From what i hear, Apple made a mechanical keyboard in the 80s called the Apple Extended Keyboard. From what I'm reading online, it was one of the best keyboards Apple ever made and is still desirable today; just like IBM's Model M.
I believe that the Matias Tactile Pro is an attempt to recreate that keyboard, so I'm wondering whether I should get one of those or the SpaceSaver one from Unicomp.
Like some others have said, keyboards are a very subjective and personal choice. The best advice I would give is to see if you can give one a try--but I'd only do that after you can notice the difference in your typing speed, accuracy, or the condition of your hands. If not, you'll be like a kid with a driving permit test driving a Lambo or Ferrari. Get your skills up and then get the tools you need, otherwise you may invest in the wrong tool.
Aesthetics is always a top priority in Apple's design agenda, I just wonder if people want a keyboard to stare at it or to type.
Seriously! Function>form for me any day!
[rant]
But I think that's a key to their success. All the women of the world want their crap and buy it endlessly like a fashion item. Don't get me wrong, some of their items have changed the game (like their keyboard we're discussing in this thread), but the cost of such form+functional products are so overpriced that only those that don't understand value seem be the first adopters.
My wife loves their phones and has gone through 3 upgrades in the last 2 years. I still have my military spec NEC Terrain and can out type her on texts any day of the week since I have a hardware keyboard. I can do everything she can except I don't have to worry about dropping, spilling, or the occasional throw across the room. Function>form as mine is thicker, but put a case on hers to protect it like mine and it's the same.
Apple changed the cellphone game with the touchscreen only option, and everyone followed suit. Personally, I hate it. Who initially thought about touching their phones would turn them on? Kinky perverts! My Treo 650 had a touchscreen and a keyboard and it was much faster to get anything done because it had buttons to do anything you could via touchscreen--answer a call, send a text, get to the main menu. The combination was pretty killer. Even the android platform sucks at this. It takes 5 steps to dial a number from a text because of all the stupid questions and bad UI decisions along the way. Placement of where you have to touch things in sequence on a task can be at the opposite ends of the screen (who thought that was a good idea?) and there's no buttons to speed through the crap.
Take redialing a number for instance. On the Treo 650, you could press the key to answer once and it would bring up your call log, you could select the number either using the 4-way directional pad or touch it--done. Or even faster if it was the same number, you just pressed it once to bring up the list and one more time to dial the most recent number. I could redial faster than it takes to select the number on either Apple or Android phones. Who forgot the UI rules about being only a few steps away from your task?
The Apple IOS stuff is so easy a 3 year old can use it. That's great, but I'm not 3 years old. Dummying down the whole computing experience opened it up to a wider audience, but all it did in the long run was reset progress, going from things like mech keyboards and solid input devices that made interaction with the system quick and efficient via a button press, to endless touching of a glass screen wearing out not only the wrist and arm, but even more body parts. If their way was superior, products like the Matias Tactile One wouldn't exist, but 90% of the people out there don't know anything about rsi because they're first generation into using such products. Those of us that have been computing and gaming since before computing was 'cool' know all about bad UIs, interfaces and the potential damage to body parts over years of use. And our wisdom was cast aside for flashy products and fashion branding. Idiots.
And to think, Microsoft bailed out Apple back in the late 1990s/early 2000s by buying a stake in the company and putting people on their board. I guess you can't have good without evil and they knew it...
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