It's probable that it did skip a generation. I'm 37. My exposure to mechanical keyboards was with the original pc at in high school, and after going through cheap logitech/rubber domes month after month in my 20s, since I do a lot of typing I remembered how great the old pcat keyboard felt. I also realized I could probably find one on ebay which I did and that began my re interest in mechanicals, which eventually led me to find the minitouch and this board. During the 80's the pcat mechanical keyboards were exceptionally expensive to own, if you happened to be able to track one down. In the 90's, they were viewed as trash, and only during the later 90's and early 2000's when ebay came about would you even be able to find one even if you knew what you were looking for.
The alps and cherry boards didn't receive much if any advertising in general media so few knew their advantages or how they felt. It was only till ebay made some models affordable that you could become exposed to them. I found my first siig minitouch for $25 on ebay just by typing in compact mechanical keyboard. It was the only real mechanical compact that came up. This was about 2 years ago now.
It took a lot of proactive research on my part to search out and find exactly what I wanted. Most people don't have a reason or probably even an idea of how to go about it, if they even have had the exposure to know that mechanicals are longer lasting, infinitely repairable, and feel 100 times better than cheap rubber domes.
