Will anyone ever make a decent Mac Keyboard?

paul@pth.com (Paul Haddad) — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:24:00 -0800

I love loud clicky keyboards, I just can’t seem to find a decent one. For the longest time I’ve used a Northgate OmniKey keyboard, these things are/were built like tanks and had a real nice satisfying click. Unfortunately they are Windows specific and don’t have niceties such as volume keys or built in USB ports. After one too many coke spills my Northgate started acting up. Fortunately this was around the same time the Matias Tactile Pro and Kensington StudioBoard came out.

Due to a miscommunication with my wife I ended up getting both of these as Christmas presents. Both of them have the nice Macish features that I want and decent looks. The Kensington one definitely felt better, though I’m not sure I could explain why. Unfortunately both feel pretty cheap as far as the plastics used and overall weight of the keyboard. Turns out that both are built pretty badly as neither lasted longer then about a year.

The StudioBoard again was my favorite, unfortunately one of the cheap little plastic legs broke on it. I contacted Kensington Customer Service to get a replacement and they sent me a junky $10 Keyboard in a Box as a replacement. After contacting them again I was told they didn’t make those keyboards anymore and that the junky keyboard they sent me was their replacement. So much for a company standing behind their product. Fortunately I was able to just stick a USB-PS/2 converter underneath the keyboard as a replacement leg. This worked fairly well until this keyboard started acting up as well.

A few months ago I started using the TactilePro. It just never felt right (key pressure wise) and it only worked for a few months before it started developing its own annoying problems. For some reason the Shift and Control key only seem to register being held down about 1/2 the time. This makes the keyboard pretty useless. I’d probably send it in for service, but I don’t really care for the keyboard anyways.

So now I’m back to the original Northgate. The Up Arrow key doesn’t work and neither do half the numeric keypad keys. But overall I can live with up arrow not working (Control-P is your best friend in these situations).

I think I’m going to try to grab a Customizer 104 from PCKeyboard.com, not pretty and no hub or volume keys, but it is cheap and I believe I can get them to do a decent layout (with Command/Alt keys).

PTH Consulting Blog: Tag mac keyboard

Will anyone ever make a decent Mac Keyboard?