Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2012–2025.
comedy · evergreen
A satirical Onion News Network piece announcing the 'MacBook Wheel', a laptop with no keyboard where users type by spinning and clicking a wheel. It parodies Apple product launches and minimalist design.
HN uses it as a recurring punchline whenever a device removes keys or buttons in favor of touch or novelty controls.
“Two of my favourites”
20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Two of my favourites: Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard - ▶ this video Anonymous Hero Donates Hospital 200 Human Kidneys - [link]
in “No Joke: The Onion Faces Layoffs by Univision, Says Report” · View on HN
Meanwhile my 2019 i9 16" MacBook Pro gets battery life on par with the MacBook Wheel (as seen in this classic from The Onion: ▶ this video ) I kid you not, the hummingbird battery is real . At least I have something to look forward to when I upgrade.
in “iPhone Air” · View on HN
The reason they're dangerous is not because you have to interact with them, per se, its simply because they provide to much information that takes a lot of cognitive processing to interpret. Specifically, text. Reading is "hard". Even things as simple as the title of the song on the radio. Especially when the text changes. I have a modern LCD on my motorcycle, a BMW, that uses a WonderWheel (rotate to scroll up/down, and push or pull for right/left click) as an interface. It's very reminiscent of The Onions MacBook Wheel[0]. It is absolutely dangerous to use while riding. It's a cognitive black hole. Obviously, the LCD is not alone in this case, the interaction pushes it all up to eleven. But the old school car interface was numbers and small words, and, eventually icons. Consider changing the temperature in a car, for me, I'd shove the hot/cold slider around until the air coming the from the vent was comfortable vs clicking up and down and deciding "do I want 72 or 73?". And, yea, maybe it's just me. Perhaps I alone am a hazard when interacting with these things. So, maybe it's not fair for me to project my experiences to the population at large. [0] ▶ this video
in “Are touchscreens in cars dangerous?” · View on HN
That would have been a hilarious timeline if they just upgraded ipods with cell networking, at least for one model. Then you can use this for typing: ▶ this video
in “Show HN: Rotary Phone Dial Linux Kernel Driver” · View on HN
So a knob that doesn't even have the feedback of knowing when you've gotten to the next selection at all, you have to actually stare at it as it goes through the different choices. That doesn't seem better to me at all. Personally, in this idea of a dial I'd like one that can actually give some haptic feedback. Or even better yet just be able to actually tap on the option instead of needing to turn a dial to move a selector on the screen to choose it. At least with an old-fashioned radio knob you got the feedback of if you were tuning into the station by hearing it. But moving a selector on a screen? It's like you're arguing for the MacBook Wheel, as if a knob is the most optimal way to input arbitrary choices on a computer. ▶ this video
in “Touchscreens are out, and tactile controls are back” · View on HN
> The average developer averages 10 lines of finished code per day. And even with a raw 10x that amount to account for variance, changes, debugging etc, you'd be at 12 lines PER HOUR. Being generous at a full 80 chars per line, you have a maximum of 1000 keypresses per hour, or an average of one every 3 seconds. Even doubling your typing speed or keyboard response time would have no discernible effect. Just my personal experience, it's not about how fast I can get my ideas down in writing (whether code or not), it's about how often I am broken out of the flow when typing. At one extreme, using your stats above of "10 finished lines of code per day", you could argue that using this keyboard ( ▶ this video ) should have no effect on your productivity, and yet no developer would make or support this argument. Small frictions add up; there's a joelonsoftware post that I read a long time ago about this[1], and it stuck for 24 years! The best editor/environment is the one that gets out of my way. One where I don't need to look things up on google. One in which I have already learned all the shortcuts, and don't need to relearn them to make the software useful. Emacs `M-x sql-connect` is much easier for me to do than to look up, in VS Code, what shortcut has been assigned to the extension I use that does the same thing, and then look it up again in a few years when that extension is no longer supported. Same for Vim commands. Using VS Code, or a full-fledged IDE[2] removes the whole comm
in “Leaving Neovim for Zed” · View on HN
"Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard" ▶ this video "Markets In Turmoil As Price Of Money Skyrockets To $90 A Dollar" [link]
in “Jeff Lawson buys The Onion” · View on HN
Oy, I wouldn't hold up a 2008 BMW as a paragon of usability. That early iDrive system was awful. Three different ways to differently manage climate temperature? Navigation straight out of the Macbook Wheel[1]? I could go on. The auto wipers were definitely better than the Tesla though. I do largely agree with you re the Tesla, although the steering wheel controls I could argue both sides. They're multi-function, which allows you to customize their operation and do a lot more than you can with dedicated controls. Edit: though I guess it's 2024 now. IIRC the 2009s had slightly less bad idrive. [1] ▶ this video
in “Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars” · View on HN
Makes me think of the "MacBook Wheel" [0] from ages past. It's really a shame how user-hostile design can be. [0] ▶ this video
in “Scrollbars Are Becoming a Problem” · View on HN
I'm still waiting for the revolutionary laptop Macbook Wheel , hopefully it will run the latest IpadOS ▶ this video - 2009 video
in “Apple Event Live Blog: iPhone 14, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, and More Expected” · View on HN
>Human Machine Interface hall of fame along with the old click wheel iPod Classic Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard ▶ this video "just few hundred clicks away"
in “My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement” · View on HN
You mentioned a wheel in the context of Apple and I thought you were talking about the Apple MacBook Wheel. ▶ this video
in “Apple expands Self Service Repair to Mac notebooks” · View on HN
I think that many people only decided that they didn't need these features because Apple removed them. It reminds me of this video from awhile ago by The Onion: Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard[1] [1]: ▶ this video
in “MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch” · View on HN
I think they'll address it by eliminating the keyboard entirely à la the MacBook Wheel[0], albeit perhaps with a touch screen. From an absolute, ergonomic standpoint, it will suck. But soft keys won't fail or get crud in them like hard keys do, and Gruber will soon be writing thinkpieces about how the keyboard is the most failure-prone part of a computer, and the complaints about recent MBP keyboards are inherent failings of hardware keyboards themselves rather than Apple skimping on quality, and Apple is taking the lead in something the industry should have done a long time ago by eliminating the hardware keyboard. [0] ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: Does anyone know if Apple plans to address the MacBook keyboard issue?” · View on HN
Do you even vi? Remove everything! Here's a link to the pic of the keyboard for which vi was originally designed on: [link] I completely agree with your post. Removing the home/end & function keys is such a waste given the amount of free space for keys on every single notebook ever made. edit: I realized I hadn't taken my initial argument to complete absurdity, "Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard": ▶ this video
in “Differentiating laptops: How about a decent keyboard? (2015)” · View on HN
That reminds me of this fake ultimate apple ad. It's not exactly the following video, but maybe it helps remembering it: ▶ this video
in “A two-button mechanical keyboard that types ASCII values, one bit at a time” · View on HN
This stuff always brings me back to "there's nothing more simple than one giant button" ▶ this video
in “Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away – the Escape key” · View on HN
Watching the apple event and the various demos of the touch bar reminded me of this onion video from 2009: ▶ this video I really needed a macbook upgrade (I've been using the same machine since 2008), but I have a feeling that the touch bar will fail and be removed in the next generation of macbooks. But buying the macbook without the touch bar means settling for lesser specs (and given that I'm thinking about buying a machine that would last me another 8 years it feels like a bad choice).
in “Macbook Pro Touch Bar runs watchOS” · View on HN
I'm surprised. I thought Apple would have been the first to bring something like this to mobile since they already have a similar concept for laptops. ▶ this video
in “Introducing Gmail Tap” · View on HN
Perhaps G+ should substitute all comment boxes with dropdown menus It would help with data hygiene. It would also integrate nicely with a no-keyboard computer. ▶ this video "The aardvark admitted its fault."
in “Google+ relaxes real-name policy, allows pseudonyms” · View on HN