ThinkPad Designer David Hill Spills Secrets, Designs That Never Made It (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0178607398
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/07/2125251/thinkpad-designer-david-hill-spills-secrets-designs-that-never-made-it
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/02/thinkpad_david_hill_interview/
> Hill revealed that he tried several times to introduce additional laptops that had the famous "butterfly keyboard" found on the ThinkPad 701C. [...] Hill told The Register that he had [2]wanted to make more ThinkPads with butterfly keyboards and had tried at least three times to make it happen -- in one case there was a prototype where only half of the keyboard moved -- but was never able to get there. Eventually, screens became big enough that there was no need to have a keyboard that expanded. However, Hill said, he thought about putting a butterfly keyboard on a netbook when they were a viable product category in the late aughts. [...]
>
> One of the features Hill is most proud of developing is the ThinkLight, an overhead light located above the screen that lit up the entire keyboard and deck. Though the advent of keyboard backlights has made the ThinkLight redundant -- Lenovo discontinued it in 2013 -- it offers capabilities that backlights do not. If you want to place a paper on top of your keyboard, the LED will light it up, allowing you to see more than just your key legends. ... When designing the 25th anniversary ThinkPad, which came out in 2017, Hill brought back the ThinkLight, but he actually wanted to have -- for the first time -- two LEDs instead of one. The dual lights would have eliminated shadows and provided even better illumination, but unfortunately, this effort proved too costly to make it into the final product. [...]
>
> When I asked Hill about products he wanted to come out with but never got to, he talked about an idea for portable workstations that would fold up like a laptop but have a separate keyboard and screen like a desktop when you put them on your desk. He collaborated with butterfly keyboard creator John Karidis on this concept, but couldn't make it ready for market. "We did a lot of experimentation with laptops that sort of unfolded to be more like a desktop: things where the display elevated or the keyboard would remove so you could use them like a workstation, rather than just being a clamshell with a hinge, you open and close," Hill recalled. "We did a lot of experimentation with that and got close a few times, but never could completely sell it. I always thought it was an opportunity to create a new category."
[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/02/thinkpad_david_hill_interview/
I'd like a new laptop with 7-row keyboard (Score:2)
Good pic for example at [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/think... [reddit.com] (or just google image search for Thinkpad T25 keyboard).
I'd pay extra to get my hands on one. There are couple of DIY projects attempting to create this with frame.work 16" model, but nothing beyond that.
And unfortunately, my trusty old T25's keyboard membrane is just starting to wear out - not sure if it's possible to repair it, some keys only work when PC is heated. No spare parts available, except with JP layout.
I *want* my cluster of del/home/end
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1gd8ngg/thinkpad_t25_keyboard/
Re: (Score:2)
I count 8 rows from the right side, if you count 2 for the enter as it takes 2 rows of space.
Re: (Score:1)
This, and make it a standard (non-chiclet) keyboard design. Make it optional, and I'll pay extra for it.
another design that never made it (Score:3)
I recall someone visiting my PhD laboratory from IBM. Never caught their name, but it could have been David Hill, because he had a laptop with a special fold-out mechanism and harness that allowed you to wear it around your neck and type while standing with nearly-natural arm and hand position on the keyboard. He said something about it being a prototype of which he had only 1000 made. I never saw one of them again.
Legendary Laptop Line (Score:2)
Always a safe bet, even when bought refurbished. I rely on ThinkPads to this very day.
The Thinklight was great (Score:2)
I had an A21p which had the Thinklight. It was a great laptop in its day. It had a really high-res display, too.
One fucking mouse button (Score:3)
I want to meet the brilliant, ground-breaking Apple designer who decided that more than one button on a mouse would be too confusing for the Genius purchasers of Apple Baubles.
A man who truly realized the stupidity of his customers.
Re: (Score:1)
I refuse to buy laptops without physical mouse buttons. I prefer the Thinkpad pointing stick, but can live with a touch pad that has physical buttons. I'm not sure why the bulk of the laptop industry decided that buttons were unnecessary, but it's a terrible move. At least Lenovo has kept them (3, even!)...for now.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously? Almost every decision any company makes comes down to money. Especially the ones that don't make sense like removing physical buttons.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe his name was Steve Jobs. Here's [1]an article [cultofmac.com].
[1] https://www.cultofmac.com/news/steve-jobs-hated-idea-multi-button-mouse-designer-claims
I don't get the Thinkpad fascination (Score:2)
I have a work-issued model from 2021. Heavy, loud, and slow. The keyboard is fine, but I don't care for the placement of the Function key. For portability and battery life, a Macbook Air is tough to beat. For Windows stuff, there are much better performers at the Thinkpad price range. What am I missing?
Re: (Score:2)
I think they have a nostalgia for the IBM ones, before Big Blue sold their business to Lenovo.
Re: (Score:1)
The Fn and Ctrl keys can be swapped in BIOS (and they actually swapped them on the latest keyboards, so those of us who are used to the old layout need to swap them back). The old keyboard that had the Fn key to the left of Ctrl followed the original standard (an actual written standard) for laptop keyboards. The version with the Ctrl key to the left of Fn is a corruption, which somehow became more popular among laptop manufacturers. As a Thinkpad user, I don't get the popularity of Apple's laptops. I h
Re: (Score:2)
The mistake is that they ever used the f keys for anything other than the f keys. There should have never been a function key.
Wow, actual news for nerds (Score:2)
It's been a while. Post-Andover Slashdot is usually full of empty techbro posturing and marketing promises.
All I want... (Score:3)
...is the ibm era thinkpad back. Boring, tough, and an unmatched keyboard. I had huge hopes for the anniversary edition... but it turned out just a regular lenovo thinkpad - overprized in a cheap plastic chassis, with a few visual hints to the classic to rub the salt into the wound. I ended up thinking not even Hill himself understood what made the thinkpad great.
Re: (Score:3)
My wish is a standard key to enter into bios. Currently even same laptop manufacturers use different keys in different models so it can be really difficult to find out which key takes you to the bios if it is not visible on the screen. I don't think that it would be much more expensive to use the same key.
Re: All I want... (Score:3)
Fortunately F12 seems to be a reliable way to find a boot menu and from there getting into the BIOS is almost always a menu option.
Re: (Score:2)
I would too. IBM set such a high bar that even the modern enshittified versions have better keyboards, mice replacements, and arguably specs, than pretty much everyone else today (a huge amount of that being Apple deciding usability doesn't matter for hardware and pulling down everyone else with them with keyboards that would embarrass a ZX Spectrum, but still! Lenovo has, at least, recognized it can't follow them all the way, it has to be just a little bit better...)
Re: (Score:2)
I ain't even mad. Your track record of years and years of -1 comments is impressive. I would love to have your persistence. But nothing else, mind, that would be sad.
Re: (Score:1)
The current ones are actually still pretty solid, as long as you stick to the P, X, and T series. The biggest step backwards has been in keyboards, ever since they went to the 6-row chiclet design, then to the 1.5mm low-travel version. Make the damn thing 2-3mm thicker and give me back the non-chiclet 7-row keyboard, please. The annoying thing is that they are still better than the competition (with the understanding that all laptops are compromised and suck to varying degrees).
Re: (Score:2)
It used to be ThinkPad was the absolute best laptop. It still technically is the best, not because it's good, but because everything else is worse. There's not much joy left in it. The metal chassis, which made a comeback for a few years, seems to be a 2-in-1 thing now. The keyboard, while not completely terrible like e.g. Apple, cannot hold a candle to the old one. The insides could use a lot of love, there's no excuse these days for the battery/motherboard volume ratio they have going. The selection of po
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, the 600(e) was 'peak laptop' - tough as old boots, good keyboard, powerful (for its time), had decent support for drivers and whatnot so you could re-install Windows and get rid of the crapware IBM bundled with it, and you could run Linux too, if you wanted.
Since then, it's hard to find anything as good - although I've got to say my Apple Macbook Pro is pretty good. It too is pretty tough, doesn't run a bloated windows version, can run Linux, but is of course not upgradeable and is pretty much unrepai