I’ve done a bit of looking and found some interesting things, not just about the timeframe:

We’re not sure why you said we have 20 people (our staff is larger than that, and on two continents).

Not a lot of info there, but better than nothing. Oh, it is from March 2015.

And this one I didn’t recall, but it alters some impressions I’ve gotten:

We’ve not changed our butterfly design. We’re upgrading the production process that makes it. We are using a more expensive and superior grade material, and made a new mold for itl

I was under the impression the design was changed, but this says it wasn’t a design change.

the engineering and tooling work over 3 years was not funded by the last few weeks of preorders.

This put it back to 3 years prior to March 2015.

Also found a patent for the TB from October 17th, 2011 - so 3 years, 3 months before the announcement. And surely there was a lot of work done prior to the actual filing.

Another patent goes way back to Jan 15, 2008! It looks very different, yet you can see some similarities. So this could mean 7 years before announcement!

In their blog, they referred to their butterfly design as taking over 3 years at that point, which was March 2015.

So a minimum of 3 years, 3 months before announcing and possibly traceable to another concept that would be 7 years prior to the announcement - plus any work done prior to filing.

Now, I guess some can say this shows how poor they are at development. But in my opinion, it shows how complicated the whole thing is. While people can say it is just a keyboard, What keyboard is this small, this light, and ends up typing better than any other keyboard I’ve tried? Amazing. And many with hands-on experience agree. I don’t think anyone has said it feels worse.

It would be like inventing a vehicle that has more power, better acceleration, better top speed, and with more hauling capability than any other vehicle - but also gets better gas mileage than any of them!

And that doesn’t even get into the ability to probably have one keyboard for use on every device you own, reduce the stretch regular keyboards require, allowing different layouts for each jump slot (and different OS), and almost complete customization abilities!

Yes, some other keyboards allow some of these things. Sometimes not as much (for example, a keyboard may allow 2 or so jump positions rather than 6 or the jump process may be slower), but how many allow all those things or offer things without major sacrifices elsewhere?

Who has better and easier editing abilities?

All this and more. I won’t say there are no compromises to get some good things in there. Because that might vary according to how you use a keyboard. But there is darn little.

When I originally read about the TB and checked the WT site, something I read (I don’t recall the exact words) said something about how this keyboard was so small, yet typed better than traditional keyboards. It was a statement that caused me to order one, yet I didn’t really believe it. You just don’t get that with small keyboards! I just hoped it meant the compromises wouldn’t be too bad.

Well, I was wrong - their description was absolutely correct and I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t get to use one myself.

I really hope you all will soon.