I work with the author at Nuon. He initially used a Kinesis like some coworkers, but refined it to a minimalist setup with an open-source Korne keyboard, that sits on top of his Macbook keyboard.
When I first saw it, he initially had rubber bands holding it down. Now it's on a secure plate with even a company-coordinated color scheme for the keys.
Interesting how his gaming experience led to a custom layer setup.
Your product might actually relevant for me, but browsing your website I gotta say it's quite the turnoff that there is nothing there on your company. I could not find out, within reasonable time, where you are incorporated.
For anyone looking into this who doesn't want to design their own layout from scratch, a well maintained layout for small keyboards is Miryoku. Worked very well for me (in qwerty base + vim directional keys mode) on a keyboardio atreus
Miryoku is a solid layout. Designing your own layout is definitely time consuming, and not something most should try diving into if they are new to small form factor keyboards.
What started as a joke a few years ago has actually turned into really good signal. I've found that the engineers who care enough to invest in keyboards like this spend a lot of time investing in their tooling and are extremely productive.
Some people like to over-optimise everything. Window manager, vim config, unix tool choice, split keyboard, DVORAK layout, mechanical keyboards, coffee brewing, Obsidian note-taking/Zettelkasten, mice (the rabbit hole for mice goes as deep as keyboards)
This is often more about enjoying the process of optimising than wanting to be productive overall. Some may spend a lot of time reading Hacker News to "keep up with new tools" and clipping their productivity bonsai tree at the deteriment of actually getting work done. They may be the type to spend weeks optimising a command that is run once a year. They may obsess over pointless details that don't matter.
> the engineers who care enough to invest in keyboards like this (1) spend a lot of time investing in their tooling and (2) are extremely productive
I think (1) is true. Whereas, (2) may be less so.
Or at least, "smart but unproductive" is also a class. :) (And I'm sure there are those who have had bad experiences working with such people).
I suppose using a keyboard like this is an expensive signal. As in.. it's fairly easy to buy a typical mechanical keyboard, but more difficult to get one of these small split keyboards. -- But I think this is just "interested in technical excellence", which is somewhat different than "highly productive".
;) As for these keyboards? The most pragmatic & superior tooling part isn't the "36-key keyboard" so much as "each thumb has 2-3 keys" each. That's what allows these keyboards to expressively bring the full functionality of the keyboard to within reach of the hands on home row.
You hit the nail on the head with the 2/3 thumb key bit. That is what was such a game changer for me with the kinesis. all the sudden you have real estate to take a layering approach that you just can't with normal keyboards.
Smart but unproductive is a class. We've all had experiences with those types of engineers. I think startups generally weed them out though. It's hard to survive at a startup without being productive. I probably should have put that as a disclaimer up front.
I work with the author at Nuon. He initially used a Kinesis like some coworkers, but refined it to a minimalist setup with an open-source Korne keyboard, that sits on top of his Macbook keyboard.
When I first saw it, he initially had rubber bands holding it down. Now it's on a secure plate with even a company-coordinated color scheme for the keys.
Interesting how his gaming experience led to a custom layer setup.
Your product might actually relevant for me, but browsing your website I gotta say it's quite the turnoff that there is nothing there on your company. I could not find out, within reasonable time, where you are incorporated.
That is quite good feedback, and I will make sure we get that addressed asap. Thank you.
FWIW, we're incorporated in delaware, and based in the US.
For anyone looking into this who doesn't want to design their own layout from scratch, a well maintained layout for small keyboards is Miryoku. Worked very well for me (in qwerty base + vim directional keys mode) on a keyboardio atreus
Miryoku is a solid layout. Designing your own layout is definitely time consuming, and not something most should try diving into if they are new to small form factor keyboards.
I'm building a toucan (piantor style layout) and was thinking about using seniply layout, but this looks much better.
disclaimer: I'm the ceo of this company.
What started as a joke a few years ago has actually turned into really good signal. I've found that the engineers who care enough to invest in keyboards like this spend a lot of time investing in their tooling and are extremely productive.
Causation or correlation?
Some people like to over-optimise everything. Window manager, vim config, unix tool choice, split keyboard, DVORAK layout, mechanical keyboards, coffee brewing, Obsidian note-taking/Zettelkasten, mice (the rabbit hole for mice goes as deep as keyboards)
This is often more about enjoying the process of optimising than wanting to be productive overall. Some may spend a lot of time reading Hacker News to "keep up with new tools" and clipping their productivity bonsai tree at the deteriment of actually getting work done. They may be the type to spend weeks optimising a command that is run once a year. They may obsess over pointless details that don't matter.
> the engineers who care enough to invest in keyboards like this (1) spend a lot of time investing in their tooling and (2) are extremely productive
I think (1) is true. Whereas, (2) may be less so.
Or at least, "smart but unproductive" is also a class. :) (And I'm sure there are those who have had bad experiences working with such people).
I suppose using a keyboard like this is an expensive signal. As in.. it's fairly easy to buy a typical mechanical keyboard, but more difficult to get one of these small split keyboards. -- But I think this is just "interested in technical excellence", which is somewhat different than "highly productive".
;) As for these keyboards? The most pragmatic & superior tooling part isn't the "36-key keyboard" so much as "each thumb has 2-3 keys" each. That's what allows these keyboards to expressively bring the full functionality of the keyboard to within reach of the hands on home row.
You hit the nail on the head with the 2/3 thumb key bit. That is what was such a game changer for me with the kinesis. all the sudden you have real estate to take a layering approach that you just can't with normal keyboards.
Smart but unproductive is a class. We've all had experiences with those types of engineers. I think startups generally weed them out though. It's hard to survive at a startup without being productive. I probably should have put that as a disclaimer up front.
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Thank you governor for your service