The original note, as written at the time
TEXTY MODE KEYBOARD. I see computers evolving to become mostly touch based devices. However, one of the biggest challenges is that a keyboard on a wide screen can never be as effective as one on a smartphone, where thumb texting has proven to be a robust input method for touch keyboards. I saw a company online that has developed these mini touch keyboards for use in computer input. I love the idea.
Ongoing development
Computers are becoming mostly touch-based, and the wide on-screen keyboard has never been as good as the small one.
That is the whole observation and it is correct in a way that embarrasses the industry. Thumb typing on a phone is a robust, fast, learned input method used by billions of people. A full-width keyboard on a tablet or a touchscreen laptop is worse, and it is worse for a reason nobody addresses: you cannot reach it. The hands have to leave the device, hover, and hunt.
The mini touch keyboard solves it by geometry. Two small clusters, at the edges, where the thumbs already rest. That is exactly the arrangement the phone discovered and the computer refused to copy, on the grounds that a computer needs a real keyboard.
The interesting consequence is that touch typing and thumb typing are different skills, and a device could support both by changing shape. A tablet laid flat on a desk wants the mini clusters; a tablet propped up on a stand wants the wide keyboard. The layout should follow the posture.
And there is a version for the desk that nobody has built: a pair of small wireless key clusters, one under each hand, with the thumbs doing the modifiers and the enter. That is closer to a games controller than to a keyboard, and it is probably where text entry ends up once screens stop being rectangles on hinges.
The reason this matters beyond convenience: the keyboard is where the last thirty years of muscle memory lives, and every migration to a new form factor has asked people to abandon it. An interface that keeps the thumbs keeps the skill.