ThinkPad Designer David Hill Spills Secrets, Designs That Never Made It (theregister.com) 39
alternative_right shares an interview from The Register with David W. Hill, who served as lead designer for ThinkPad from 1995 to 2017. Here are some excerpts from the wide-ranging interview: Hill revealed that he tried several times to introduce additional laptops that had the famous "butterfly keyboard" found on the ThinkPad 701C. [...] Hill told The Register that he had wanted to make more ThinkPads with butterfly keyboards and had tried at least three times to make it happen -- in one case there was a prototype where only half of the keyboard moved -- but was never able to get there. Eventually, screens became big enough that there was no need to have a keyboard that expanded. However, Hill said, he thought about putting a butterfly keyboard on a netbook when they were a viable product category in the late aughts. [...]
One of the features Hill is most proud of developing is the ThinkLight, an overhead light located above the screen that lit up the entire keyboard and deck. Though the advent of keyboard backlights has made the ThinkLight redundant -- Lenovo discontinued it in 2013 -- it offers capabilities that backlights do not. If you want to place a paper on top of your keyboard, the LED will light it up, allowing you to see more than just your key legends. ... When designing the 25th anniversary ThinkPad, which came out in 2017, Hill brought back the ThinkLight, but he actually wanted to have -- for the first time -- two LEDs instead of one. The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product. [...]
When I asked Hill about products he wanted to come out with but never got to, he talked about an idea for portable workstations that would fold up like a laptop but have a separate keyboard and screen like a desktop when you put them on your desk. He collaborated with butterfly keyboard creator John Karidis on this concept, but couldn't make it ready for market. "We did a lot of experimentation with laptops that sort of unfolded to be more like a desktop: things where the display elevated or the keyboard would remove so you could use them like a workstation, rather than just being a clamshell with a hinge, you open and close," Hill recalled. "We did a lot of experimentation with that and got close a few times, but never could completely sell it. I always thought it was an opportunity to create a new category."
One of the features Hill is most proud of developing is the ThinkLight, an overhead light located above the screen that lit up the entire keyboard and deck. Though the advent of keyboard backlights has made the ThinkLight redundant -- Lenovo discontinued it in 2013 -- it offers capabilities that backlights do not. If you want to place a paper on top of your keyboard, the LED will light it up, allowing you to see more than just your key legends. ... When designing the 25th anniversary ThinkPad, which came out in 2017, Hill brought back the ThinkLight, but he actually wanted to have -- for the first time -- two LEDs instead of one. The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product. [...]
When I asked Hill about products he wanted to come out with but never got to, he talked about an idea for portable workstations that would fold up like a laptop but have a separate keyboard and screen like a desktop when you put them on your desk. He collaborated with butterfly keyboard creator John Karidis on this concept, but couldn't make it ready for market. "We did a lot of experimentation with laptops that sort of unfolded to be more like a desktop: things where the display elevated or the keyboard would remove so you could use them like a workstation, rather than just being a clamshell with a hinge, you open and close," Hill recalled. "We did a lot of experimentation with that and got close a few times, but never could completely sell it. I always thought it was an opportunity to create a new category."
All I want... (Score:3)
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My wish is a standard key to enter into bios. Currently even same laptop manufacturers use different keys in different models so it can be really difficult to find out which key takes you to the bios if it is not visible on the screen. I don't think that it would be much more expensive to use the same key.
Re: All I want... (Score:3)
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I would too. IBM set such a high bar that even the modern enshittified versions have better keyboards, mice replacements, and arguably specs, than pretty much everyone else today (a huge amount of that being Apple deciding usability doesn't matter for hardware and pulling down everyone else with them with keyboards that would embarrass a ZX Spectrum, but still! Lenovo has, at least, recognized it can't follow them all the way, it has to be just a little bit better...)
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It used to be ThinkPad was the absolute best laptop. It still technically is the best, not because it's good, but because everything else is worse. There's not much joy left in it. The metal chassis, which made a comeback for a few years, seems to be a 2-in-1 thing now. The keyboard, while not completely terrible like e.g. Apple, cannot hold a candle to the old one. The insides could use a lot of love, there's no excuse these days for the battery/motherboard volume ratio they have going. The selection of po
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It's just a pity that, as you say, the keyboards have been going downhill for years. Every time I move to a new laptop, typically 5-7 years, I try and find the one with the least shitty keyboard as the main feature, and while they're still nowhere near as bad as all the competition they're also not very good any more. The rating is "least bad" not "best".
Alongside messing up the keyboards they're also really mucked up the product lines, currently running a budget T16 that runs circles around the X1 I had
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Yeah, the 600(e) was 'peak laptop' - tough as old boots, good keyboard, powerful (for its time), had decent support for drivers and whatnot so you could re-install Windows and get rid of the crapware IBM bundled with it, and you could run Linux too, if you wanted.
Since then, it's hard to find anything as good - although I've got to say my Apple Macbook Pro is pretty good. It too is pretty tough, doesn't run a bloated windows version, can run Linux, but is of course not upgradeable and is pretty much unrepai
I'd like a new laptop with 7-row keyboard (Score:3)
Good pic for example at https://www.reddit.com/r/think... [reddit.com] (or just google image search for Thinkpad T25 keyboard).
I'd pay extra to get my hands on one. There are couple of DIY projects attempting to create this with frame.work 16" model, but nothing beyond that.
And unfortunately, my trusty old T25's keyboard membrane is just starting to wear out - not sure if it's possible to repair it, some keys only work when PC is heated. No spare parts available, except with JP layout.
I *want* my cluster of del/home/end/pgup/pgdown keys. I *want* my print screen, scroll lock, pause keys. I want my cursor keys neatly ordered in a cross. I want my function keys to be distinct from number keys.
Just make a laptop with 7-row keyboard and take my money.
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I count 8 rows from the right side, if you count 2 for the enter as it takes 2 rows of space.
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another design that never made it (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall someone visiting my PhD laboratory from IBM. Never caught their name, but it could have been David Hill, because he had a laptop with a special fold-out mechanism and harness that allowed you to wear it around your neck and type while standing with nearly-natural arm and hand position on the keyboard. He said something about it being a prototype of which he had only 1000 made. I never saw one of them again.
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So you're saying some guy visited and had a complete laptop "mounted" to his front side so he could stand and use it?
I'm imaging a conversation with such a person. Or seeing someone waiting for public transit, standing there using a computer (one would probably get accosted doing this).
As I figured, everything you can think of exists, here's something like you described:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c... [bhphotovideo.com]
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So you're saying some guy visited and had a complete laptop "mounted" to his front side so he could stand and use it?
I'm imaging a conversation with such a person. Or seeing someone waiting for public transit, standing there using a computer (one would probably get accosted doing this).
As I figured, everything you can think of exists, here's something like you described:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c... [bhphotovideo.com]
Yes, it was similar to that, except it was, somehow, an integral part of the laptop itself.
It was definitely weird, but no weirder than things we've seen more recently, like Google Glass.
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As I figured, everything you can think of exists
And thus Rule 34.
Legendary Laptop Line (Score:2)
Always a safe bet, even when bought refurbished. I rely on ThinkPads to this very day.
The Thinklight was great (Score:2)
I had an A21p which had the Thinklight. It was a great laptop in its day. It had a really high-res display, too.
One fucking mouse button (Score:3)
A man who truly realized the stupidity of his customers.
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Almost every decision any company makes comes down to money
This is the economist view, but it's really not true. Companies are made of people, and people make decisions for all sorts of reasons, almost none of them purely financial even when the justifications are argued in financial terms. In this particular case, Steve Jobs was a UX purist who made all sorts of decisions on the basis of his taste for elegance and simplicity, even when they didn't make much financial sense. Most of his worst ideas were stopped by the people around him -- often with financial argu
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Re: One fucking mouse button (Score:2)
I want to meet the brilliant, ground-breaking Apple designer who decided that more than one button on a mouse would be too confusing for the Genius purchasers of Apple Baubles.
A man who truly realized the stupidity of his customers.
Macs made extensive use of keyboard shortcuts, and those included the mouse.
Option+click, command+click, shift+option+click, command+drag, option+command+drag, etc, etc etc.
What Windows did was use right click to bring up a context menu with functions depending on what was clicked, in addition to the simpler, static application menu bar. Vs the Mac way of a more complex set of static menus and keyboard shortcuts to activate specific functions.
There's pros and cons, and I'm not calling anyone stupid, but my
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The reason for the single click is so that people do not hide options in right click menus.
And when you started back in the mid-80s, people didn't know how to use a mouse. Recall the "Hello Computer" moment from Star Trek IV The Voyage Home. I can tell you from watching people use a mouse in the 90s, the following were almost always the problem:
1) Their fingers landed on the wrong button so the button they thought to left lick was the right or middle button.
2) They don't know left from right.
You might think
I don't get the Thinkpad fascination (Score:2)
I have a work-issued model from 2021. Heavy, loud, and slow. The keyboard is fine, but I don't care for the placement of the Function key. For portability and battery life, a Macbook Air is tough to beat. For Windows stuff, there are much better performers at the Thinkpad price range. What am I missing?
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I think they have a nostalgia for the IBM ones, before Big Blue sold their business to Lenovo.
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There are a bunch of different models unfortunately. Some are crap for certain purposes - if your work issued you a workstation when you'd rather have a thin'n'light, or they gave you one of the cheapo models (which unfortunately do also exist - another thing that Apple does better), then you either got one of the crap ones or something that doesn't suit your preferences. Heavy, SLOW and loud points to cheapo rather than workstation...
That said, if you want a decent keyboard layout, there's no real alternat
Wow, actual news for nerds (Score:2)
some strange comments (Score:2)
Eventually, screens became big enough that there was no need to have a keyboard that expanded.
a full-size laptop keyboard still feels cramped, and uses an atypical key layout, compared to a full-size desktop keyboard (using a '90s IBM keyboard to type this, and it's quite a bit wider than the large HP laptop next to me).
suppose the market just doesnt care enough.
he actually wanted to have -- for the first time -- two LEDs instead of one. The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product.
two LEDs, compared to one, was too cost prohibitive?
going from zero to two... ok, maybe (redesigning the chassis, wiring, etc.) but... there's already one there.
Portable workstation (Score:2)
ditched keyboard and lifted screen? (Score:2)
" things where the display elevated or the keyboard would remove so you could use them like a workstation,"
There's a name for that design: Osborne!
The keyboard was a gimmick (Score:1)
I seem to be alone that I use external monitor, keyboard and mouse, so these do not matter when I look for a machine to buy. I only use the battery as UPS, so that does not matter either. It must be Linux-friendly, have enough RAM, storage, and the thicker the better. If it is heavy, so what.
I would love the fold out computer. (Score:2)
A couple of 15" portable screens would be just fine. I can see a long skinny machine like that with that pair of monitors fitting into my carry-on and not displacing too much other stuff.
I want one.