The thing with DS keys?

[ander]

What's the thing with DS keys, anyway?





(Thanks to DT for the image.) In the '80s, keeb makers switched to cylindrical keys, pretty well en masse. They must've had a reason.

Was it simply because cylindrical keys were cheaper to make? Or were studies done, surveys taken, and most people found cylindricals more comfortable and/or faster? And the DS revival is pretty well a novelty thing, powered by people such as us, who find the older look amusing?

[mogo]

Did you mean SA? I don't know why cylindrical keys became the new norm, but I have heard that it's far easier to print on a cylindrical surface than a spherical one. Makes sense, you rarely see spherical caps with legends very near to the extreme edges, but cylindrical caps seem to be able to fit far more onto the available space.

[zslane]

They became the norm because IBM used them with the IBM PC, and over the course of the 80s the PC clone wars guaranteed that the IBM "look" would dominate as a new de facto standard. This is because being "IBM compatible" (even to the extent of looking as much like one as possible) had become more important than forging unique branding aesthetics for your computer product.

[Findecanor]

The computer industry became international. To be significant in a market, you had to also support the language and keyboard layout of that market. Competing with IBM in the '80s were also computer platforms that catered only to a specific country and had that as an advantage.
Double-shot moulding is expensive and the costs go up a lot if you also have to do different legends and layouts for different countries.

And yes, there are also trends. IBM set the norm. Not just with cylindrical keys but also colour scheme and layout: Commodore Amiga 2000, Apple Extended Keyboard and Sun Type 5 were not exact copies of the IBM Enhanced Keyboard ("Model M") layout but copied different aspects of it.