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Valve Job Posting Confirms Hardware Plans
redletterdave writes "Valve is reportedly interested in building hardware. The Bellevue, Wash.-based software developer added a job posting to its site on Tuesday morning for an industrial designer. We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we're jumping in,' the posting said. 'Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked.'"
Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years
Maybe the reason for this is the basic form works. The design of the wheel hasn't changed much in a 5 thousand years either. I wonder why.
"Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked"
Yeah, aside from the Wiimote and Kinect and every other product that has changed the input in a meaningful way.
It sounds to me like Valve is interested in developing a gaming laptop with Kinect-like functionality built in. That is an interesting idea, but it's nothing particularly revolutionary. Successful products are seldom revolutionary, so that's not a bad thing. Good luck Valve, with whatever it is you're doing!
You seem to be missing the point. Valve seems to be saying that they're not seeing the kind of innovation they want in the computer hardware space, and point to the keyboard and mouse saying "Look! These aren't changing to therefore there is no innovation."
The obvious answer is they're not changing because they don't need to. It's like pointing to the wheel and saying "It's still the same shape, there's no innovation there!" Yes, in 5 thousand years we've adding on whiz-bang features and materials, but its circumference is still pi*d because that's what works best. Anything else is sub-optimal.
For the mouse, perhaps it's not exactly *optimal* for for our current user interfaces its pretty much the best input we have. I think for any change in the input, we're going to also need a change in the software. History shows this to be the case, as the mouse didn't really do much until we needed it for a GUI. You point to voice recognition and eye tracking, and a whole slew of other input devices, yet you neglect the fact that all these things exist yet no one uses them. Again, I believe the reason is because the deviate from the optimal input device for our GUIs (mouse), and in order for some of these alternative inputs to become as mainstream as mouse, we're going to need a user interface to compliment them. That is to say, while voice command sucks for navigating our current 2D GUI, mouse would suck for navigating a voice-centric UI.
On a final note, I as well applaud Valve for looking into a better way of doing things. I just want to be cautious and say I hope their efforts are not misguided, and that in their quest to find a better mouse or other input device, they don't instead just invent something different for the sake of being different.
The mouse has evolved, and natural selection has killed the old style mice.
I mean, we have mousewheels now which seem to be essential (try using a mouse without one - they get annoying quick). But you have mice that have tried other things - IBM used to put their red nubs on them for scrolling, Apple put a touchpad on them, etc. And we have mice, trackballs, and touchpads (which have evolved greatly from their useless postage-stamp sized days to the acres of surface on the Apple ones).
Hell, there were laptops with built-in mice (not trackballs or touchpads or eraser points, but actual mouse).
Innovation may have stopped because they've matured, and we've reached a stage where they're really not much you can do that hasn't been tried before and natural selection killed it. Plus, considering a basic mouse is usable, costs probably $5 assembled tops, and is good enough (not a far cry from Jobs' demand that the Mac mouse cost $20 tops, though Apple makes terrible, horrendous mice (and always have), perhaps that's why they use touchpads).
Keyboards, again you see a bit, but there's only so much you can do with the key layout before people can't type on them anymore. Maybe if you made it a key pad for gaming or something.
Maybe a joypad can be improved a bit - though something like the Xbox360 one is pretty damn comfortable to use and definitely one I use for playing games on the PC with...