Overview
Have you ever really looked at your keyboard? Are there some key placements that actually make no sense to you at all? We all learn the key positions by rote when we learn how to Internet, but Apple — along with a lil Aussie company — are about to potentially change that forever.
The tech giant (who just launched their new MacBook Pro yesterday) have been working with Sydney-based startup Sonder Design to incorporate their dynamic keyboard technology into the laptops you know and love. They announced that, from 2018, their laptops will feature dynamic e-ink keyboards.
What the heck is an e-ink keyboard, you ask? It's a keyboard that changes the content on its keys according to what you're doing on your device. It's designed to customise your shortcuts, allow you to type in multiple languages, prioritise the peach emoji for lightning-quick butt references and generally make the keyboard work for you (as it should — c'mon people, its 2016).
Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Well, QWERTY currently has a stranglehold on the marketplace. There's a lot of conflicting stories regarding the QWERTY keyboard's rise to prominence. Some people believe Christopher Sholes designed it to slow keyboard typists down so their typewriters wouldn't jam (they say it's designed to alternate letter between each hand). Others claim it was designed with the help of telegram transcribers and has only once since been challenged in efficiency, by the Dvorak keyboard. Most likely however, it's a perfect example of a human invention that was in the right place at the right time. QWERTY was popular at the time Remington and Sons began to mass produce typewriters. And once typists knew one system, retraining them was a big waste of time.
But this preamble about the history of keyboard is to give some context to what Sonder are doing with their new keyboard. Thanks to ~technology~ we've moved way beyond the restrictions of the typewriter — theirs is supposedly the "world's first" keyboard to use e-ink to make it dynamic. It's a big win for the Aussie tech company and, frankly, any technology that brings us closer to emojis is a win for us.