Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
The Onion1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2012–2025
comedy · general · evergreen · 2012–2025 on HN
A satirical Onion News Network piece announcing the 'MacBook Wheel', a laptop with no keyboard where users type by spinning and clicking a wheel. It parodies Apple product launches and minimalist design.
HN uses it as a recurring punchline whenever a device removes keys or buttons in favor of touch or novelty controls.
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12 comments from Hacker News
Two of my favourites: Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard - ▶ this video Anonymous Hero Donates Hospital 200 Human Kidneys - link
Meanwhile my 2019 i9 16" MacBook Pro gets battery life on par with the MacBook Wheel (as seen in this classic from The Onion: ▶ this video ) I kid you not, the hummingbird battery is real . At least I have something to look forward to when I upgrade.
The reason they're dangerous is not because you have to interact with them, per se, its simply because they provide to much information that takes a lot of cognitive processing to interpret. Specifically, text. Reading is "hard". Even things as simple as the title of the song on the radio. Especially when the text changes. I have a modern LCD on my motorcycle, a BMW, that uses a WonderWheel (rotate to scroll up/down, and push or pull for right/left click) as an interface. It's very reminiscent of The Onions MacBook Wheel[0]. It is absolutely dangerous to use while riding. It's a cognitive black hole. Obviously, the LCD is not alone in this case, the interaction pushes it all up to eleven. But the old school car interface was numbers and small words, and, eventually icons. Consider changing the temperature in a car, for me, I'd shove the hot/cold slider around until the air coming the from the vent was comfortable vs clicking up and down and deciding "do I want 72 or 73?". And, yea, maybe it's just me. Perhaps I alone am a hazard when interacting with these things. So, maybe it's not fair for me to project my experiences to the population at large. [0] ▶ this video
That would have been a hilarious timeline if they just upgraded ipods with cell networking, at least for one model. Then you can use this for typing: ▶ this video
So a knob that doesn't even have the feedback of knowing when you've gotten to the next selection at all, you have to actually stare at it as it goes through the different choices. That doesn't seem better to me at all. Personally, in this idea of a dial I'd like one that can actually give some haptic feedback. Or even better yet just be able to actually tap on the option instead of needing to turn a dial to move a selector on the screen to choose it. At least with an old-fashioned radio knob you got the feedback of if you were tuning into the station by hearing it. But moving a selector on a screen? It's like you're arguing for the MacBook Wheel, as if a knob is the most optimal way to input arbitrary choices on a computer. ▶ this video
> The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x that amount to account for variance, changes, debugging etc, you'd be at 12 lines PER HOUR. Being generous at a full 80 chars per line, you have a maximum of 1000 keypresses per hour, or an average of one every 3 seconds. Even doubling your typing speed or keyboard response time would have no discernible effect. Just my personal experience, it's not about how fast I can get my ideas down in writing (whether code or not), it's about how often I am broken out of the flow when typing. At one extreme, using your stats above of "10 finished lines of code per day", you could argue that using this keyboard ( ▶ this video ) should have no effect on your productivity, and yet no developer would make or support this argument. Small frictions add up; there's a joelonsoftware post that I read a long time ago about this[1], and it stuck for 24 years! The best editor/environment is the one that gets out of my way. One where I don't need to look things up on google. One in which I have already learned all the shortcuts, and don't need to relearn them to make the software useful. Emacs `M-x sql-connect` is much easier for me to do than to look up, in VS Code, what shortcut has been assigned to the extension I use that does the same thing, and then look it up again in a few years when that extension is no longer supported. Same for Vim commands. Using VS Code, or a full-fledged IDE[2] removes the whole comm
"Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard" ▶ this video "Markets In Turmoil As Price Of Money Skyrockets To $90 A Dollar" link
Oy, I wouldn't hold up a 2008 BMW as a paragon of usability. That early iDrive system was awful. Three different ways to differently manage climate temperature? Navigation straight out of the Macbook Wheel[1]? I could go on. The auto wipers were definitely better than the Tesla though. I do largely agree with you re the Tesla, although the steering wheel controls I could argue both sides. They're multi-function, which allows you to customize their operation and do a lot more than you can with dedicated controls. Edit: though I guess it's 2024 now. IIRC the 2009s had slightly less bad idrive. [1] ▶ this video
Makes me think of the "MacBook Wheel" [0] from ages past. It's really a shame how user-hostile design can be. [0] ▶ this video
I'm still waiting for the revolutionary laptop Macbook Wheel , hopefully it will run the latest IpadOS ▶ this video - 2009 video
>Human Machine Interface hall of fame along with the old click wheel iPod Classic Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard ▶ this video "just few hundred clicks away"
You mentioned a wheel in the context of Apple and I thought you were talking about the Apple MacBook Wheel. ▶ this video