Optimus Freakin’ Maximus
$1564.37
That’s the magic number, kiddos.
That’s how much cheese it will cost you to get a keyboard with the power to truly crush other kids.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, this sweet sweet piece of finger candy hopes to rewrite every rule about keyboards.
With a color OLED under every key that displays the currently assigned function for each respective key, the Optimus Maximus can be reconfigured, at will, into any kind of specialty input device you want it to be.
That might not sound like much to the typical cubicle rat, who spends most of their time in Word, Excel and Outlook.
But folks who do a lot of work in highly specialized applications, especially media apps, tend to already use customized keyboards, with color coded keys highlighting the command structures for them. But these are typically one-trick ponies, customized for one specific application.
The Optimus Maximus makes the keyboard a highly-adaptable, I/O platform. Imagine the ability to configure different command sets for whatever application you are in at the time. Awesome, right?
But don’t take my word for it…
Try it out for yourself using the official Optimus Maximus keyboard demo: http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/demo/
As hella cool and potentially asskicking as all of this is…
I have a few nagging questions about the Optimus Maximus.
Firstly…
This thing costs more than most mainstream PCs and notebooks.
Cost, obviously, is an issue for all but the most well-heeled and power user of power users. But with an initial run of 200, and a second run of 400 planned…mainstream obviously != the target market of the Optimus Maximus, ya dig?
Secondly…
How helpful can icons really be?
I can definitely see how a metamorphing keyboard would kick much ass, especially for folks who switch between a lot of highly specialized applications.
But, by and large, most people who are hella awesome typists never look at the keyboard anyway. To do so would simply slow them down.
And even if they did, I think most icons in the GUIs of most programs are hit-and-miss, at best. Easily 50% of the time, I don’t know what the heck a given function is by looking at the icon. I have to wait for the tooltip to come up when I hover on it anyway. Look at this example of a Photoshop profile for the Optimus Maximus:
So, I figure most folks will end up using the Optimus Maximus for one simple solitary thing…
Running cutesy holiday apps that draw pictures or spell out messages on their keyboard, and which are prolly laden with adware, spyware, rootkits, and the like.
Also, I wonder if OLEDs suffer from burn-in? Could this spawn a whole new cottage industry of keyboard savers?
And don’t even get me started about keyboard porn…sheesh.
Thirdly…
Wireless, anyone?
I dunno about you, but for the last decade or so I’ve been on a quest to eliminate as many wires as I possibly can from my desktop setup, in hopes that one day, I won’t need any wires whatsoever between anything that I’m using. The Optimus Maximus would set me back a good 5–7 years, which is a heckuva lot of quest equity to forfeit.
Fourthly…
Complexity killeth.
It’s a simple fact that the more complex a given something is, the less people are apt to use it. Even the most fanatically fanatical fans for a given piece of hardware or software will, at some point, say “Whoa! Enough!”
I use my faithful Saitek X36 HOTAS setup as an example. Hellaciously awesome, astoundingly programmable, undeniably powerful…
I used it for like, 3 games…
- Crimson Skies
- MechWarrior
- Tachyon: The Fringe (some of Bruce Campbell’s best voice work, in any medium)
Don’t get me wrong. That HOTAS setup kicked so much ass, it was unbelievable. But on the flipside, it was so complex to program, I pretty much just went with the basic profiles available from Saitek’s site. I think I flipped one weapon combo on the Crimson Skies profile. That was it.
So the major benefit of the X36, its amazing customizability, was basically no benefit to me at all because I decided against spending all my time becoming a HOTAS programming wizard. I just wanted to jump on and shoots thing until they blew up.
I think the Optimus Maximus will see a good bit of that kind of user overload as well.
Finally…
Only you can prevent beverage spills!
Despite shelling out more than 15 Benjamins, one single spill will render your precious Optimus Maximus neither Optimus nor Maximus. That’s right kiddos. There’s nothing spill-resistant about the Optimus Maximus at all.
For $1500+ buckaroos, I think it’s ludicrous that this thing isn’t at least semi-sealed. Heck, even spill grooves might offer a little bit of something. But for the price we’re talking, the Optimus Maximus should be fully sealed. End of story.
With a motto of “Design Will Save The World” you’d think that those crazy Russians what work at Art. Lebedev Studio could at least come up with a “Design That Will Save My $1500+ Investment.”
Sheesh.
|| posted by chris under beta, hardware, opinion, tech hand || || ||
