25 years ago one of early engineering courses included a case study about Ingersol Rand (IIRC). They went out to work floors and saw how all the workers had modified their air wrenches in the same way, adding padding with tape in various areas. They realized they could probably make a better wrench if it had some of those ergonomics built in.
Maybe the next phase of Apple could return to flowing shapes and save our wrists.
If your wrist is in contact with the edge of the laptop while you are actively typing, then your typing style has a good chance of giving you RSI. You'd be better off trying to fix that than trying to make the fast path to RSI more convenient.
How the f are you supposed to type? Ideally I'd like full support for my arms from the elbow to the wrist.
In my first job - i think it was in 1997, I had my own small room with an L-shaped desk with a rounded corner. That gave a few inches of space for resting my arms - both when typing on a quite reasonable Pentium laptop, and especially when using the mouse.
Since then, the desks and the chairs has become shittier and shittier. Except perhaps when a was a consultant for an HR-department.
The U-shaped desk was probably the best ergonomically designed workplace I've had. Maybe a wheat-filled pad along the desk would have made it better.
If your arms are resting, then your fingers and wrists are doing the maximum amount of reaching as you type. If you use a wrist rest you are encouraging your fingers/wrist to reach up (bend in your wrist) instead of neutral or reaching down (more natural position).
Constant change in position, dynamic motion, strong & brief muscular exertion of whole hand and arm, even including the shoulder vs constant static position w/ small repetitive motions, where the fingers really are doing almost all the work.
You should try to avoid continuous static load on your muscles, especially the smaller ones. So you should find a typing position where that doesn't happen. You also want to use your muscles in the strong and comfortable part of their range of motion, which depends on the entire chain of joints, because tendons have to stretch past several joints to get to whatever bone they attach to – so for fluent finger motions, you want to keep wrists and hands in as neutral a position as you can.
If your wrists are not straight while typing a lot, that's really bad. I constantly see people typing with their wrists either significantly flexed or significantly extended; doing that a lot is a fast road to RSI, and even doing it a little is pretty unpleasant and inadvisable.
If you are going to type a whole lot at a stretch (say, as a programmer or writer), you want your arms to be mostly passively supported from the shoulder. Having your arm bent at the elbow doesn't cause much strain, as long as the upper arm is hanging loosely down with your shoulder relaxed – so bring the keyboard relatively close to your torso. Resting your wrists, palms, or forearms on some surface and then typing generally causes more strain than having your wrists and palms "floating" above the keyboard while actively typing. You can rest the fingertips lightly on the key tops if you want. You can rest your palms on a palmrest or arms on an armrest (or table, or lap, or whatever) while you are taking a break from typing. It's generally a good idea to take regular breaks.
There doesn't appear to be good evidence that this is better for RSI. I found one study that shows greater shoulder and back strain when doing the hover hands approach. It might make more sense for piano since you need more mobility up and down the keyboard, but for typing your hands don't need to move nearly as much, so resting should be just fine. The do suggest some sort of support under your wrists, though.
Huh, seriously? Have you ever worked in an office? Perhaps your mental picture of what op is describing might be misaligned? I just always assumed it was a rarer/ more disciplined style some people had
On a modern laptop, the keyboard is on the top half of the lower case these days, not the bottom.
My palms are hovering over or resting on the chassis, and I sit high enough that my wrists do not come in contact with the edge of the case or desk. The majority of the weight of my arms is supported by my shoulders. For me, the ideal height happens to be pretty close to a neutral wrist position.
A more concrete way of putting it is if you are putting so much weight on your wrists that the edge of the MacBook is making you uncomfortable, you're probably doing it wrong.
I've heard this but I've personally been typing this way for 25+ years (wrists on the rest, including on laptops exclusively for the last 15) and my wrists are fine. Meanwhile people I know with ergonomic keyboards and everything that's supposed to save your wrists are the ones with bad wrists.
The reasonable takeaway from that correlation is that people with preexisting issues turn to ergonomic keyboards to avoid worsening those issues, not the other way round.
While this is true, if standard keyboards were bad then everyone who uses them would have issues, yet many (most?) don't.
Sometimes I think it comes down to actual typing technique. For example. I've heard of "Emacs pinky" which is easily avoided by simply using the Ctrl key opposite the key being pressed (use right Ctrl for C-c for example). I religiously never use Ctrl, Shift or Alt + another key with the same hand and I feel that's been huge. Also my elbow, wrist and hand always form a straight line to the keyboard with a standard laptop keyboard and the right body position/desk and chair adjustment.
After RSI years ago, I switched to an X220 and had 100% the opposite experience. The curve at the front of the case was a perfect resting point for the heel of my (average size) hand to allow easy reach of the keys. I replicated this geometry by sanding a pine 1x4 and wrapping that in soft leather for a wrist rest with a procession of mechanical keyboards (currently a Lenco Majestouch 2). Literally decades later, all is well.
My experience with Apple hardware has been it generally holds up. I've only on my third iPad since I bought the original in 2011. My iPhones have all lasted at least four years.
The screen on my Macbook Air has been the exception. I wonder why they can't just use the same display on those that they do iPad. Seems better quality, as well
I’ve made my living as a pro photographer for over 30 years. These days I consider most cameras to be disposable. I also keep any older bodies as hazardous duty remote cameras. Once you get into the mindset it opens a certain amount of creativity.
The number of times I find myself saying to beginning photographers that babying their camera is the surest way to hate photography, whether as a hobby or a profession… I get particularly testy about handwringing about weather sealing or protecting the finish on their kit. Just take the camera places and use it. It’s probably going to be fine. It’s going to get scars. That’s just stories.
There's a curve. Beginners with pristine gears are babying it, but veterans just don't bump their camera everywhere nor drop them, they have the bags that fit what they do, use straps (or not) that fit them and there's little to hurt their camera.
Event photographers are another kind, camera throwing is part of the job.
I wonder if you feel the same about cars, expecting expert chauffeurs to have bumps all over their car ?
> but veterans just don't bump their camera everywhere nor drop them, they have the bags that fit what they do
Most veterans I know would not be seen dead with one of those bags that shout LOOK AT ME I AM A CAMERA BAG ....
The theft risk is just too great these days.
Most of the time they will take a standard bag, with their other stuff in it (e.g. change of clothes etc.) and just dump their camera and a couple of lenses in there. Either padded by their spare clothes or with a velcro-neoprene camera wrap cloth.
That solution also enables them to move fast instead of having to make sure everything goes into the right stupid slot in a camera bag.
So for example if it starts raining heavily (or if they have to get through airport security) it can be done quickly and efficiently.
I made a car analogy because I didn't get the sense that you were in groups of photographers yourself, looking at other people's gear. I spent a decent amount of time with birders, being out in the field for day in day out, climbing, crawling, hiding, and their gear was far from beaten up.
I mean, it takes some effort to dent our current magnesium alloy bodies, you won't get scratches by laying it a bit fast on a counter table or hitting your bag's zipper.
The modding community lives on where it always were, hacking gaming and demoscene, and that never wasn't on Apple platforms for the most part, rather Amiga, PC, Atari,...
That doesn’t seem strange to me, Apple is my “buy it for what’s on the box” brand, stuff that I don’t want to mod. If I want to mess with something I usually use hardware that runs Linux.
This is why I like cheaper tools. Yes, that means cheaper quality but it's far easier to approach taking a dremel to it. And the DIY look usually matches the stock materials better anyway.
I'd say it's an even split. Half the Jeeps on the road and on the trails are modified. On the road maybe 1/10 of Porches are modified, but on the track 90% are.
Big difference between bolt-ons vs deeper mods too.
Go to any mechanic thats been doing cars, especially if it's a focused subset of cars, for more than a few year and I guarantee they'll either have some modified HF sockets or wrenches or some home made tools. Probably don't want to cut up your SnapOff debt peonage tools, but a lot of the time they alone don't cut it.
The interesting part isn't whether Apple got the design right or wrong, it's that most of us never even consider altering the tools we use every day. We just adapt ourselves instead.
I used to turn the back of my laptop into a whiteboard. Then you could write todos on it or custom messages. Was kind of neat. You know I've always thought the back of the case was wasted potential. Can you imagine if it had an eink display? You could flash whatever you wanted to it as a clean customized print and it would stay there without power. would be cool but prob expensive.
The flame war on whether the original chassis design sucks or rocks is not that interesting.