Ah, so the keyboard is doing fine, eh? Is it kinda loud and springy to the touch? The ones I have are very very "clacky." There really is some bit of echo to the keys.
I definitely noticed the echo you mentioned at first, but I painted the case white with Krylon Fusion within 15 minutes of unboxing, and since having done that, the echo seems to have largely receded. I still get it a little bit, but not nearly as much; this paint's some thick stuff, apparently.
It definitely has black keyswitches that say Alps on them. I can only assume that they're black Alps. They don't require all that much force to get them to push down, but having come off using scissors for the past six years, I don't naturally use that much force to push down, so I find these quite to my liking actually, especially considering the price. I hit the bottom often on the space bar and the delete/backspace, but not really on any other keys. I still remember liking my old Model M back in the day better, but this doesn't feel as inferior as I expected it to.
Interestingly, Mac OS thinks this keyboard is a Strongman. If I recall, that's the company that actually produces the Tactile Pro series, rather than Matias?
One thing I really do miss--and this isn't specific to this keyboard really; I'd get it with most aftermarket options--is Apple doesn't offer full remapping of all the function keys. I can reassign all my dashboard and exposé (and Spaces if I used it) keys, but none of the volume/play-pause/track skip controls for use with Quicktime and iTunes. I've found third party software to help with this, but it doesn't quite work the same way Apple's official hotkeys did; it the volume, play/pause and track stuff were OS-wide rather than iTunes specific, and I could fast forward/rewind as well as skip tracks. These are minor things, but workflow issues I suppose I'll have to get used to. It seems the Matias board would be able to do the volume, but not the rest. Hmm.
