I absolutely agree. I’ve long been a fan of MS natural keyboards and if they had had a mechanical one that would have been my preference so now I’m kinda relearning to use an “ordinary” keyboard. I agree on the mouse side of things too.
Perhaps my best media keyboard and mouse (not for writing) are my Gyration ones in part because the mouse that works even in the air … 'tis a shame the keyboard went a bit wonky after I left the batteries in too long and they leaked (something it seems no amount of cleaning will resolve).
I currently have a Unicomp 101 because of their amazing keyswitches, but I do get complaints about how loud the keyboard is. I’d love to find something that keep carpal tunnel at bay like my current keyboard, but is quiet.
This must be another “Chevy vs. Ford” thing, right up there with “vi vs. emacs,” “chocolate vs. caramel,” or “Star Trek vs. Star Wars.” I find that Logitech mice, regardless of their physical size, don’t fit in my hand – they all somehow feel too small. Whereas Microsoft mice, even when they’re the tiny laptop-sized devices, seem to fit just right.
Your post about the Keyboard Model 01 reminded me of a keyboard I saw promoted at the start of the year: I am seriously interested in the TextBlade. Sadly it looks like they ran into some serious glitches that have delayed delivery of the final product, but I still like the look of it. One day…
Over the weekend my wife and I were down in Portland, and we picked up a Corsair Gaming K70 keyboard (black with red backlighting). These are based on the Cherry MX Blue switches. So far, it has a good feel with great tactile response and the sound is still gratifyingly clacky, but less than the Unicomp. However, the sale person at Fry’s told me that the Cherry MX switches have aftermarket O-rings available (each color is a different thickness) that you can use to pop off the keycaps, add onto the stems, and use to prevent the key from bottoming out on each press. This is supposed to help remove the majority of the noise without removing the tactile response of the switch mechanism.
I ordered a package of the Cherry MX Blue O-rings from Amazon (125 for $15, enough to do the entire keyboard plus have a few spares, .4mm thickness – apparently, the thickest available so if these are too big I can step down to thinner rings) and should have them Wednesday. I’ll let you all know how it works out for me.
Whenever I write at a keyboard for a length of time, I will get a Gordian knot in my shoulders. My wife has a heck of a time working the knot out and I can’t sleep because of the pain.
She brought home a Kinesis keyboard from work to try. Split in the middle it allows the user to not roll their shoulders in. I got the Mac Bluetooth version. Best money spent in a long time. Amazon.
Absolute waste of money!!
All you need is two drops of Jameson, The Holy Amber Distillation, diluted with one drop of Guinness The Ebony Ambrosia, gently spread over the affected area and then licked off by your wife.
Hope this helps
Vic
The future of keyboards most likely will be touchscreens. The new MacBooks are supposed to have Oled touch bars for function keys . My suspicion is that in a couple of years, everyone is going to be typing on glass like on Star Trek TNG…
So hold on to your mechanical keyboards folks cause in a few years you might be able to auction them off for a boatload…
Yeah, I saw that rumour too. Hope it’s a short lived addition to the Mac line-up! At work I use a Lenovo Carbon X1 which has a similar touch strip for the function keys. It’s awful. So awful, in fact, that they dropped it from the next release of the model.
But then, with the general direction Apple is taking with it’s keyboards and OS, I suspect the (very lovely) Mac I use at home now will be the last one I own. Good job they last for a squillion years!
If the keys are app sensitive, that is, they change depending on the app, then I can’t see it being too bad a thing. We’ll have to wait and see.
But certainly, with the new magic keyboard (what a goofy name eh? I mean come on) the keys are getting thinner and thinner, with each iteration requiring less force to type each letter. The final result? A keyboard with no keys…of course, my hope when that happens is that they make it like the MacBook trackpad with haptic feedback, cause typing on glass might be painful.
I wouldn’t mind at all if the function keys became an OLED touchbar; being able to re-label what each function key did in the context of the app that has focus would be really nice, actually. I have to look down at the keyboard to find the right one to tap anyway.
But the idea that we’ll all be typing on glass in the near future is ludicrous. You have to have some tactile feedback to tell that your fingers are still on the home row, and that you tapped the right key. Only a physical keyboard can provide that. The proliferation of tablet keyboard cases is evidence enough, for me, that we’re not headed into a Star Trek TNG interface nightmare.
Haptic feedback dude. That’s the future. Just like on the new MacBook trackpad. Just imagine that for every key. You press it and gives a tap back. If they do switch to Star Trek land, it’ll make keyboards for the first time programmable and catered towards whatever you want.
A few of my classmates have given up on external keyboards and just write on their iPads using the screen keyboard…so I predict the transition will eventually happen.
Enjoy your fully mobile shoulders, all the feeling you still have in your hands, and being able to turn your head without shooting pains while you can. I give you 10 years at a desk job, max, before you’re in physical therapy for one of the many ergonomic crimes you’re committing against yourself.
Don’t mistake me. When I predict future technologies, that doesn’t particularly mean I actually like it. In fact, for the most part, it’s given me pause. I just report it as I see it. And I’m not particularly happy about this report, as it bodes, as you say, to hand injuries.
I actually struggle with severe hand tremors, so typing on a keyboard is difficult altogether. Shaky hands make both iPads and mechanical keyboards difficult to type for their own reasons. My hope is that, as Apple grows, its concern for people with physical disabilities grows too. But that’s another matter altogether.
My predictions I think still stands. We’re going towards Star Trek. Photon-torpedoes here we come. Let’s hope haptic feedback is there to save us. Or something better.
I’ve seen this prediction coming for decades. Haptic interfaces have resulted in feedback which only tells you that some input has been acknowledged. It can’t (I don’t think ever) tell you that the input was what you intended. “You clicked” is a far cry from “your fingers are resting on the ASDF and JKL; keys on this smooth surface”. It also can’t communicate that you barely hit the very edge of the Y key, almost typing a U or a 7 instead.
There may very well come a time when there exist keyboards that are just a flat LCD with some vibrations as feedback telling you that you’ve tapped on a key somewhere on the surface, but it’s not practical for the vast majority of touch-typists.
I will eat my hat if, in five years, Apple has replaced all the physical keyboards with smooth glass surfaces on their Macintosh computers.
