People generally seem to want some combination of the following, in no particular order:
- Bright color options, including the ability to do light-on-dark
- Crisp clean legends
- Durability to scuffs
- Not too tall, both for aesthetic reasons and for typing comfort (low wobble, don't need to hold hand way up high over the board or use a tall wrist rest)
- Nice wide typing surface with relatively small gaps
- Some curvature in the tops (i.e. not flat tops)
- Sculpted profile
- That classic Cherry look
- Thick plastic for deeper sound and smoother/softer feel
- Reliable manufacturing with good QC
- Easy to get in touch with and work with (as a Westerner)
GMK ticks all of those boxes. All other keycaps fail in at least one or two categories.
NPKC and WinMix/KPRepublic Cherry profile is less "premium", has ugly modifier legends, and the latter has serious QC problems. Also it's PBT.
Tai-Hao OEM is fine quality but people just don't like typing on OEM, and has poor compatibility. They also don't run custom color GBs to my knowledge.
NPKC PBT OEM has great compatibility but it's still OEM. Additionally has a "rough" texture that lots of people don't like, and doesn't feel premium. Personally I think OEM is underrated for its typing experience but it also has a stigma that will be hard to get over.
Tai-Hao Cubic is like SA in that it's tall and chunky and not super comfortable to type on, also it's unbelievably loud and clacky due to the shape of the keycaps, and has not-great compatibiilty. And like their OEM, they don't do custom GBs, and the existing colorway (apart from Concrete) are frankly wack. Unlike SA it's not really beautiful either. Cubic is nobody's favorite.
DSA is making somewhat of a comeback, with Milkshake and now Scientific. This is deserved. DSA is a good profile, especially as mid-angle boards (4-7 degrees) are starting to gain popularity.
SA, whether SP or Maxkey, doesn't have the elite status it once had, but it still has its diehard fans. The common sentiment is "nice to look at and listen to (except the spacebar), not comfortable to type on".
People like KAT, MT3, EPBT Cherry profile, and MDA, but there's only so much you can do aesthetically with PBT. Novelpro is going to be another PBT player, more of an MT3 competitor than anything, and it's still a long way off at any rate. Also new KAT sets are basically unavailable due to issues at Keyreative and ZFrontier. EPBT is getting more popularity as the quality continues to rise (thanks for your hard work Gok!). MDA feels nice but I think it looks kinda weird and that turns people off. XDA is polarizing, either you love it or you hate it; it lacks mass appeal. MT3 is the same way, albeit with a bit of additional respect for its vintage aesthetic.
JTK keycaps don't feel or sound as nice as GMK for some reason, and the wonky legend issues still aren't fixed.
MT3 ABS has weird/bad font and the first set still hasn't shipped.
So what's left? Nothing.
Maybe SP decides to restore or recreate the old thick Comptec DCS. Maybe someday they actually (re)produce DSS (and we pray that it's not as thin as DCS). Or maybe Novelkeys and/or Spectreill revive the SSS profile they had worked on. Maybe HuB makes a comeback. Otherwise... I don't see how the GMK glut will ever end, unless the communal wallet runs dry.
As far as I know, SP has stated they have no intentions on bringing back thick DCS, as our relatively small demand (compared to most of their partners) is very low, and it doesn't really provide any benefit for them. I'd be surprised if DSS came out thin, considering it's relation to the SA profile. I believe some people have found test caps in grab bags from them too, and they look similar to SA in thickness, which IIRC is about 1.6mm
SA Probably won't get a whole lot of attention due to SP still having a fairly lengthy backlog, and Maxkey quality still being pretty subpar. To my knowledge, SP has not been running very many ABS or PBT DSA sets as of late, so I can see that being a potentially good option. Keyreative has effectively ceased making DSA sets due to QC issues with the cap provider, and their KAT/KAM profiles future seems uncertain, as they still haven't delivered on KAT Starry Night, thought it was supposed to ship a month or two ago.
Certainly, MT3 has it's issues in ABS with MD insisting on going with a SA like font, which is honestly too large. The PBT sets have had their legending issues sorted out from what I can see with my Dev/TTY R2 caps, so that's a possibility, although limited by having to be run through MD, on their time schedule, if at all.
I've always been a little surprised at how Polarizing XDA is, since it's very similar to DSA, just with a wider top. Most every set I've seen done in the profile has turned out excellently, although it is limited to just PBT, and I don't know of any reverse dyesub sets existing.
MDA does look weird, although nice to type on, I agree. Pretty understandable why it's failed to garner real appeal in the community.
ADA exists, although I am unaware if the profile is open to the community or not, and it has only so far appeared with one set, and only as laser infill.
Novelpro remains a hopeful contender for me, but that's going to have to wait on real results, and it's still about a year off for samples, IIRC.
As for HuB? I see no chance of it succeeding as long as the project is being headed by it's rather... divisive creator.
OEM? No comment.
Really this mostly stems from my frustration over a lack of spherical profile sets. There have been a couple, but mostly in colorways I find pretty unappealing. and when they do run, they seem to almost always be DSA or XDA PBT. I can't even remember the last time I saw an ABS DSA keyset ran. I really hope that KAT is actually able to get somewhere, as that's what I see as having the best chance at reducing this slew of GMK ICs. While it's PBT and not ABS, Keyreative DOES offer reverse and multicolor dyesubbing, and it's turned out very well in the past. This would certainly help improve the color options as opposed to standard dyesubbing. in addition, it's extremely thick, at about 1.7mm, making it even thicker than Cherry profile. It's also supposed to have an extremely smooth finish, and a sculpt similar to Cherry, but with spherical tops.
I don't know though, seeing the same profile over and over starts to make everything feel samey.