Latest news with #keyboard
CNET
17 hours ago
- CNET
This Corsair Gaming Keyboard Could Be Yours for a Cool $130
Gaming is an appealing hobby for a reason; it's accessible entertainment, on a console, portable gaming device or a PC. If the latter is your preference, the proper desktop and accessories can help you achieve a better PC gaming experience. For example, Corsair's K70 Pro TKL gaming keyboard is a great way to fine-tune your setup, and it's just $130 at Best Buy, a $50 savings. Amazon Prime members can also score this gaming keyboard for $130. The Corsair K70 Pro TKL keyboard has a sleek black colorway and includes gorgeous colorful backlights. It also has a wrist pad, so gameplay is comfortable. Aside from its good looks, Corsair's keyboard includes programmable keys and speedy response that can make a difference as you play your favorite PC games. This is all thanks to magnetic switches that power the K70 Pro's response times. Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money. The Corsair K70 Pro also has customizable per-key actuation, essentially allowing you to determine the touch sensitivity you'd like for each key. It's wired for direct connectivity to your PC and built to last through 150 million keystrokes. If this gaming keyboard isn't quite a fit for you, check out the best gaming keyboards list for other options. Why this deal matters This Corsair K70 Pro TKL gaming keyboard offers rapid response, customizable response times and an ergonomic design for comfortable gameplay. It's now $50 off at Best Buy, and Prime members can also score the same discount for a limited time.
Android Authority
a day ago
- Android Authority
This keyboard case made my Pixel 9 actively painful to use — but I can't stop typing on it anyway
Clicks Keyboard The Clicks case brings a full QWERTY keyboard with physical keys to selected phones, including the Pixel flagship series. It provides excellent tactile feedback and keyboard shortcuts to your typing experience, but makes the phone taller, a bit imbalanced, and cramped to hold or use. I lived through the early era of non-touch smartphones. My first 'smart' phone was a Nokia 3250 Xpress Music with a glorious T9 keypad, and my first QWERTY was an HTC Qtek 9100 running Windows Mobile. Physically pressing keys to type was in my DNA for years; I loved the tactile feedback of typing, and I relished the perk of typing without looking, especially during long college lectures. Over the years, I tried a couple of Blackberry phones, but my heart always brought me back to Nokia. The E71 was the best QWERTY phone I've ever used — nothing could even come close. When the era of all-touch smartphones began in the late 2000s, I was a refractory skeptic. I missed all the perks of typing on a physical keyboard, but the world was changing, and I had to adapt. It took a few years before on-screen touch keyboards became properly usable, but it wasn't until Gboard launched in 2016 that they finally convinced me. Now, nine years later, it's hard to remember a time when I physically pressed every letter I wanted to type. But the QWERTY dream on Android isn't dead yet. Clicks has made a keyboard case for the Google Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro that adds four rows of keys to the bottom of the phone. Obviously, I just had to try it to see whether physical keyboards still have a shot in 2025. An experience of early frustration Rita El Khoury / Android Authority The moment I slid my Pixel 9 Pro into the Clicks case, I knew I was in for a rollercoaster. Google's small, pocketable phone suddenly became too tall, too unwieldy. You don't think an extra 4cm (1.57 inches) will affect how you hold the Pixel until you have to actually hold the Pixel in this case. It becomes very unbalanced and top-heavy. For someone like me with Carpal Tunnel pain, it also physically hurt the first few days when I was testing it. A few minutes in, I had to put the phone down because my wrist was cramping up. My first typing experience wasn't any better. The buttons aren't any narrower than the touch keys on Gboard, but they're shorter. They also felt significantly smaller, like I was pecking on teensy, cramped targets and had to rethink the entire way I type on my phone. I kept hitting the wrong keys, pressing two letters instead of one, and adding a space after ev ery V or B b utton press. I kept hitting the wrong buttons, making typos, and adding spaces where there shouldn't be any. I had hoped that this would be like riding a bike, that I'd find my familiar QWERTY bearings and fly through text in a few minutes, but after more than an hour of on and off usage, I was still making more typos than ever and typing slower than ever. I wanted my touchscreen Gboard back! Rita El Khoury / Android Authority I found it even more frustrating that I had to reach up to the display to reposition the cursor each time I wanted to fix a mistake or rewrite something. I'm so used to swiping on the spacebar in Gboard to move the cursor that I found myself trying that on the Clicks keyboard and sighing when it wouldn't work. With no friendly arrow keys either, this made every cursor reposition an eyeroll moment. (Android does support a pointer/arrow mode, but it works with the keys 7, 8, 9, u, o, j, k, l, which aren't appropriately positioned on the Clicks keyboard: 7, 8, and 9 are to the bottom left, not the top right here.) This brings me to my most significant adjustment: the missing standalone number row. I'm used to keeping that on top of Gboard so I can easily reach the numbers — an essential feature if you type transliterated Arabic, where certain letters that don't have a phonetic equivalent in the Latin alphabet are replaced by numbers. The famous 'habibi,' for example, is written '7abibi' if you use transliteration, because 7 replaces the hard H (ح), which doesn't have a proper equivalent in Latin letters. Because of this, access to numbers is essential in my everyday communication with my Lebanese friends and family members, and having to tap the number symbol along with the number key on Clicks got old very quickly. Having those numbers in a T9 configuration right next to the number symbol, instead of in a row, was even more frustrating. Slowly relearning to type Rita El Khoury / Android Authority A couple of weeks in, things started looking up for the Clicks keyboard case. I wouldn't say I'm a pro at using it yet, nor that I'm faster typing on this keyboard than I am on my phone's touchscreen, but I do make fewer mistakes now, and I'm starting to appreciate its benefits more than its issues. The tactile feedback is fantastic. It is so satisfying to feel a button physically press beneath my finger every time I type a letter. And the click I hear is just right. The tactile feedback and audible click each time a key is pressed is fantastic. I'm also way more familiar with the button layout and the exact way I need to hit the keys to avoid typos. Each side of the keyboard slopes down outward, so it took a bit of practice to reconfigure my brain for that versus a perfectly flat touch keyboard. Don't get me wrong — the keys still feel cramped, but something clicked (ha!) for me after a few days, and I started typing faster, more efficiently, and I'm now at a stage where I can type without looking. Almost. Perhaps, with a few more months of practice, I could type blindfolded, but for now, I'll consider this a win. I've also gotten a bit more used to holding the super-mega-tall Pixel 9 Pro in this case. There's still an imbalance and a cramped-up feeling because I have to keep my hands on the bottom third of the contraption to type, but I do feel less wrist pain. I still can't do more than 10 minutes or so at a time, but someone with no wrist pain might not have this issue and find it a joy to type on. The perks that make this worth the trouble Rita El Khoury / Android Authority You might be wondering why I'm putting myself through this horrible experience if I can take off the Clicks case and use my Pixel 9 Pro like normal. The answer is two-fold. First, having a separate keyboard has freed up my entire screen. I no longer lose half of my display each time I want to type something; I can keep everything on the screen in front of me, and still type. This works wonderfully in apps like WhatsApp or Slack, where I can see more chat context before replying, or apps like JotterPad, where I can read more of my writing before adding to it. I can fill forms in Chrome without obscuring half the form, and reply to a comment on YouTube or an email in Gmail without hiding what I'm replying to. In many apps, this doesn't matter much, but in those examples, it really feels like I've gained double the screen estate by using a separate physical keyboard. Android's support for physical keyboards is amazing now. There are shortcuts for everything. Second, and most importantly, Clicks allowed me to discover — and enjoy — all of Android's keyboard shortcuts. I'd seen my Android Authority colleague Mishaal Rahman report changes in how newer versions of Android handle external keyboards, but I didn't have the chance to test these before getting this case. Now, I know. Physical keyboard language pop-up ...with clipboard ...or emoji picker ...or translate box. Android's compatibility with external keyboards has improved a lot since its early day barebones support. Now, there are shortcuts to trigger many features in Gboard (emoji, clipboard, translation), to interact with text (copy, paste), for multitasking and app switching, to launch apps no matter what you're doing, and more. I certainly like the option of opening the app list with one button or dropping down the notification shade with a shortcut. Having copy and paste be a quick shortcut away instead of a tap-and-hold process is also surprisingly handy. Plus, launching Gmail and my calendar from any app is a perk I didn't expect to enjoy this much, though I want Android to let me set custom shortcuts to launch any app, not just the few Google ones set by default. Android's external keyboard settings ...with customizable modifier keys ...and accessibility settings ...as well as a mouse feature. There's a bit of shortcut fatigue, though, I won't lie to you. It takes a while to memorize the important ones, and if you don't use the Clicks case for a couple of days, you have to relearn them again. My least favorite bit was having to memorize shortcuts to access Gboard's emoji and clipboard menus, which I use every day. Oh, and of course, my most-used shortcut ended up being the one that reveals all the shortcuts because I keep forgetting them! Clicks also has a dedicated Gemini key that launches Google's assistant without having to reach for the power button, as well as a Clicks logo key that acts a bit like the Tab key on your computer, switching selection between on-screen menus and buttons. Both of them are excellent additions that come in handy. QWERTY + Pixel 9 Pro: Romanticized vision versus harsh reality Rita El Khoury / Android Authority Part of me, the one who grew up in the 80s-90s and loved the early days of T9 and QWERTY Blackberry and Nokia smartphones, wants to love the Clicks keyboard case. In an ideal world, this is the most efficient way to type on any platform, and physical keys will always be superior to a touchscreen. The reality of using this case, though, opened my eyes to how much the current smartphone landscape has changed and how much more practical it is to quickly touch-type with chunky thumbs and let the software decide that I wanted to write 'Hello' and not 'Jello.' Add in the super tall form factor that Clicks creates with its imbalance, top-heaviness, small keys, and cramped wrist feeling, and you have an overall product that sounds way too good as an idea, but isn't all that practical to use. The Clicks Keyboard case is perfect on paper, but its usability is a victim of its form factor. I really love the Clicks keyboard's passthrough USB-C charging, MagSafe compatibility, tactile feedback, shortcut support, and the way it liberates my entire display from Gboard, but I just have to be honest with myself and admit I'm not faster, nor am I more accurate typing on it. And it's still painful for me to use for stretches of more than 10 minutes. Perhaps on a shorter phone with a different balance equation, like the Moto Razr, this would be a better bet. Or perhaps a different case option that slides from the side and turns the Pixel into an old-school Communicator-style phone would make more sense for Clicks to solve both the imbalance and small-key issues. Most buyers with a Pixel 9 Pro are better off sticking with their touchscreen, but if you really, really want a physical keyboard and you're ready to deal with the trade-offs I've mentioned, then by all means, this is the best option out there for Android. It's exceptionally well built, but its only fault is being a victim of what it's trying to achieve. Clicks Keyboard Full QWERTY keyboard • Impressive tactile feedback • Keyboard shortcut compatibility MSRP: $139.00 Want QWERTY? Get Clicks! The Clicks keyboard moves the physical keyboard off the screen, freeing up display space. It features backlit keys and supports app shortcuts, and for Pixels it provides AI interactions via a Gemini key. See price at AmazonSee price at Manufacturer siteSee price at Best Buy Positives Full QWERTY keyboard Full QWERTY keyboard Impressive tactile feedback Impressive tactile feedback Keyboard shortcut compatibility Keyboard shortcut compatibility MagSafe support Cons Cramped keys Cramped keys Causes phone imbalance Causes phone imbalance No arrows or standalone number row No arrows or standalone number row No tangible typing speed gain
The Verge
5 days ago
- Business
- The Verge
Refine your own macrodata for the low, low price of $899.
See all Stories Posted Jul 18, 2025 at 11:21 AM UTC Refine your own macrodata for the low, low price of $899. That's how much Atomic Keyboard is charging for its MDR Dasher keyboard, based on Apple TV's Severance , though early adopters can save $300 with a $10 deposit. That gets you an aluminum keyboard with a trackball and swappable magnetic top sheet that enables three different layouts, depending on how show-accurate you feel like being. 1/4 Image: Atomic Keyboard
CNET
7 days ago
- CNET
My Favorite Wireless Keyboard Is Worth Every Penny of the $100 It Costs
Over a decade ago, Logitech made the perfect keyboard for my needs: the K810. It was a compact tenkeyless wireless keyboard with Bluetooth and backlit keys. While those two boxes are far from hard to check off today, they were at the time. Best of all, I loved that I could seamlessly switch the keyboard to up to three different devices by just tapping a key. It wasn't perfect, though. The biggest downside of the K810 was its build quality. While it wasn't bad, it didn't feel super solid. As time went on, it became increasingly hard to find, and Logitech had discontinued it by 2019. I wasn't alone in missing it, either. You can find plenty of old Reddit posts looking for alternatives or pleas to Logitech to rerelease the K810. I found myself buying at least two used or refurbished K810s from eBay since Logitech hadn't produced a proper replacement. Finally, Logitech introduced a true successor to the K810 in 2021. The Logitech MX Keys Mini was nearly everything any K810 owner could want in a successor. It has the same compact and minimal design, backlit keys that are more comfortable to type on, easy switching to other devices, a much-needed upgrade to USB-C for charging, and a solid build quality that goes toe-to-toe with Apple's Magic Keyboard. In fact, I have no problem recommending the Keys Mini over Apple's equivalent offering any day of the week. The Keys Mini typically comes with a $100 price tag that might be a hard pill to swallow for some, but if you're like me and spend several hours a day using a keyboard (and, yes, I'm typing this on my Keys Mini), the price is justified. If you're not a keyboard snob and just need a keyboard for casual use, I'd still recommend the MX Keys Mini. Typing on it is a great experience, especially if you like a minimal and compact layout. The Keys Mini isn't going to impress someone looking for a gaming keyboard, but if that's what you're in the market for, we have you covered with our best gaming keyboards for 2025. Why I like the Logitech MX Keys Mini keyboard The MX Keys Mini has a lot going for it. The backlit keys automatically turn off when I'm not using the keyboard and turn on as my hands approach it. Its ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the brightness of the keys to my current lighting conditions, though I can also manually adjust this as well. The surface of the keys themselves are slightly concave, so typing on them feels great. I love this keyboard so much that I have two of them. David Carnoy/CNET I also love the battery life. Logitech's website claims the Keys Mini will last up to 10 days on a single charge or up to five months with the backlighting turned off. That seems to undersell it. Even with daily use, I don't find myself having to charge the keyboard more than once a month. The top row of keys comes with some standard and not-so-standard abilities. The expected multimedia, volume, Esc and Del keys are present, along with the three easy switch buttons to change the Bluetooth connection to another device I've already paired to and the backlight intensity keys. The keyboard has a useful and dedicated dictation key, a mic mute/unmute key and an emoji key to open the emoji window for supported apps. While I can't say I've ever used the emoji key, I love the idea that enough typists want something like this and that Logitech included it. The MX Keys Mini is about two-thirds the size of MX Keys. David Carnoy/CNET Available in both Windows
Fast Company
15-07-2025
- Fast Company
This IBM ThinkPad was astounding in 1995—and still is
The ThinkPad 701 was 9.7' wide, yet its keyboard magically expanded to a comfy 11.5'. How could anything so ingenious go away so quickly? [Photo: nakashi /Wikimedia Commons] BY Listen to this Article More info 0:00 / 23:24 Closed, it looks pretty much like any other laptop manufactured in 1995. To be sure, it's more compact than most—making it, in the parlance of the day, a subnotebook. But it's still comically thick, standing almost as tall as four MacBook Airs stacked on each other. That height is required to accommodate multiple technologies later rendered obsolete by technological progress, such as a dial-up fax/modem, an infrared port, two PCMCIA expansion card slots, and a bulky connector for an external docking station. But then you open it up. And as you do, something utterly unique happens. Thirty-five of the laptop's keys glide out to the left in a cluster. Another 49 swivel downward and to the right. By the time you've raised the screen into place, those 84 keys have assembled themselves into a keyboard that's 11.5' wide—even though the laptop's case is only 9.7' wide. The result is the holiest of 1990s computing holy grails: comfy, no-compromises typing on a laptop that is—again, by the standards of three decades ago—highly portable. This story is part of 1995 Week, where we'll revisit some of the most interesting, unexpected, and confounding developments in tech 30 years ago. I could only be talking about IBM's ThinkPad 701, the most buzzworthy PC of 1995. Its expanding keyboard, officially called the TrackWrite, remains better known by its code-name of 'Butterfly,' referencing the spreading-wing-like effect as it slid into place. (IBM's butterfly keyboard is not to be confused with Apple's much later, famously wretched keyboard of the same nickname.) Most amazing tech products don't stay amazing forever. 'Amazing—for its time' is generally as good as it gets. But I don't hesitate to describe the ThinkPad 701 as amazing, full stop. It's one of the best things the technology industry has ever done with moving parts. Though the concept may sound faintly Rube Goldbergian, it worked shockingly well. Lifting the screen set off a system of concealed gears and levers that propelled the two sections of keyboard into position with balletic grace. Once assembled, there was no visible seam between the sections, and—despite the overhang they created on both sides of the computer—no droop. Closing the lid neatly reversed the process. Even the confident sound the keyboard produced as it slid in and out—somewhere between a whirrrr and a whooosh, culminating in a satisfying click—was pleasing to the ear, as if IBM had paid attention to the acoustic experience in its own right. Most computers would be hard to sell in a 15-second TV commercial. But all IBM had to do was convey the ThinkPad 701's petite size and then show what happened when you opened it. Mission accomplished, with time to spare. Long after the ThinkPad 701 left the market, it still felt like magic. David Hill, who became the ThinkPad's design chief in 1995 and continued in the role after IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo a decade later, kept one on hand to demonstrate to visitors such as college students. 'Every time I pulled that thing out and showed it to people, the reaction would be the same,' he remembers. 'There would be this deafening silence. And then someone would say, 'Do it again!'' When the ThinkPad 701 was new, laptop buyers recognized it as the engineering marvel it was. A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995's best-selling PC laptop. Yet by the time that story appeared in February 1996, the 701 had been discontinued. IBM never made anything like it again. Neither did anyone else. So how could a laptop widely regarded to have solved one of mobile computing's fundamental problems come and go so quickly? Therein lies a tale. The subnotebook conundrum If you skim through enough photos of typical laptops of the mid-1990s—such as the 65-plus models reviewed in an August 1993 PC Magazine cover story —two things will strike you about their displays. First, they're truly dinky. Nearly all the ones PC Mag covered measured between 8.5' and 9.5' diagonally. Today, by contrast, most mainstream laptop screens start at 13' and go up from there. Secondly, most mid-1990s laptop screens are surrounded by overwhelmingly gigantic bezels, as if they were framed, matted photos. From our 21st-century vantage point, they look weird, since computer makers later spent years shrinking the bezels down—both an aesthetic improvement and a way to fit a roomier display in a smaller case. But by supersizing the bezels, '90s manufacturers gave themselves enough room to equip laptops with desktop-like keyboards. At the time, even more than now, that was an absolutely critical design goal. The first PC maker that figured out how to design a subnotebook-sized laptop with a desktop-sized keyboard would really have something. Now, there were buyers who craved portability so much that they were willing to accept a shrunken keyboard. Subnotebooks catered to them. But these miniature laptops were a quirky niche. Reviewing the ThinkPad 500, IBM's first subnotebook, for InfoWorld in 1993, my friend Fredric Paul concluded that 'touch typing is possible but not exactly fun. A bit more thought about the proper form factor might have allowed more pleasant typing.' Everyone else making subnotebooks faced the same issue. 'There was a mismatch between the largest-size screen and a full size keyboard,' says Hill. 'If you wanted to make something that essentially hugged to the sides of the screen, the keyboard had to be significantly compromised in terms of the ability to type on it.' It was obvious that the first PC maker that figured out how to design a subnotebook-sized laptop with a desktop-sized keyboard would really have something. Unless, that is, the whole thing was an impossible dream. In 1992, design legend Richard Sapper had given the first ThinkPad its squared-off black case and red TrackPoint pointing nub—elements that have proven so durable that they're still with us in new ThinkPads from Lenovo. As IBM contemplated the subnotebook market, Sapper tinkered with methods for getting big keyboards into small laptops—'Folding the keyboard on top of itself, with wings that would fold outward, and some other ideas,' says Hill. 'But they made the computer thicker. And that was not something that was popular.' Impractical though the goal of a keyboard that expanded seemed, it continued to float around within IBM. Among those trying to solve it was John Karidis (1958-2012), an employee at the company's Yorktown Heights, New York, lab whom Hill calls 'the most gifted mechanical engineer I've ever worked with in my entire career.' His previous projects at IBM had ranged widely, from high-speed printers to chip testing equipment. Karidis 'really enjoyed the cadre of inventors and makers,' say his brother, George Karidis—an inventor himself, as was their father, a nuclear engineer for Westinghouse. 'He welcomed that [IBM] was International Business Machines, and he and others made machines. He had a deep concentration at a moment's notice on any topic. He didn't have a fear of failure, but just an eagerness to pursue things.' One day, Karidis had the epiphany that made the ThinkPad 701 possible. 'He was playing with some wooden building blocks with his daughter, and he noticed that if you take two triangular blocks and slide them past each other, it kind of makes a rectangle that changes its aspect ratio,' says Hill. By breaking a keyboard into sections that slid, you might be able to increase its width without resorting to a folding design that added to the computer's height. To test that idea out, Karidis 'ended up photocopying a keyboard and then cutting it out,' says his brother George. 'He saw how it could translate. And he went home and showed it to his wife, and she kind of looked at him funny and said, ''They pay you to do this?'' IBM used robots to verify that the split keyboard was robust enough to withstand 25,000 openings and closings. In his 2017 book How the ThinkPad Changed the World and is Shaping the Future, Arimasa Naitoh, who led a ThinkPad engineering team in Yamato, Japan, for decades, writes of an IBM executive at the company's Raleigh, North Carolina office. Learning of Karidis's keyboard, he pushed a plan to incorporate it in a laptop. That executive, Naitoh says, was Tim Cook—years before he joined Apple. Cook's IBM responsibilities involved manufacturing and distribution, not product development, and he left the company well before the ThinkPad 701 was released. Thinking of him as one of its fathers may be going way beyond the documented evidence. Still, the mind boggles: The most interesting laptop Apple's eventual CEO played a hand in hatching might not have been a MacBook. Bringing Karidis's brainstorm to market took time. In 1992, the company had formed an analysts' council that gave a select group of industry watchers the opportunity to see products under development and provide feedback. Its participants included Creative Strategies analyst (and Fast Company contributor) Tim Bajarin; the group still exists today as part of Lenovo's PC business and Bajarin remains a member. At one meeting, the council got a preview of Karidis's design—though not yet in a working laptop. 'It wasn't a true device, but they showed us the concept, showed us how the butterfly keyboard might work,' explains Bajarin. 'And by the way, they did really good mockups. They were not cheapo stuff. To a person, we said, 'If you can do it, you should do it.'' They could do it, and did—just not as rapidly as they'd hoped. Naitoh writes that the ThinkPad 701 was initially supposed to ship by the end of 1994. It missed that deadline, delayed by the demands of engineering and testing such an unprecedented product. For example, IBM used robots to verify that the split keyboard was robust enough to withstand 25,000 openings and closings. Mr. Bond's laptop On March 6, 1995, IBM finally announced its new subnotebook. Available in a variety of configurations, its list prices ranged from $3,799–$5,649, or about $8,000–$11,900 in 2025 dollars—not cheap, but not absurd at the time. The most economical variant, the ThinkPad 701Cs, had a 10.4' screen—roomy at the time—but it was a 'passive matrix' LCD, which tended to leave colors looking a tad washed out. The one you really wanted was the 701C, which sported a vivid active-matrix screen of the same size. In a story about the 701's arrival, The New York Times ' Laurie Flynn said that IBM might have trouble keeping up with demand, in part because it had gotten prospective buyers too excited too early. She also noted that the 701 used 'the older Intel 486 chip rather than the faster Pentium'—an artifact of its slow gestation that would come back to bite IBM. Reviewers, whom IBM had seeded with ThinkPad 701 units before its release, weren't impressed by the laptop's aging processor and found its battery life iffy. Thanks to the butterfly keyboard, they still hailed the system as a mobile computing landmark. 'The $5,000 ThinkPad 701C has successfully taken the sub out of subnotebook,' wrote PC Magazine' s Brian Nadel. The Wall Street Journal 's Walt Mossberg called it 'a true gem of a computer' and— more than 20 years later —'probably the most unusual and, I think, in some ways clever laptop I ever reviewed.' Generally speaking, IBM was a businesslike brand and ThinkPad marketing leaned into practical advantages. With the 701, however, the company wasn't afraid of gadget-y associations. 'James Bond, as a frequent traveler, will certainly carry this amazing 4.5 lb. ultra portable computer on his next mission,' declared one ad, playing up features such as the built-in answering machine and fax capability. That November, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) really did fool around with a 701 in GoldenEye —although only fleetingly and to the apparent annoyance of Q. (Fittingly, Hill says that Karidis was known as 'the Q of IBM.') The following year, the computer also showed up briefly in Tom Cruise's first Mission Impossible film, which is better known for its Apple product placement. In this video promo shot at Disney World's Epcot Center,an IBM employee walks through the 701's features. We also glimpse the equipment the company used to test the computer and random theme park visitors being impressed by the expanding keyboard. The ThinkPad 701 garnered some weighty recognition, including 27 design awards. It was even exhibited at New York City's Museum of Modern Art. But despite the publicity and plaudits, its clock ran out before the year ended. In a 'Hardware Withdrawal' list released on November 21, 1995, IBM announced that it would stop marketing the 701 as of December 21. Units that had already made their way into distribution channels would remain available into 1996, but the 701 was a dead computer walking, less than nine months after its debut. Multiple factors contributed to IBM's decision to discontinue such a high-profile system. One of them was its Intel 486 chip, which had felt a tad outdated when the 701 was released and grown only more so by late 1995. Updating the design with a Pentium would not have been as simple as plopping in a newer processor. Instead, the decision would have set off a cascading series of engineering challenges relating to keeping the powerful Pentium running cool. Possible, certainly—but also a significant undertaking. 'I would have to say that [the ThinkPad 701's] biggest success is the halo that created around ThinkPad and IBM, because it was so wildly creative,' says Hill. 'But it did kind of miss the wave in terms of the announcement relative to the chip. So it was a little bit late.' Bajarin notes that that IBM told members of its analysts' council that the TrackWrite's keyboard had some reliability issues, since its left and right edges overflowed the case and were unsupported in use. That was especially true among users who mistreated their pricey new laptops: 'Sometimes they'd throw it in their backpack without getting the keyboard closed completely,' he remembers. The great widening Ultimately, though, the ThinkPad 701 wasn't done in by its own limitations. As portable computers became more popular, progress in display technology had made it possible for PC makers to use larger screens. Manufacturers were also getting better at fitting a laptop's necessary components into less space. These advances let them design a new generation of thin, light laptops that went beyond the limitations of subnotebooks. Once IBM could make a lightweight laptop with a wider screen, 'the need for an expanding keyboard was no longer essential,' says George Karidis. 'It would have just been a novelty.' In his book, Naitoh writes that the 701 was released amid rivalry between IBM's Raleigh and Yamato teams that was resolved by centralizing ThinkPad development in Yamato. Put in charge of determining the butterfly keyboard's future, he reluctantly concluded its time had passed and suspended further work on it. In 1996, IBM released the ThinkPad 560. Its 12.1' display was considerably roomier than the ThinkPad's 701's 10.4-incher. The case was two inches wider than the 701, offering plenty of space for a desktop-like keyboard—no butterfly mechanism required. Yet the 560 was also much thinner (1.2') and lighter (4 lb.) than the 701, achieving a form factor that would become known as 'ultraportable.' The ThinkPad 701 had been a memorable blip. The ThinkPad 560's balance of portability, power, and comfort presaged where the entire industry would focus its energy for years to come. The end result has been laptops such as today's ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13. With a 14' screen, it's 53% thinner at its thickest point and 46% lighter than the ThinkPad 560. 'Lenovo continues to flatten these things to the point that it hardly even needs to be any thinner,' says Hill. Though the 701's butterfly keyboard couldn't survive on coolness alone, 'There were a couple of attempts to bring it back with other operating systems, like a kind of a smart book kind of device or other things of that nature, but we never could get the the traction,' says Hill. 'In fact, John [Karidis] and I worked on one where only half the keyboard moved.' Even now, it may be premature to assume the idea will never resurface in a new device: In 2021, the history site Laptop Retrospective reported that Lenovo had filed a new patent for a magnetic expanding keyboard, possibly for use with tablets. Interviewed by Cnet' s John G. Spooner in 2001, Karidis didn't seem haunted by his invention's failure to change computing in any permanent way. 'The butterfly keyboard was no longer necessary, because people moved to larger displays, especially in this geography,' he told Spooner. 'Where the butterfly approach makes sense is where you want the largest keyboard possible in combination with an 8-inch or 10-inch display. We'll wait and see whether the market need develops (again) for that.' So far, it hasn't—but it's fun to think it could. Butterflies are forever Back in 1995, I didn't even consider buying a ThinkPad 701. Even in its cheapest configuration, it was far, far outside my price range. Both of my parents got ones as work machines, though. I recall Ma and Pa McCracken being very happy with their hers-and-his ThinkPads, although my mother, who mostly used hers on the couch when working from home, discovered that excess cat hair clogged the keyboard mechanism. While working on this article, I realized I needed to reacquaint myself with the 701 in person. I ended up snagging one off eBay. Its TrackWrite keyboard continues to function perfectly, and it still boots into Windows 95. However, like many 30-year-old laptops, mine has fallen victim to its advanced age. It has a corroded battery, a flaky power switch, and a case whose rubberized black coating has decomposed to a syrupy consistency. A ThinkPad 701 owner who goes by the online handle of Polymatt hasn't just lovingly restored his own laptop. He's created Project Butterfly, a website full of step-by-step repair guides: How to sand and repaint its case, 3D-print replacement parts, fabricate a replacement battery, and more. Everything is open source, including files that allow the printing of replacement decals for icons such as the ones indicating the laptop's power switch, printer port, headphone jack, and other features. Like me, Polymatt is a second-generation fan whose father brought a 701 home during its original moment of glory. 'I was instantly attracted to it,' he says. 'He had some previous ThinkPads, but this thing was just supercool. I have really fond memories of playing video games on it and just being fascinated by what it was. It helped cement my interest in technology.' The 701 lingered in his memory. Years later, it resurfaced as an opportunity to contribute something meaningful to the community of vintage computing enthusiasts. As a thing of wonder, the ThinkPad 701 continues to transcend its wn obsolescence. Polymatt isn't the only 701 owner who's gone all out to bring the machine into the 21st century. Karl Buchka managed to replace a 701's guts with the motherboard from a modern Framework modular laptop and give it an iPad's Retina display. Theoretically, an intrepid modder could do something similar with any old computer. It's just that few mid-90s laptops remain interesting enough to inspire such creativity. Only a small group of hackers have the patience, passion, and technical chops to acquire a ThinkPad 701—Polymatt says he's had 20 or 30 over the years—and fix it up. But a far larger swath of humanity is still charmed by John Karidis's butterfly keyboard. YouTube is awash in 701-related videos, from an excellent documentary to people simply being entranced by it. As a thing of wonder, it continues to transcend its own obsolescence. Just by itself, Polymatt's YouTube Short of a 701 opening and closing has been viewed more than 600,000 times. 'The fun thing is, I see the comments coming in from people who think that it's a modern thing and are excited about it,' he says. 'And then I see people who know it and are like, 'Oh, they need to bring this back.' I get the whole spectrum of reactions.' Yes, some of the YouTube commenters helpfully point out that the advent of wide screens long ago eliminated the need for an expanding keyboard. Even so, it's tough to watch the video just once and then click away. After all these years, the most natural response to seeing the ThinkPad 701 in action remains 'Do it again.' The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today. Sign up for our weekly tech digest. SIGN UP This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Privacy Policy ABOUT THE AUTHOR Harry McCracken is the global technology editor for Fast Company, based in San Francisco. He writes about topics ranging from gadgets and services from tech giants to the startup economy to how artificial intelligence and other breakthroughs are changing life at work, home, and beyond. More
