Happy New Year to all of our supporters! I’d like to share a few things that we have planned for 2025.
Trackpad Preorder
So far, we’ve shipped out all of our Tier A preorders, and we plan on shipping out the first Tier B units starting next week. Everyone who purchased on launch day should have their units shipped out by March 6th, although we’re working hard to ship out units earlier than that.
The Classic 2
Here is the very first render of the Classic 2!
I’m excited to tell all of you about this. The Classic was a great design with a lot of heritage behind it, and it has remained largely unchanged since we released it back in 2019. That said, a lot has changed in the landscape around us since then. The new Classic 2 is a modern, upgraded version of the Classic design.
It features USB-C, a feature that’s been requested for quite a while. We stood by our original USB-B connector design as we believed that it’s a strong, bulky connector that resists mechanical stress. We decided to switch to USB-C as experience has shown us that we can provide a very strong USB-C connector that fits in with modern electronics without sacrificing much in the way of mechanical strength.
The scroll wheel is also vastly improved. The big limitation behind the original Classic’s scroll wheel was the speed of the microcontroller, which limited the fidelity of the scroll wheel. The Classic 2 is powered by the RP2040 MCU, which runs at 125MHz, a big improvement over the 8MHz of the ATmega32u4. As a result, the scrolling is way, way more precise.
We don’t exactly know when we’re going to release the Classic 2, as we have a few more details to iron out. It could be a while yet. Until we release it, we’re going to continue providing original Classic kits, although at a lower price: $119CAD for a kit, and $179CAD for a preassembled version.
Thumb and Mouse Improvements
Both the Thumb and Mouse have been upgraded from the ATmega32u4 microcontroller to the RP2040 microcontroller, and those improvements will start shipping out next week.
The Thumb and Mouse improvements are fairly small; both the Thumb and Mouse perform well, already had USB-C, and had no issues with scrolling, so the additional microcontroller horsepower will serve mostly to fuel innovations by our community members.
That said, it is a lot of additional horsepower, so the sky is the limit!
And lastly…
We’ve had a ton of fun designing cool and exciting things for you these last few years, and we’re excited to keep going.
Thank you for being part of our community, and here’s to another great year!