Mechanical keyboards with linear switches are occasionally offered to enthusiastic computer gamers.
But if that's one application for a quality computer keyboard that ought to generate sales, one would have thought that it would be data entry typing. If one expects one's secretaries to type stuff in at 60 to 80 words per minute... you need to give them a decent keyboard.
Of course the beam spring keyboard in a Displaywriter added to its price. So did the buckling spring keyboards in the original PC. They might not feel precisely like the keys in a Selectric - and, in fact, the way an electric typewriter operates is constrained by its mechanical operation. Tactile feedback is, to some extent, just a happy consequence, not something that could easily be optimized in design.
So IBM - and other companies that made computer terminals or keyboards for them - considered it was worth making an effort to provide tactile feedback in a computer keyboard.
The goal wasn't to mimic a typewriter exactly, just to give the typist something she could work with.
Some advertisements for Topre keyboards note their use in airport ticket counters, because fast, accurate entry is important there.
I presume this is an element in Unicomp's continued sales as well. But in a small web search, at least initially, it doesn't seem as though anyone out there is using that sort of thing as a sales pitch these days.
