Apparently there are rumors floating around that Apple is going to be putting actual working keyboards back into their MacBook computers. They're going to "invent" the scissor switch. According to rumors, the MacBook Air will receive a working keyboard later this year, and the MacBook Pro next year.

Unfortunately there seem to be no plans to abandon the long thin touchscreen that replaced the top row of keys.

[ Source: Ming-Chi Kuo, via multiple news sites ]

I can barely tolerate the chiclet keyboard on my Dell, but at least it keeps working if you use it outside a cleanroom. I miss laptops with full travel keys.

I have one with the horrid keyboard. It really is crap and whoever approved it at Apple needs to be beaten, badly.

I've found that younger people have less of an issue with it though.....
They don't seem to know the joy of a real keyboard.

Are you saying that you're old?

And it seems they've introduced a "new" MacBook Pro. It still has the crappy keyboard, but they've removed the function keys and soldered the SSD down to the motherboard. This is APPLE GENIUS and you WILL love it, citizen.

And yes, Ragnar is old. Even he agrees that he's been old since the day he was born.

Oh yeah. Old from birth. No doubt about it.

And I always get your birthday wrong by one day, for some reason. Some sort of mental block.

So I hear the Magic Apple People released a new laptop. It has, as one commenter pointed out, "cute vintage-style touches, like an escape key and a 720p camera".
And instead of working USB-A or Ethernet ports, it has a touchbar.

Well, at least it still has keys that move a little bit. I was expecting the keyboard to be a touchscreen by now.

Apple has said they don't want to do a touch-screen on the laptops....


USB-A - who cares? There's adapters. Ethernet? Less and less important for most people. Most slim laptops have abandoned them.

But not having a mmemory card slot? Stupid, especially given the target market.

Now that Jony Ive is gone, I expect some rational thought to come back into Apple designs.

I'm still waiting for the Wite*Out(TM)-sensitive panel.

Requiring an adapter for USB-A on a laptop will be about as well-received as requiring an adapter for earphones on a smartphone. Somewhat tolerable, but annoying.

As with all Apple releases in the last few years: Where is the "wow" factor?

Sadly, Apple learned a lesson that it's better business to let other innovate and then just Microsoft it.

USB-A - who cares? There's adapters. Ethernet? Less and less

important for most people. Most slim laptops have abandoned them.

I for one like portable computers to be portable. That means that you get all you need in a single portable package without requiring lots of adapters and peripherals for getting the job done. So if a computer has standard ports that save me the effort of using an adapter it is better than if I have to buy one. Much more so for a expensive computer.

Also, I like ethernet ports on my computers. Even on portable ones. My bos has one of those ultra-slim laptops and he had to purchase yet another peripheral in order to get connected via ethernet...

That said, I am happy with my old, ugly computers from the last decade, so I think I am not buying a new one any time soon.

Let's stop with Apple not innovating. Because they never did. Not the first PC, not the first laptop, not the first MP3 player, not the first smartphone, not the first tablet.

But they DEFINED all of them.

Is there really anything innovative happening in technology right now? Not really.

They bandwagon they missed? Smartspeakers. They let Amazon run away with that one.

Otherwise, they're doing what they've always done.

There's really nothing interesting in tech happening where you say "I want THIS!"

I can think of a couple of things: the Newton and OpenDoc. The later had the potential to be great - but since it was Apple-only the adoption of it was tiny; the former is the progenitor to smart phones, tablets, and much else handheld. Yes, the first version earned the laughts it got (I bought one on ebay years ago just to see), but the last two where great and finally earned a profit for the company. There's stuff on that that are still better than today's Android and iPhones.

Sorry, the Psion beat the Newton to market by a year.... As did the HP 95LX.
Even the Tandy Z-550 (which is more Newton and Palm like) beat Apple to market.

What's new worth defining? Nothing. I think I said it before, the area they've failed is with "smart speakers". Amazon killed them. They should have been ahead, especially with Siri. People want these devices to be cheap and everywhere.
Not $300+.

Computers are generally boring at this point. There's less of a need to upgrade like we used to. There's really nothing I can do today that I couldn't do just as easily a decade ago.

This is life in a mature market.

There's an article on dslrbodies.com by Thom Hogan about the severely declining camera market. A lot of people blame cellphones and their "good enough" pictures (although they're way beyond good enough for most casual shooters at this point).

The jist of his article is about a lack of innovation in camera technology....

What made people buy new (D)SLR's?

Interchangeable lenses, automatic exposure metering, autofocus and then digital.

Digital had a large boom, because the quality of the pictures increased dramatically every year or two.

That's no longer the case. The pictures I took with a camera I bought nearly 6 years ago are not significantly different than those with the camera I got last year. (Although I have a lot more cropping options and some higher quality in very low light situations.)

Sony right now is being seen as "innovative" - but they really aren't doing anything special compared to Canon and Nikon. They just iterate faster - since they're a consumer electronics company. You can find 3 or 4 generations of Sony cameras on sale at the same time.

Again - life in a mature market. I think it's safe to say that the personal computer market is just over 40 years old now - and began to be viable in 1977, when Apple release the II, Commodore released the PET and Radio Shack released the TRS-80.

Forgetting Apple for a second, what was the last computer or other consumer electronics device you thought "wow" about? Something you felt you really wanted or needed to have?