Because I'm down the rabbit hole of highly customized keyboards, at one point I did a frequency analysis of the keys I use the most.

Guess what was the most frequently used key? Cursor down followed by cursor up.

For example, cursor down was pressed ~2.5x more times than space, or ~4 times more than letter E, which is was the most frequently used letter.

Guess what are the smallest keys on a Mac-type keyboard (the layout also used by the Framework laptop). Cursor up and down. Madness.

Keep in mind this is likely unique to CLI users. The vast majority of users have little use for arrow keys - nudging the text cursor a few chars left/right and making tiny moves in graphics software are about the only two I can think of.

Even then. If you're strictly CLI you should likely prefer Ctrl+b, Ctrl+n, Ctrl+p, Ctrl+n, etc etc

Not just CLI but also browsers when you don't want to get bitten by infinite scroll adjustments moving your scrollbar cursor placement and then pressing down before noticing and accidentally scrolling past 50% of the page you were just trying to read.

I love the ThinkPad with the Arrow Key and PgUp/PgDown all next to each other.

Rejoice, Lenovo is introducing a ThinkPad that finally lets them scrap this excellent setup for a mainstream rectangular keyboard: Z13 and Z16. Doubly sad because those look like a kick-ass AMD Ryzen implementation otherwise. Trippy sad because they also found a way to get rid of the physical TrackPoint buttons and still call it a ThinkPad.

The writing is on the wall, just wait for Lenovo to finally extinguish their ugly step-child of asymmetry and deprive us of the last good arrow key layout left in portable laptops.

I am on a Mac for over a decade and I don’t understand what’s the issue with the keys. Well, they are smaller, but it’s not a problem for me, not at all.

Do you scroll with the arrows keys?

You don't?

Either that, or PgUp/PgDown

This is I don't understand. Why laptop manufacturers neglect probably the most important thing that is the keyboard? Almost every single laptop that comes out these days looks like the keyboard is an afterthought. Why can't I have full size cursor keys? Pg Up, Pg Down, Home, End and few others?

I suspect majority of users never touch Pg Up/Pg Dn/Home/End and all those other keys over there. For arrow keys, the compacted layout is helpful when designing a space constrained keyboard, and it's totally usable.

Wouldn't that be because these keys are difficult to use in typical laptop keyboard, as in self fulfilling prophecy?

It probably doesn't help, but it definitely isn't the reason. Most people still do their work on desktops with full-sized keyboards and they already don't use those keys there.

So how they e.g. move around cells in the spreadsheet or documents?

Mouse. If you're correcting data in a spreadsheet you're probably jumping around a lot and a mouse makes more sense and if you're entering new data most people I've worked with use tab and enter.

fn+arrow combo is imho equally as usable

I hate fn+arrow as an alternative to having real home/end/pgup/pgdown keys. It's probably the thing I hate most about my blade laptop.

Why? Do you feel similar about not having a "real" dedicated key to ctrl+c / ctrl+v ?

Because I came from a laptop that had home/end/pgup/pgdn and grew fully accustomed to those keys for keyboard navigation (which is my bread and butter these days).

The alternative was to get a 15" laptop, which is slightly too big for me, so I suffer in silence and occasionally bitch about it on forums.

It takes two hands to use Fn+Up/Down instead of PageUp/PageDown keys to scroll around. These keys are for some people the most common keys used for fast nevigation in code and documents.

Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V are used far less often, and you can type them with one hand.

> It takes two hands to use Fn+Up/Down instead of PageUp/PageDown keys to scroll around

Doesn't seem like a big deal, I'm trying to think of a situation where I need the other hand to be free while paging or moving to end of the line.

> These keys are for some people the most common keys used for fast nevigation in code and documents.

Seems like a personal preference. I have a working trackpad so I almost never use them. Also, home/end on a thinkpad are out of reach anyway. And what's the point of 'insert' ?

> Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V are used far less often,

I use these constantly, I don't remember touching home/end ever, pg up/dwn maybe by accident.

Wow, you're right! Didn't understand how you could not have a reverse T for the arrow keys and took a look at the pictures. The up/down keys are split in half?! Why'd you make the arrow keys have different sizes?!

It was the design on MacBook's for almost 5 years. Apple rolled that change back in late 2020 but it will take other OEM's a while to update their available SKUs to match the Apple of today.

So that's where all this comes from. Not surprising. I saw that Dell announced a touchbar product. Guess they'll have to kill that too. This sort of slavish aping of Apple needs to stop.

My ex-boyfriend called me "insane", but I genuinely prefer ye olde 6-key arrow cluster from the Thinkpads of yore. I quickly got used to browsing with pgup and pgdown, now any keyboard without those keys adjacent to the arrows just feels wrong to me.

In any case, the keyboard on the Framework is fully replaceable. If there's significant enough demand for an inverted-T cluster, you can bet there are people who will make the replacement for it (if OEM doesn't get to it first).

And I hate the ThinkPad 6-key cluster because of accidentally hitting the pgup and pgdown buttons. I decapped both buttons because of it. Same with the the fn button next to ctrl.

Different strokes for different folks. I'm personally just glad that we were able to collectively hate the Touch Bar enough for Apple to '86 it.

Pedantry incoming, but “86” doesn’t need the apostrophe before it.

The etymology from what I remember comes from the fact that if asking for 86 of anything at once is impossible to provide.

In theory you can just buy the keyboard and swap in when/if it becomes available https://frame.work/marketplace/keyboards

Oh yeah, that would be awesome. I’ve searched for a proper tkl layout in laptops. There’s the current layout in Frame.work which is think is probably the worst, then current Macbook, then finally HP Omen (tkl) (but its kind of a shitty laptop).

Ive also seen a laptop with the arrow keys slightly offset downward.

I hate half size arrow keys, why don't make it normal size.