On Thu, 23 Aug 2012, Aryeh Goretsky (home) wrote:
One thing I have noticed from looking at keyboards on new systems from
Vizio, Samsung and Microsoft's new keyboards for Windows 8 is that they
all seem to have "standardized" on this "island style" six-row keyboard
layout with some small degrees of variation. I have included some links
to photos, below.
In the photos I have linked to below, compare how the all those
keyboards for new laptops look like the Windows RT tablet keyboard.
I've also included a link to a very large photo of an Apple MacBook Pro
keyboard for comparison.
I find it hard to believe that all of these companies which compete so
heavily against each other would unilaterally and individually decide to
switch keyboard layouts, so I suspect that what we are seeing is a
change being made for an ulterior reason. For example, it might be a
requirement to use the new keyboard design/layout in order to pass some
sort of certification requirement for Windows 8.
That's just a guess on my part, though; I don't have any evidence that
is the case. Still, it is such a strange thing to happen all at once
that this is the only scenario I could come up with to account for all
of these competitors to copy the MacBook Pro style keyboard.
Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to economics.
Using a design similar to your competitors means that -- if you have the
same component supplier(s) as them -- your suppliers can re-use parts
and/or designs when making your components.
Chicony makes keyboards for a number of vendors. Up until recently,
Lenovo was the only one of their large laptop keyboard buyers who
purchased non-island designs. I'd be willing to bet that Chicony made
them bear a large chunk of the production/tooling costs since they were
the only outlier.
Of course this is based on pure speculation...
-Rob
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