My last blog entry was first really popular one, attracting more than 1,500 visitors on the ByteSoul. You are welcome to send comments, suggestions, lucrative offers, hate mail and death threats to bifacial@gmail.com (See? I’m not afraid to give out my main mail address.)
Boys and girls,
Hype around Art Lebedev’s overpowered Optimus keyboard is rising, and I’m getting more confident in idea that it just won’t sell enough copies. Why? I’ve got five reasons for it. (For reference: Optimus is keyboard with little programmable LED screens for keys, designed by Artemi Lebedev, genius of creative thinking and my favorite designer).
5. Price
How do you think, how much set of 100+ low-res LED screens together with interface to bind them all will cost? $200? $300? $1000? $2000? Way too much for a keyboard.
Yes, I know that it really cannot cost less. Yes, I know that geeks worldwide are eager to buy it for any price, and yet I know that this is just too much for keyboard. Plain old keyboard.
4. Half-measures
They just can’t make it and will go for any half-measures not to disappoint Optimus fanboys.
They don’t have personnel savvy enough – and they are hiring like mad to quicken up the pace.
They don’t have time enough – and they make lite versions of Optimus like weird but useful Upravlator or completely pointless Optimus Three to buy off time.
They know that final price will be crazy – and they offer standard keys instead of LED-powered ones to lower it a bit.
What will be next?
Boo to half-measures made and not yet made.
3. Style
Artemi Lebedev is real genius in design. His studio is full of real talents. Their hardware designs are really unique and catchy. And yet, no one has stopped man actually responsible for sketching it from making the design good, bad and ugly.
Imagine of cacophony of colors and shapes made by key-screens when user is able to completely customize them at merest whim, and add it to the awful design of keyboard itself. Yuck.
Boo to the poor style.
2. Delays
Nothing has stopped them from setting up release date at late 2011 or something and then making nice surprise for everybody by releasing it in 2008.
Yet, they moved on the flawed way and made ‘floating’ release date, pushing it by year… every year. Welcome to the Duke Nukem Forever of hardware, glorious Optimus, to be released in late 2007, or early 2008, or late 2008, or never.
Boo to the constant delays.
1. Soul
And the most important problem – Optimus is doesn’t have any soul, and will never gain any, just like every single built-for-customization piece of hardware. And this is the most important reason why Optimus won’t sell.
Boo to the complete and utter lack of soul.
Amen.
PS. I still consider Artemi Lebedev as genius of design. His Optimus idea is brilliant, and his studio really should have sold this idea to Logitech or Genius or whatever.
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