EDIT: I don't even know what I was saying here. Feel free to skip this reply.
I do get it; a lot of people are typing with other people around and don't want to be that guy. I had an office recently, so I could use my clicky boards, but a ton of people just want to be quiet. They also don't like the ping frequently involved in some clicky keyboards, even ones that are quite bassy. I get that too: I much prefer the sound of the Model M to the beamers and the Fs, and prefer the sound of blue/white alps to those.
However, the noise that these relatively silent keyboards make that everyone is trying for, that almost sickening plop plop plop when you bottom out makes me want to barf. I have a Keychron K4 or something with the 96% layout and MX Browns (which aren't that bad, come at me) that I think is okay to type on but the sound is blegh. But you know what else? It's in my work bag for when I am typing up my manifesto in the breakroom so I look only slightly weird typing with my tablet and I'm not clack clacking.
Not much. It seems like a checklist to being an enthusiast these days is to hate on clickies. No idea why.
Silence and "smoothness" seems to be the latest obsession.
Or tactility. Some of the world has gone heavy to smoothness (which is fine for me), or the other half has decided they want something so tactile it's like breaking a board to type on. After years of them trying to figure out how to get an MX switch to be sharply tactile, they developed the clickbars which are very sharp and the clickies which you can mod into non click but probably the most tactile switch on the planet.
And by half I mean 90% and 10%.
I just don't see any real middle of the road switches around, even tactile but otherwise largely silent ones. You have blues and their derivatives, clickbars (which click on the way up for annoyance), and BS. But Matias makes the best feeling switches currently, IMO, being
pretty tactile, pretty light, and pretty good sounding.So Ellipse and Matias are making keyboards with middle of the road switches which are both highly limited. If Zeal just came out with a lighter less tactile switch, I think I would buy them.