers and minicomputers such as PDP-11 and IBM mainframes should all be learned and passed on. We want software ideas that are durable and last forever. File systems are an idea that are durable. Processes are an idea that are durable. I do wonder how many young people possess the capacity to writing an operating system today. The skills have been long fought by Linus and other operating system developers throughout time. I want people to document the lessons and implementation notes of various low level system services. The UNIX POSIX API is durable. I'm writing this on an Intel 10th generation NUC and it is plenty fast for running Ubuntu virtual machines and running IntelliJ on Windows 11. It has an Intel Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10710U CPU @ 1.10GHz, 1608 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s) I suspect I can get a lot of usage out of this computer and move homes more than once if need be. The computer is only 4 inches by 4 inches so it is easily transportable. Another idea that needs to persist is the idea of archive quality formats. PDF, JPEG, Markdown shall probably be readable in 10 years time. But other document formats maybe not so much.

vlovich123 4y ago
> For example, NES/Playstation/Switch/Xbox/PC game sourcecode are essentially one-shot projects, the code is not mutated much after release except for bug fixes whereas general purpose computing the code must be adapted over time to cope with changes in the world. The lineage of code written for these game consoles and old PCs, amiga and commodore are all ending. But the ideas behind that code persists. This doesn’t sound right to me. Sports games for example reuse much of the old game (NHL 2022 reuses a lot of code from 2021). Additionally almost all games use a standard game engine (in-house or external) and that engine is reused across many titles. That engine incorporates those learnings. It’s very hard to build anything if you’re constantly starting from scratch. I think you’re heavily discounting just how often existing code is reused.

323 4y ago

> Why haven’t we seen a single computer with such a built-in keyboard? Because computers are not built to type any more. There are built to consume content. Interesting how casually author dismisses the millions of people filming themselves and posting on Instagram/TikTok as "consuming". There's more to "creating" than just writing code in a terminal. > You own your input (your favourite keyboard and trackball) Same thing again, author doesn't even mention microphone/camera as "input". > We forgot that a computer should not hide how it works to be easy but instead allow its user to learn gradually about it. Shall we make the same argument about cars? Should cars gradually introduce you to mechanical and electrical engineering? What about your bathroom fixture? Should it try to steer you into becoming a plumber? Some say plumbing is as critical to our civilization as computing.

hulitu 4y ago
> Shall we make the same argument about cars? Should cars gradually introduce you to mechanical and electrical engineering? you need a driving licence to draw cars. Now there are some BMW and Audi drivers who never touch the turn signal.
vel0city 4y ago
> Some say plumbing is as critical to our civilization as computing. If I had to choose between personally owning a computer or running water and flushing toilets, I'd pick the pipes every time.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

petegordon 4y ago

I would like to give up the physical keyboard in the next ~5 years entirely. I like touch, pencil/pen, voice/microphone for input and screens with speakers for output.

hulitu 4y ago
> I like touch Wait until your fingers starts complaining.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  Touch + Active Digitizer Pen is very good in my experience. Handwriting recognition has gotten much better this decade, and having 'fingers" allows for pinch-to-zoom and finger-point to scroll. The pen allows for copy/paste, selection, and "hover" allows you to access Alt-text. Touch + Active Digitizer seems to be an acceptable replacement for a mouse, and even functions as a very crude keyboard with handwriting recognition. The only issue is that I type several times faster than I write, so the keyboard is still my preferred entry method.
jll29 4y ago
The opposite: I'd pay much more if I didn't have to touch glass ever again in a computing & communication device.

marcus_holmes 4y ago

I'm not sure I understand the objection to the clamshell laptop here. You can easily close (or almost-close) the clamshell, add an external keyboard and/or an external monitor. The clamshell is exactly what the author describes from their Forever Computer, except that it also opens up to have a screen and keyboard that are usable if you need them.

signa11 4y ago

dupe : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33867537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33867537

ThePhysicist 4y ago

Hard to imagine to own a computer for 80 years, technological progress moves so fast. Like the author, I also have a couple of typewriters at home and even there it's obvious that you wouldn't want to keep using let's say a model from the 60s if you had access to one from the 80s, as it's a world of difference in terms of ease of use. It's also hard to imagine how you would non-destructively transform the 60s model into the 80s one, as everything is so different (size, key layout, materials, etc.).

throwaway4aday 4y ago

I don't intend to be mean but this is technological fetishism. The HIDs that currently define the computer being talked about here are simply attempts to fit the device to the environment and purpose for which it is used. Screens, mouse, trackpad, keyboard are all simply the best we can do with current limitations. These limitations are felt more in some domains than in others. If your domain is writing then the typewriter does feel like a natural ideal for what a computer should be and a keyboard is a natural successor. If instead you are a 3D artist then the form of a typewriter becomes antithesis to how you want to interact with your computer and even the best peripheral options we have are inadequate. I look forward to a time when the limitations of screen and keyboard are obsolete. When I can move freely through space and populate that space with shapes, images, text, scenes unbounded by tiny rectangles. Where I can interact with that overlay by conversing with it, touching it, wielding all manner of physical and virtual tools. I'll carefully place my old keyboard on the shelf beside the typewriter and will only take it down to use it from time to time out of nostalgia.

yetihehe 4y ago
> Where I can interact with that overlay by conversing with it, touching it, wielding all manner of physical and virtual tools. And if I want to listen to one radio channel or song without switching it (or opening garage doors), will I have to stand still in the middle of the room?
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  This is a non-sensical reply to me but I'll answer anyways. I think the ideal interface for this already exists, you just say "Play [song] by [artist]" and the song starts playing.
  - yetihehe 4y ago
    This was reply inspired by some description I think I've read in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Voice interfaces are not yet perfect, have problems with understanding users and could misinterpret some sentences spoken to other people as spoken to it. Also when you have interfaces everywhere, you risk stumbling on and activating some controls you didn't even know exist, common troupe in films where someone presses one button and everything in a room goes crazy, along with shaking bed. My reply was not directed at you specifically, just for general class of zealots of touch (or even touchless) interfaces.