keyboards

I got a keyboard like this one with the Mac Pro. It’s tiny, and it allowed me to reclaim what felt like acres of desk space. I’ve used it since I got the Pro, about three months ago, and I have really really tried to like it. It is just too small – I keep mis-hitting the keys even after all this time.

So this morning, I fetched out my Matias Tactile Pro, cleaned it (shock horror!) and perlmonger plugged it back in for me, for I am just a gurly and don’t do computery things. And lo, peace is restored. A rather clacky peace, to be sure, but it’s *so* nice to have it back.

16 thoughts on “keyboards”

  3. This looks a lot like the Bluetooth keyboard I got with my iBook and have since sold. Solid and a lot less flimsy-looking than the first one you illustrated. I still have an old black Mac USB keyboard from some sort of G4 tower, use it once in a blue moon if I want to type a lot. Again, it looks and feels a LOT sturdier than your original keyboard.

  4. Ah, the Matias Tactile Pro!

    Got one. Alas, chunks of it are falling off and it’s filthier than the inside of a sewer, plus it only does USB 1.1. I tried to order the Tactile Pro 2.0 a couple of months ago but they cancelled my order — they’ve had horrible QA problems with the Chinese factory they subcontracted construction of the last batch to — but they’ll email me when they’ve got a new batch ready to sell. The 2.0 model comes, of course, with a built-in USB 2.0 hub … but the same feel: the nearest thing to an IBM M-Series you can buy with USB and an Apple layout.

    1. I’m impressed with Matias. The keycaps all wore off my first one, and they replaced it FOC. See here.

      We still have some IBM keyboards on top of a shelf in the server room – we bought a batch a few years ago when they were disappearing from stock. Nothing to touch ’em. As you say, the Tactile Pro is the nearest thing to it.

      I kept the old one Just In Case, but I shall be tempted by version 2 when it finally ships.

      1. The version 2.0 isn’t much different. Same ghost key problem (which they strenuously deny happens) and now it takes TWO USB connections to provide ONE USB 2.0 port on the keyboard.

        I (like The Boy Gruber) want a brand new version of the Apple Extended Keyboard II, with the clicky Alps switches but the beautiful matt grey surface. I had one in the 80s on my IIci and it was marvelous. Dan Benjamin’s in contact with the guy who had the original factory before they switched to Alps and he’s trying to persuade him to do another run.

        The best substitute I found was the Acer-manufactured keyboards that came with Viglen machines in the 90s. Same matt surface, same clicky-but-not-heavy fell (unlike the IBMs where you feel like you’re operating some sort of sheet metal press) but sadly PC keyboard layout.

  5. Recent apple keyboards appear to have been designed for people who ‘can’t type, won’t type’… Which is a pity as from the //e onwards they were great. That said, I’d love a proper buckling-spring clicky IBM feel in an apple layout. That would be monstrously cool. Err, and it should all be in black crackle-finish hammerite.

    1. The Tactile Pro is as close as you can get to an IBM clacker – it’s really very good. But pricey.

      As I spend all day on a keyboard, I don’t see it as overly expensive, myself, but your mileage might vary.

    2. Not sure I agree.

      I’ve got the new Apple keyboard (with my iMac), and I’m typing this now on a Macbook air. The short-travel “chicklet” look keysboards look like Sir Clive Sinclair designed them but once you get used to them they’re actually pretty damn good — certainly far superior to your typical £5 PC keyboard with the rubber membrane and dead-fish feel.

      However, the short travel thing is obviously a matter of choice, as is the inter-key spacing. I’ve adapted okay to the new style (well enough that acquiring a new Matias keyoard is clearly an optional extra) and prefer them to, say, the old G4 Powerbook keyboards. And I hated every ADB keyboard that Apple made that I ever tried.

      1. I tried the new Apple keyboard. I am used to IBM Model Ms and Unicomp clones thereof.

        The new Apple keyboard puts me in mind of a cross between a short-travel Sinclair QL and a bag of Scrabble tiles. It does not feel like something I’d keep, or want to keep, for years.

  6. If it takes up too much desk space, the solution is obviously A Larger Desk capable of handling keyboard, graphics tablet and sleeping Cat.

    1. I have a custom made desk complete with sleeping cat shelf. And a study that is too small to have anything larger.

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