As a straight dude, my first internal knee-jerk reaction was "this is such a stupid solution to a stupid problem", but then my mental "Don't be an asshat because not everybody is like you" guard rail kicked in.

Clearly this is a product for a market of people that it works for and I'm happy for them. Enjoy your neat keyboard thing, long nailed peeps.

Typing with long nails is the embodiment of “beauty is pain.”

The pain is real, but the beauty is subjective.

Jesus these comments scream basement dweller. You don't have to like what someone does with their own body to accept it. It doesn't hurt you so don't worry about it. God forbid people have some self expression

A chiclet membrane to go over your non-mechanical keyboard, it’s like double hell.

I'm not a fan of the long nails because it hurts my insides.

I sometimes have medium length nails (3-5 mm past the fingertip), though I tend to just grow my own out, and I do it entirely for myself. I have a bunch of different kinds of nail polish and stencils for making cool patterns and it satisfies my inner elementary school librarian urge to dress up for even very minor holidays.

People have come up to me and told me that my nails are too long for them to find attractive, which is a bizarre non sequitur imo. I don’t know why the assumption is that any self-decoration is intended as a sexual signal: my ideal nail-based interaction is that a little kid asks about them and I get to tell them about Arbor Day or national soup day or something.

Sometimes they make life more difficult, and then I either find workarounds (opening pull tabs with a spoon, for example) or cut them, depending on how much time I have and how much I like my current nails.

I get that they’re not for everyone, but I like them, so I wear them. It’s okay if others don’t like them, they don’t have to wear them.

A solution to a self inflicted problem.

Kinda cool but shit $45 for a piece of silicone those margins are insane.

Honestly-I always wondered how in the hell women with nails even just a little bit long typed comfortably on a keyboard. I figured it was either a) not a big deal or b) a super pain in the arse and another example of the world (for whatever reason) not making a simple product to solve a simple issue (like bandaids that match people’s skin color for example).

Now I know! :)

Phones must be a bitch as well…. The solution to that might be a bit harder to pull off…

The Tippy Type is a keyboard cover for MacBooks

I could have predicted that even if the article never mentioned it.

Hmm. That's an interesting problem to have.

On one hand, I can't suggest a great alternative, but man, silicone keys...I guess if they work for the author.

Stenotypists -- people who have to professionally do very high-speed text entry -- do use these dinky specialized keyboards that IIRC from a Japanese-language one -- I think that there were multiple Japanese layouts -- can only have a home row or something. I think that they use chording or something. I don't know if that might address it, but learning one would be a huge change. Also, I have no idea what keys they can output...given that they're highly-optimized for text entry, they might not be able to do weird symbols.

goes looking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype

A steno machine, stenotype machine, shorthand machine, stenograph or steno writer is a specialized chorded keyboard or typewriter used by stenographers for shorthand use. In order to pass the United States Registered Professional Reporter test, a trained court reporter or closed captioner must write speeds of approximately 180, 200, and 225 words per minute (wpm) at very high accuracy in the categories of literary, jury charge, and testimony, respectively.[1] Some stenographers can reach up to 375 words per minute, according to the website of the California Official Court Reporters Association (COCRA).[2]

Hmm.

Looking at the key layout there, and here:

https://stenokeyboards.com/

...it looks like English-language stenotype keyboards don't just use a single row, but rather two or more rows. So that's probably out.

There's apparently a second chording layout, the "palantype" layout, but that also doesn't do only one key per finger:

https://www.openstenoproject.org/palantype/tutorial/2016/08/21/learn-palantype.html

There are dedicated chording keyboards that do use only one key per finger, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard

That has some examples of one-key-per-finger keyboards, like the BAT keyboard (well, that has three for the thumb, but given that you hit those with the side of the thumb, I assume that it'd be okay with long nails):

https://www.infogrip.com/bat-keyboard.html

The problem is that (a) the BAT is discontinued and (b) you really don't want a one handed keyboard, which is what the BAT does...it'd be better to have a two handed chorded keyboard, or you're taking half of your fingers out of the picture.

EDIT: Here's an open-source, two-handed chording keyboard, the Ialboard, based on the discontinued DataHand keyboard. I'm not sure that it'd work with very long nails in its current form -- they might collide with the structure of the keyboard -- but it's 3d printed and I'm pretty sure that if the format doesn't work as-is, a tweak to the 3d-printed keys would permit for arbitrarily long nails. Just need to create a space for 'em.

Gonna need some serious keyboard re-learning, though.

EDIT2: Here's another two-handed chording keyboard with one input device per finger, the CharaChorder. It uses an analog D-pad under each finger. I think that it'd have space for long nails as-is. It does have separate arrow key and mouse control sticks, and I'm not sure if those, given the placement, would be an issue for long nails. I'd imagine that if one were determined to work around that with an external mouse device and -- if you use arrow keys enough to need it; I rarely do -- maybe some dedicated arrow key keyboard, though I'd think that having the arrow keys in vim-style hjkl-style layout might be preferable to the inverted-T layout that seems common. I don't know whether the barrel connector's positioning there would be an issue, though the positioning of that is obviously not critical to the keyboard, and I imagine that if it is an issue, with a bit of work, one could relocate it.

EDIT3: It looks like there's another DataHand-based 3D-printed keyboard besides the above-mentioned Ialboard, the Svalboard. Same argument as with the Ialboard -- I'm not sure that it'd be usable with long nails as is, but I'm pretty sure that that design could be modified with approprately-different key shapes to permit long nails to extend through a gap. You can apparently buy the thing in kit form, 3D-print it, so I figure that if someone wants to make a "longnail" variant of a few of the 3D-printed parts, that'd probably be a pretty easy keyboard to start from.

The downside is that I don't think that -- unlike the above CharaChorder -- this comes with a travel carrying case, which might be important if you're a laptop user. I guess it'd probably be possible to craft something with foam and a shell, but that's not off-the-shelf any more.

This is awesome. Not really any notes, I'm just glad this exists.

I guess a mechanical keyboard with round ketcaps would do the trick as well. Not the same budget though...

Long nails can look pretty, and while I'm sure this would help people with long nails, I think it would just give me an RSI or just be differently frustrating.

No thanks. I'll paint my short nails so I can—you know—use my hands. And that's free.