Saw this alternate entry device announced at CES:
SelfieType, using a camera to watch your fingers, looks even more futuristic:
https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-selfie-type-demo-vi...
SelfieType, using a camera to watch your fingers, looks even more futuristic:
https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-selfie-type-demo-vi...
The biggest issue with these devices is the huge learning curve upfront. You need to invest a lot of time to get to a point where the productivity / speed claims get true.
I learned Dvorak many years ago, and I would never switch back to a more traditional layout, but I’m not sure I would recommend it to anybody in general.
If you want to type really fast (>200 WPM) and don't mind a VERY steep learning curve, then getting a $95 Georgi keyboard [4] and learning steno [5] is probably the way to go.
[2]: https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard
[3]: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=41422.0
You typed "anagram" but it spit out "nag a ram". Hmm. There goes the "5x".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard
So, futuristic from the 90s, was available already and flopped (because it is much more uncomfortable than actual keys).
You could do more than just tap, for example.
Pinch and zoom, scroll up scroll down, Next page,…
You could also create chords with two hands.
Neat for some purposes, but not new and did not catch on.
People want to type, and they want to do it quickly. Tactile feedback is nice... but most people do not engage in typing for the fun of it. The primary concerns for this are input reliability, ease & speed of setup, and learning curve.
You aren't using such a thing to replace your desktop keyboard. You're using it to replace your smartphone keyboard, and probably primarily for typing emails without having to carry things around
Swipe-style input on phones seems more popular than keypresses, despite having lower input reliability, more difficult setup, and an inability to enter certain words.
It's faster than typing, though, as long as the word you want to enter is part of the swipe input method's dictionary.
I can't trust emails on a smartphones because they're so error-prone. If this thing is reliable in its input, and easy to setup, then the "unpleasantness" of typing on a desk is very low on the list of concerns, unless it's extremely unpleasant, if not outright painful.
And unless you're a hunt-and-pecker (which couldn't feasibly use the tool in the first place, afaict), I don't see how it could be that unpleasant. And playing with the idea on my desk.. it's not the greatest feeling, but its hardly a showstopper.
It's not a general keyboard replacement. It's a few-usecase and higher-constraint keyboard replacement; the only thing that matters is whether it supports those specific fewer usecases significantly better than the currently available alternatives, because it doesn't hinder using the general tool as a fallback.
Tactile feedback + no need to mess around with bluetooth configurations (or to even support bluetooth). Actually this could be used to revive dead keyboards...
It reminds me of a talk someone gave about this ad-hoc verbal shorthand someone invented so that they could use speech-to-text to code. The talk sounded really funny but the process did seem fairly productive.
To reduce voice strain and make input more reliable, one would spend a little bit of time to set up shortcuts so that e.g. "i enumerable" produces 'IEnumerable' and "of type" expands to '<‸>' and places the cursor at the caret. The voice input system is fully programmable at different levels of abstraction.