As a distraction from a long overdue closet cleaning, I decided to take a break and see if the Apple Extended Keyboard II I’ve been hoarding for years (thank you DrCheezie) actually works. Last time I took it out to try I realized I didn’t own an ADB-USB converter, so it went back in the closet to await the delivery of an iMate I found on Ebay — plus a few dozen months.
The keyboard has a copyright date of 1995 — it’s old enough to be out of college. It’s huge and heavy. It weighs in at 1580g, about 3.5 lbs., my MacBook Pro weighs 2017g and my Lenovo X1 is just 1135g. (1lb = 453.6g). I might need a bigger desk.
Wow, the typing experience is incredible. I haven’t been this accurate in years. Still not perfect, but I considered posting this without correcting anything because of how few mistakes there were. (Though once I had that thought, the next 20 words were a mess of typos.)
Random keyboard thoughts: After a few years of trying, I still don’t like the direction Apple took with the super-flat MacBook “butterfly-switch” keyboards. I’ve genuinely tried to get used to them, but every time I’m working on one I feel like my productivity is decreased by a third. My fingers feel like sausages and I’m constantly hitting multiple keys.
I recently bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon as my secondary laptop — it’s my first real PC that wasn’t a bargain basement load of crap. In choosing between the X1 Carbon and the Dell XPS, the keyboard reviews on the Lenovo won me over. They weren’t wrong, the keyboard is a pleasure to use. Almost makes up for the ergonomic vertigo of switching back and forth from Mac’s Command to Windows/Linux Control key shortcuts.
My MacBook Pro keyboard now feels like typing on a wet sponge.
Maybe my favorite detail of all.
Good God, this thing feels so nice, I just want to keep typing!
I can’t see using one of these at work. It’s still really loud. Not IBM Model M loud, but it’s a big change from what we’re used to in a modern office.
Not quite ready to pick up something from MaxKeyboards or WASD just yet, but this isn’t going back into the closet right away.
One other funny note. As soon as I hooked this up I forgot how to use my track-pad and started grabbing for a mouse.
Ok, mouse connected. It’s like I’m back in 1997 again… except the mouse is wireless and the computer is 1000x faster. And everything is JavaScript instead of Photoshop.
Tech, noted 