Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge New power-user peripheral: Could I get some help?

From the "two birds, one stone" Dept.:
@ joemikeb and dkmarsh...


I'm not so sure that's an accurate assessment, based on my past experience in pitching the idea, and on the general level of traffic here at F.T.M. It's just not that busy here, but I chose to post here, because I hadn't addressed this group of people before.

One thing that might help you to understand my level of enthusiasm with this, is that my efforts on it have been cyclical, i.e.: I get wound up about the project for a couple weeks, try to drum up collaborators, and then to let it slide when I run into an impediment. Currently, I'm in an "up" phase on the cycle.

When I first came up with the AccessPad Pro idea in early 2005, I started casually mentioning it to my power-user peers on the Adobe Forums (including a few internationally-known regulars there) and a couple other online venues, in a couple recording studios I visit regularly, some TV News editors, and elsewhere. Once people understood the concept, I make no exaggeration in saying that Every. Single. Person. responded with something along the lines of: "Oh my god, that's brilliant...When and where can I get one?" These are people who—like myself—know and use literally hundreds of keyboard shortcuts, actions and macros, spread across a few, or many applications. I also asked what they'd be willing to pay for it, if they could go to an Apple Store, or Best Buy, or Fry's, or B&H Photo, or Amazon, for that matter, and get one right away. Most answers ranged from $190 to $300. THAT tells me that there's a segment of the population who are as keen on the idea as I am...maybe not a large segment, but certainly an enthusiastic one, and probably a large enough group to make it economically viable. Granted, the sampling of opinions is relatively small, and it's certainly non-scientific, but hey, it's what I have to go on at this point. I'm not Apple, or Logitech, with that kind of marketing and R&D, so I can only do what I can do, yah know?.

I had come up with a somewhat crude, first-draft 2D rendering in Photoshop, with annotations about how it works and why it's designed the way it is, but I was kind of embarrassed by the amateurish quality of it, so I didn't show it around much. Plus, I was worried that someone would see the design and steal it.


It's certainly possible. But I'm more inclined to believe that the thread just hasn't fallen under the proper eyeballs here. "Inactivity through obscurity" is just as good a theory. Let's be honest with ourselves: F.T.M doesn't garner that much traffic. That's part of the reason I chose to poke my head in here and throw the idea and request on the table. I'm not quite ready to open it up to a mass audience. I'm content to shop this around quietly...for now.



Again, I think multi-touch-sensitive-extreme-foo-devices are a decent technology, but I don't see it being nearly robust enough in capability or in extensibility yet, and don't believe that they will be for quite awhile. It works quite well for iPhones and the iPod touch, but that's a whole different application than what's needed for full-screen, hard core, getting-a—lot—of—work—done situations.

Electromechanical devices are proven technologies that users know deeply, and to which they can become accustomed easily.

People who use them extensively have already internalized the use of keyboard shortcuts. For people who need to do a lot of work, and do it efficiently, shortcuts are common, useful and ubiquitous. Some of us have literally decades of habit that we call upon in this regard. And before you comment on THAT, I feel that just because something has become a habit doesn't automatically qualify it as bad, or outmoded behavior. Some things just work, and stick around so long, simply because they just work. (Where have we heard that phrase put to effective use before?)

But make no mistake: CONVENTIONAL KEYBOARDS SUCK! for accessing shortcuts. The ergonomics are COMPLETELY wrong. When shortcuts were first introduced, they were implemented on keyboards because, well, the keyboard was already invented and handy. Engineers and designers didn't feel it was practical, or even necessary to create another device just for shortcuts.

But, for that mythical and prodigious group of power users I've been speaking of, those shortcuts have become an enormously important part of their workflow. The problem is, the hardware hasn't evolved simultaneously, as it should have.

Look down at your keyboard and watch how you have to contort yourself to invoke, for example, a Command + Shift + F7 —with one hand. Your hand is an ugly contorted, pointing claw, and your elbow is probably racked out sideways.

Wanna do it with two hands? You have to take one off your mouse or your digitizing tablet to do it. Wasted effort.

Wanna do it by touching your screen? Wasted effort. And, besides having to clean finger guck off your monitor (if only for aesthetic, or hygenic, reasons), it might possibly even be damaging to the device in the long term.

Wanna do it with some as-yet-uninvented multi-touch sensitive Magic Mouse that allows for dozens and dozens of discrete gestures? Yeah..let me know when that comes out, eh? And then, let me know when a critical mass is reached of users who know those gestures as well as they know the keyboard shortcut paradigm.

AccessPad Pro is ALL about ergonomics, and about user customization. It's practically bullet-proof physically, and its design allows users to assign any shortcut to any series of buttons, and those buttons are arranged in such a manner that makes graceful manipulation of those shortcuts almost effortless.

Though vitally important, the nuts and bolts of driver/utility software coding and manufacturing are really just simple problems to be solved. I don't have those skills or resources at my command.

The concept and design are what sets this device apart. Sounds like an Apple-inspired product concept, if you think about it. It's the concept that is king here, and it's where I'm confident I've come up with something that'll change the way people work.

It just needs to get made.

Go ahead and mention it to anyone you might know who has the skills I'm after. If it's a software engineer, I'll converse in geek-speak, to the best of my ability. If it's a 3D/CAD designer, I'll converse in design terms.

The ad-speak that you may have found off-putting was meant to have a conversational tone, placing more emphasis on the problems it's been designed to solve, and less about the intricacies of development. It's that latter conversation I was hoping to spark here.

Also as I've said before, my ideas about AccessPad Pro aren't immutable, and I welcome well-considered ideas. I felt as if what I wrote in my initial post was enough to get peoples' imaginations juiced, and I was hoping to hear some replies about what respondents envisioned when they read it.

And as long as you guys or anyone else wants to continue the dialogue, I'll keep checking back. If the thread sinks and drops off to page 2 of the index, I'll just take it somewhere else, no worries.