The Optimus Maximus Keyboard
The Optimus Maximus keyboard is shipping in february of this year. Remember those old cards that you could lay on top of your keyboard to help you remember commands. With applications like WordPerfect it was an absolute necessity. There were also a lot of video games back in the day that used them as helpers.When I started video editing, I bought a keyboard similar to this one so I could start to learn the shortcut keys. It didn't last very long - the model I picked up wasn't a natural keyboard and I have trouble typing with regular keyboards these days. That's the first problem I have with the Optimus Maximus, in fact. Well, the second problem, the first problem I have is the price.
The Optimus Maximus is an OLED keyboard. Essentially, this means that the keys are programmable - each key can display whatever you want - be it an icon, the correct letters for a given language layout, or information about shortcuts. The cool thing is that you can set up different layouts depending on your needs - you might want Premiere shortcuts today, but WoW shortcuts later tonight, and something else tomorrow. I'm not going to put up pictures today. You can check it out over at the website.
Oddly, Apple recently filed a patent for a dynamically controlled keyboard and I don't really see how this could be considered an original or new concept. The barrier in developing one has always been the end user price, and the Optimus is far from the first concept to hit the market. For instance - this patent is 10 years old and frankly, I would be surprised if prior art wasn't available to invalidate this one were the owner to ever make a claim.
From your initial view of the Optimus, it looks like it's a $462 keyboard, but that's just for an OLED spacebar. All of the keys will cost over $1500. If you could get all dynamic keys for less than $500 it would be a worthy gadget - even in it's non-natural layout format.
The Upravlator
The Upravlator looks pretty darn cool and is a product I hadn't noticed until I browsed the artlebedev site today. Unfortunately, it's just a concept at this point. I can see definite use for the device in a home automation system. If I was more of a hardware hacker, I might start trying to build something similar for my own home automation system, but for now I guess I'll just be satisfied with my good old 3com Audrey:
Join The OLED Keyboards Discussion
