The greatest keyboard never sold

Even as the latest phones and wearables tout speech recognition with unprecedented accuracy and spatial computing products flirt with replacing tablets and laptops, physical keyboards remain beloved for their efficiency. Earlier this year, for example, sci-fi novelist Robert J. Sawyer created a comprehensive archive of files that enables modern PCs to run WordStar 7, the DOS program’s final version. He favors the once-dominant word processor, also used by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, in part because of its effective use of “home row” keyboard shortcuts to speed navigation and editing.

The keyboard is also a vibrant target for tinkering. Crowdfunding campaigns over the past year or so have included Mobile Pixels’ Tetra, a split keyboard with a repositionable screen; Naya Create, a sloping, modular keyboard; the Clevetura CLV1, which integrates trackpad functionality into the keys themselves; and the Flux, a keyboard that combines control modules and a display under the keys for infinite combinations of appearance and function.

Alas, neither WordStar nor these daring designs are well-suited to mobile usage. On that front, Michael Fisher (aka Mr Mobile) and Kevin Michalu (aka Crackberry Kevin)—two tech media veterans with keyboard phone nostalgia coursing through their thumbs—teamed up to launch the Clicks keyboard for iPhones this year. While a well-designed accessory, it adds significant height to what can already be a large phone. And like the Blackberry keyboards that inspired it, it can be uncomfortable for extended text-entry sessions.

Such have long been the compromises of typing on the go. But in 2015, a keyboard that looked and worked like nothing before or since went up for pre-order. It claimed to capture the holy grail of a comfortable and familiar typing experience in a pocket-friendly package. It promised to turn phones into text-entry powerhouses and halve the thickness of tablets paired with keyboard covers. And as it got close to release, the company solicited feedback from a community of passionate testers who loved the product and pleaded with the company to release it. But this breakthrough device never shipped to customers.

WayTools’ TextBlade consisted of three rectangular sections, each about the size of a stick of gum. Its “KeyBlades” which split the letters of a QWERTY layout, attached magnetically to each other and an oversized space bar called the SpaceBlade. The heart of the product, the SpaceBlade included the device’s battery, Bluetooth radio, and a line of 10 LEDs that indicated the device’s status and modes. When not in use, the three sticks neatly stacked magnetically, sliding into a plastic brace that doubled as a stand for a smartphone or tablet.

WayTools even sweated the details when it came to charging the TextBlade. Lightly knocking the SpaceBlade against a surface such as the side of your hand dislodged a half-height USB “nano charger” adapter with metal contacts that connected to the SpaceBlade. After charging, the adapter could be docked back into the SpaceBlade like the stylus in a Samsung Galaxy Note or S24 Ultra.

But the TextBlade’s Voltron-like assembly setup was just the beginning of its bag of tricks. Despite being a fraction of the size of a standard laptop keyboard with its segments all connected, it offered a shockingly comfortable typing experience that included 19 mm key width for most keys and a competitive 1.5 mm of key travel, Instead of each key sitting atop a separate switch, vertically adjacent keys shared a butterfly switch, and the TextBlade detected which character was being typed.

Layers and chords

The TextBlade also defied expectations with its functionality. Despite having only 37 keys (including the space bar) on nine switches, it could produce far more characters by combining layers and chords. Layers (modes) expanded the concept of modifier keys (like the Mac’s Option key that changes the output of the “G” key to a copyright symbol). Chords, long used by stenographs, assistive text input devices, and gamers looking to maximize on-screen actions while minimizing finger movements, allowed triggering different outputs when multiple keys are held down at the same time. For example, when using the TextBlade with an Apple device, holding down C and V together before pressing F would enter Command-F. And holding down Z, X and V equated to pressing Control and Alt together on a larger keyboard.

Activating the TextBlade’s Edit layer turned the I, J, K, and L keys into gaming-style cursor keys. This layer also included one-key shortcuts for Clipboard operations, undo and redo. Adding “S” in this mode turned text cursor movements into cursor-based selection. And adding the space bar to the mix allowed you to navigate or select by paragraph or even across a whole document. Holding down A, S, D, and F activated a Media layer that turned other keys into controls playback and volume. Adding the space bar activated an App layer that allowed switching among windows or apps. Pressing K and L activated the Function layer, enabling other keys to act as up to 20 function keys, the ones typically located above the number row on a desktop keyboard. And holding down the J and K keys activated a Macro layer that could enter snippets of text triggered by any other TextBlade key.

While elegant and powerful, mastering layers and chords did have something of a learning curve. To help with the journey, WayTools developed an iOS on-screen keyboard that reflected the dynamic functions changing in response to chord presses. It also developed a companion iOS app that included a guide, a way to tweak many settings, and the ability to update the keyboard’s firmware. The app saved settings, macros and custom keymaps in a cloud account so that they wouldn’t be lost if the TextBlade was lost or damaged.

Living up to the hype

For months after the preorder launch, a calendar on waytools.com kept shifting when orders from which batch would ship. Then, in 2016, WayTools welcomed some customers to test TextBlades in development through a program called TREG (Test RElease Group) along with an online forum to discuss feedback. I joined TREG late in the game in 2019. Admittance included a one-hour tour of the TextBlade in a phone call with the company’s founder and CEO, Mark Knighton, who clearly relished peeling back each layer of cleverness that had gone into the product’s design. His infectious enthusiasm notwithstanding, the proof was in the pressing.

The TextBlade lived up to the hype. I took it everywhere and found myself typing things into my phone in locations such as a small cafe table where a keyboard simply wouldn’t fit. Nonetheless, when I checked in with Knighton by phone after a few weeks, he seemed disappointed that I wasn’t using the TextBlade as my primary keyboard. He firmly believed that the TextBlade was not just the best mobile keyboard—which it clearly was—but so superior to other options that users would want to use it with all of their devices. After all, it could switch among six paired devices on the fly.

I would also visit the TREG message boards, which were filled with discussions about bugs and potential features. But by far the most prevalent sentiment offered there was that the TextBlade was amazing, even revolutionary, and that WayTools should ship the damn thing already. Trace Rogers, a former TREG participant who produced an exhaustive two-hour YouTube tour of the TextBlade in 2020 after more than three years in the program, wraps up his presentation by saying, “I love my TextBlade. I use it all the time. I wish it was for sale right now at Best Buy.” Despite also crediting the TextBlade with relieving his carpal tunnel pain, he says in the video that he wouldn’t recommend pre-purchasing it until it shipped, given the unclear release timeline. 

Such a timeline would never arrive. WayTools continued to add and revise software features, so much so that it ran out of room in the TextBlade’s firmware. Its solution was to rewrite the firmware completely, a huge engineering effort coming years after accepting preorders from people who hadn’t received the device. The rewrite would open the door to even more advanced capabilities, a head-scratching possibility for a product that already had far more features than many of its users would ever discover. More of those who had preordered the product took the company up on its promise of an unconditional refund and some who criticized WayTools had their preorders refunded involuntarily.

Missing in action

Unlike some device startups, WayTools survived COVID and the pandemic’s supply chain havoc overhang. At some point, though, the WayTools TREG forum disappeared, followed by the rest of the website. The Wayback Machine’s last snapshot of a functioning waytools.com was taken on February 24, 2023.

Theories abound on why WayTools refused to ship a product that clearly exceeded the expectations of its testers and which it could have improved over time via firmware updates. A former employee with whom I spoke refuted the notion that WayTools never wanted to sell the TextBlade and instead wanted to sell or license the intellectual property behind it, noting that the company rebuffed multiple acquisition offers in the early days.

Rather, he notes, an undisclosed fire at a supplier that wiped out much of WayTools’ inventory was the most significant blow to the company, which had already spent much of its funding to develop the product. A former staffer notes, ““We lost a lot of people and talent after that. It was heartbreaking to work so hard on a product and be so close and then have a natural disaster come and basically wipe it out.”

However, former WayTools staffers also lay some blame at the feet of Knighton, whom I was unable to reach for comment. One described him as “a perfectionist who cared deeply about the customer experience” but who lost sight of customers’ patience. Knighton, who admired icons like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, would reportedly wax on about his positive experience as a Tesla owner and not wanting to risk a disappointing first impression. Indeed, like Musk with Tesla and SpaceX and Jobs with Apple and Pixar, Knighton was also running a second company, a developer of 3D scanners called NextEngine that met the same fate as WayTools after much of the former’s inventory was destroyed in the same fire.

Knighton also felt the heat of legal issues. Since 2009, Knighton and NextEngine have been embroiled in litigation with an investor, Bigfoot Ventures. Last year, Bigfoot Ventures sued Knighton for personal injury and included WayTools as a defendant. According to one of the former staffers I contacted, the lawsuits crippled Knighton’s ability to do creative work.

While the delay needed to recreate inventory prompted the decision to rewrite the firmware, the impact of the fire and the distraction and expense of the litigation ultimately proved overwhelming.

Final cut

While there’s little evidence that WayTools still exists, Knighton never acknowledged the end of the company. There were no farewell web pages or Medium mea culpas about lessons learned. But nine years after TextBlade promised to reinvent the mobile typing experience, nothing has come close to capturing its geeky genius. One former Waytools employee who still uses a TextBlade calls it an “incredibly useful product [that] was ready to ship. It would have made a lot of people very happy.” Like others with whom I spoke, he hopes some party will one day bring the TextBlade to market, adding, “I would love to see this come to the world.”

Today, the closest product in spirit to the TextBlade is the CharaChorder X, a crowdfunded and shipping USB dongle that lets any external keyboard become a chording keyboard. CharaChorder, a company that uses the slogan “typing at the speed of thought,” has also created its own text input devices. All use CharaChorder Engine, an operating system for input devices it hopes to license to laptop makers. But while CharaChorder X shares many of the TextBlade’s nods to efficiency and customization and preserves the standard QWERTY layout, it doesn’t provide the integration and extreme portability of the TextBlade.

There’s also the TapXR, a wrist-worn Bluetooth text input and XR controller device that generates characters via chords generated by finger-tapping combinations. It’s small and even allows one-handed input but isn’t nearly as efficient as the TextBlade was and has a steeper learning curve. 

I still have my TextBlade TREG unit, which developed an issue that caused it to type garbled text after being paired to a device; repeating the pairing process fixes the issue. Its three stacked layers remain a brilliantly engineered sandwich of efficiency and execution. It’s a shame WayTools couldn’t serve it to a hungry user base.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91249548/waytools-textblade-pocket-keyboard?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss