1y ago

Magnets are switching up the keyboard game

Magnets are switching up the keyboard game | TechCrunch

The next big thing in mechanical keyboards is magnetic switches. Mechanical keyboards quickly went from a niche product to mainstream during the pandemic,

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GadgeteerZA @beehaw.org

1y ago

Magnets are switching up the keyboard game with an additional keystroke setting

techcrunch.com /2024/04/07/magnets-are-switching-up-the-keyboard-game/

3 comments

I want a programmable keyboard with electromagnetic switches that moves the keys by itself along with my terminal output.
- And so the player piano rises like a phoenix.
tech crunch definitely needs to un-fire their editor because that was painful to read.
I dunno. I'll be interested to see if this gets any traction. I can definitely see the electronically adjusted travel lengths being valuable to some people and for special purpose keys. But it won't be "clicky" which means keyboard youtube will hate it.
But also, design wise, it will be interesting. Because these basically "can't" bottom out since the fastest way to demagnetize something is to smack it a bunch of times. Which is going to increase the complexity of the keys themselves as you now need extra stops to "stop" the key so that at 100% depression it is not bottomed out (magnet contacting sensor, basically). And, unless you go for an overly strong magnet (that drastically increases the likelihood of interference), you basically can't have any plastic in between the magnet and the sensor itself.
I can definitely see this becoming a thing where higher end prebuilts and chassis might have a row of maget switch buttons. But... yeah.