Why E-Ink keyboards will make it big?
Stress can hit you anytime of the day and while working at the office. Trying to remember those complicated keyboard shortcuts seems like quite a task and that is when morphing E-Ink keyboards were announced. it was a sigh of relief for me and many people like me who just can’t ignore the fact that they hate keyboard shortcuts. No matter how some people would advocate that keyboard shortcuts were designed to make our tasks easier but remembering those shortcuts is a mean job.
It is a dream come true for people like me that we would now be able to pre-order E-Ink keyboards that provide various shortcut hints based on the operating system we use. How cool is that? The Jaasta E Ink keyboard will soon be available through a crowd funded campaign and it is expected to be sold around $300 once it will be in the production stage. So, there is still some time until you throw your old keyboard and gear up for this masterpiece.
It seems as if this app has the potential to make it big, but the question is whether it will work on it’s own? This will probably be just another keyboard without any third party apps supporting it. It won’t be feasible until there are apps which support it and it won’t be encouraging for app developers until people buy the apps. They can make user-defined layouts for the keyboards, but it would be hard to force non-developers to go the hard way. This thing is one touch away from genius and that is if Apple starts producing it, then this keyboard might break all the previous records there were. Apple is great at creating a hype and it can definitely help the sales of the keyboards.
If we consider dynamically changing keys, it is not just useful for remembering software shortcuts. This feature has a great amount of customisation support, which will make the keyboard function better. Just imagine the Dvorak layout without Qwerty? You can remove the keys you no longer use on the keyboard and even add duplicates for the keys you prefer using more. There is now a possibility for dedicated Twitter users to to finally get a hashtag key, but I think the makers should refrain from it.
The promise shown by the Jaasta keyboard has made the geeks quite excited but the E Ink technology that provides its morphing keys is valid at the moment, but incorporating it in real life and making it use like a regular keyboard is the key and that is where the Jaasta keyboard will show it’s true colours. I hope we don’t have to use gloves to work on the keyboard and I am really concerned about my typing speed, which is around 100 words per minute.
The E Ink keyboard would be a great asset for people who are bi-lingual. Most of the times, the case is that people efficiently speaking two or three languages have a problem when they have to type in english. The E Ink keyboard will be able to solve this issue in today’s world where many people nowadays are accustomed to travelling different countries for business and pleasure and in this process pick up a few languages. This would even be of great help to people in audio-video editing as they have to use many tools and it is sometimes disturbing to remember all hotkeys for various softwares.
The E Ink keyboard is slated to launch in February and as mentioned above it will be priced at $300, which is quite high but the features it comes with are worth all the hype created by the makers.
Keval Padia is the founder & CEO of Nimblechapps, a fast-growing mobile app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.