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Comment by Godel_unicode | Hacker News Reader

The trackpoint is ugly. It's a giant throwback pimple in the middle of the keyboard, which there's no way to get around looking at all the time. Thinkpads being ugly is kind of their thing, so it doesn't surprise me that lots of Thinkpad people don't mind it or even see it as a plus, but to me seeing a trackpoint is like seeing a floppy drive. I used one for years, and I'm really happy that trackpads have gotten good enough that I'll never need to use one again.

Edit: display notches are actually probably a better comparison. They're ugly and even though I don't use it I can't get rid of it except by using hardware designed not to have it.

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There is no better way of controlling a mouse when you have limited elbow room. It also keeps your hands nearer the keys.

> no better way

Well that's just, like, your opinion.

And "The trackpoint is ugly" is yours. At least he's talking about something relevant: usability. If you refuse to use a keyboard because it's "ugly", well, there's Apple for that.

But display notches obscure the display, they're a functional issue. There's literally a hole in the image. (I have a top centre notch, and curved corners, on my A70. When watching content, wherever possible I letterbox the corners and notch out so that I'm not missing anybody the actual frame.)

Most typists aren't touching the nipple when they're typing, so is it an objection that's purely aesthetic, as opposed to notches?

My experience is absolutely not that most typists I know don't touch it accidentally, that sounds aspirational to me. It's definitely in the way and annoying if you're not thinking about it. Especially if you're doing something like video editing where you don't have your hands in the normal typing position. Or even in an IDE where you're back and forth to the trackpad a lot.

People who type a lot are super sensitive to changes in their keyboard, and this is a change to the keyboard. It's definitely both aesthetic and functional.

I feel TrackPoint and Trackpad both present at the same time is ugly

But FWIW the inspiration for the red cap is from pickled plum in bento boxes[0] so

[0]: https://images.app.goo.gl/Xf3kHjv9JVMdeXA77

> But FWIW the inspiration for the red cap is from pickled plum in bento boxes

I get now why so many anime people love thinkpads.

lol you’re downvoted but right. IBM had a lab to the west of Tokyo where lots of ThinkPads were said to have born there so not just people like them but same people make them.

Not to mention the "old 'bento box' models where the screen release lock also allows you to lift up the keyboard to access all of the internals."

https://imgur.com/a/sbMiIRG https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=131119

FWIW - I think most of us who enjoy Thinkpads don't "see ugliness as a plus". Rather, we think it has a classic look, rather than fashionably sexy. And we do enjoy using the TrackPoint :-)

What do you mean by display notches? Like the iPhone's unibrow?

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