Re:TrackPoint (2011)
by tselker on Sunday April 26, 2015 @01:13AM
(#9440626)
First, its true!, we showed Apple that the trackpoint is at least 20% faster than the trackpad for text editing,,, they said... "yeah but its ibm not apple's branded input device"... apple is still a marketing company
At first the trackpoint catapulted IBM into a new and important market, moving them from not being able to sell even a few thousand laptops a year, to selling billions of dollars of them a year... SO THEY WOULDN'T LET US SELL THE POINTING DEVICE TO ANYONE, EVEN THOUGH THEY WANTED IT... FOR TWO YEARS.
by then their were 5 copycats ... that sucked... sullying the TrackPoint luster... so they let us sell it.... but it was a bit late and the price IBM charged was a bit tough to pay...
still: at least HP, Zenith, TI, SONY, used the real thing for a while
Dell did licence it for some of their machines BUT,,,, they put these really stiff buttons on them that were like 5 times as stiff in the front as in the back... bad buttons can completely negate all productivity gains... Dell was told,,, and i would be happy ... even now ... to help ,,, some have conjectured that Dell put the TrackPoint in to get people to move away from the ThinkPad, and when it didn't work, they would "get used to the pad" and not pay the premium for ThinkPad again...
At first the trackpoint catapulted IBM into a new and important market, moving them from not being able to sell even a few thousand laptops a year, to selling billions of dollars of them a year... SO THEY WOULDN'T LET US SELL THE POINTING DEVICE TO ANYONE, EVEN THOUGH THEY WANTED IT... FOR TWO YEARS. by then their were 5 copycats ... that sucked... sullying the TrackPoint luster... so they let us sell it.... but it was a bit late and the price IBM charged was a bit tough to pay... still: at least HP, Zenith, TI, SONY, used the real thing for a while Dell did licence it for some of their machines BUT,,,, they put these really stiff buttons on them that were like 5 times as stiff in the front as in the back... bad buttons can completely negate all productivity gains... Dell was told,,, and i would be happy ... even now ... to help ,,, some have conjectured that Dell put the TrackPoint in to get people to move away from the ThinkPad, and when it didn't work, they would "get used to the pad" and not pay the premium for ThinkPad again...