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I am a big fan of physical buttons -- in phones, in-car entertainment systems, and other gadgets that we operate with our hands/fingers. And am generally disdai

I am a big fan of physical buttons -- in phones, in-car entertainment systems, and other gadgets that we operate with our hands/fingers. And am generally disdainful of sacrifies made to physical controls in favour of virtual ones. I also hope to see a few more physical buttons for vital functions (like mute or camera shut off on phones and laptops) Having said that -- But one benefit of the on-screen virtual keyboards that is hard to beat is ... flexibility of changing keyboard layouts / sizes, AND multiple languages. I have enjoyed typing in my native tongues with friends and family and nothing so-far beats the experience of inputting text directly using a native keyboard that is accessible with a single swipe on the spacebar (I use a Android, Samsung).

gspencley 4y ago
> And am generally disdainful of sacrifies made to physical controls in favour of virtual ones I agree with you with one single exception. I own a high-end blender that has a touch-screen and I think that's the one and only use-case that I have found where virtual controls win out by far. Not having the risk of food spilling into keys on a food-making device, and being able to wipe up spills quickly and easily with a dish cloth is a great application. Other than that, virtual controls can GTFO ... especially on general purpose computing devices.
- dsr_ 4y ago
  I have a high-end blender with two toggles and a dial. No keys, no screen.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Stovetops too imo. Being able to clean the whole thing with a quick wipe is so nice. Hate having to clean and remove knobs.
thesuitonym 4y ago
For what it's worth, and I know this isn't a perfect fix, you can set the keyboard language to anything. The keys still show qwerty obviously, but they'll be mapped to your language of choice's keyboard. You can also bring up software keyboards that show on the screen, but let you still use the keys to click the virtual keys.

gspencley 4y ago

> And am generally disdainful of sacrifies made to physical controls in favour of virtual ones I agree with you with one single exception. I own a high-end blender that has a touch-screen and I think that's the one and only use-case that I have found where virtual controls win out by far. Not having the risk of food spilling into keys on a food-making device, and being able to wipe up spills quickly and easily with a dish cloth is a great application. Other than that, virtual controls can GTFO ... especially on general purpose computing devices.

dsr_ 4y ago
I have a high-end blender with two toggles and a dial. No keys, no screen.
Gigachad 4y ago
Stovetops too imo. Being able to clean the whole thing with a quick wipe is so nice. Hate having to clean and remove knobs.

thesuitonym 4y ago

For what it's worth, and I know this isn't a perfect fix, you can set the keyboard language to anything. The keys still show qwerty obviously, but they'll be mapped to your language of choice's keyboard. You can also bring up software keyboards that show on the screen, but let you still use the keys to click the virtual keys.