The keyboard and keycaps arrived the same day, and I’ve replaced most (but not all) of the original keys with custom orange keycaps from WASD. I ended up at WASD Keyboards, which sells numerous custom keycaps. Topolsky seems to have picked up replacement keycaps on Massdrop and elsewhere.
MACBOOK KEYBOARD MAESTRO WINDOWS
But as soon as I had ordered it, I started thinking about its included Windows and Alt keys, and pondering replacements. (They’re available here and there, though I bought mine new on eBay from a seller in Korea.) I ended up with an all-black model, which I liked better than the all-white ones I had been seeing last fall. As I mentioned on this week’s edition of Upgrade, I spent almost four months with a version of that keyboard in my shopping cart.įinally, earlier this month, I bought one. I shopped for the FC660M, which-after consulting various web sites with audio recordings of the clicky-clacky sound that mechanical keyboards make-I had decided I wanted with Cherry MX Blue keyswitches. Topolsky’s decks were both Leopold FC660Ms-a product I had never heard of before, but then, I had never been to the Mechanical Keyboards subreddit, either. I prefer small keyboards and prefer to have my trackpad closer to my right hand, rather than pushed away by a number pad that I never use. Topolsky was right to call them “cyberspace decks,” because they definitely put me in the mind of William Gibson’s 1984 classic Neuromancer, a book I own in paperback, HyperCard stack, and ePub editions. These were tiny keyboards-no function key row, no numeric keypad-with colorful keyboard layouts. I started to ponder whether I wanted to really try using a mechanical keyboard when Joshua Topolsky, late of Bloomberg, posted this tweet: Then Apple came out with the new Magic Keyboard, which was thankfully not as radical as the one in the new MacBook. The new MacBook keyboard is the one feature of that product that I actively dislike, and it’s been a while since a keyboard has been the only thing standing between me and embracing a new bit of technology. While I remember the old days of keyboards with clicky-clacky sound effects and big key travel with some nostalgia, whenever I’ve taken a test drive on someone else’s mechanical keyboard I’ve come away thinking that time has moved on and my fingers have adapted to the soft, low-travel feel of today’s laptop keyboards.Īpple’s keyboard moves in 2015 had a part to play in getting me thinking about keyboards, too. It’s only in the past year, as I’ve settled into my home office with only the dog and cat for company most days, that I’ve started to think about whether I wanted to take the plunge and consider buying a mechanical keyboard. Yes, I have an old Apple Extended Keyboard II in my office, and I remember the years I spent typing on an Apple Standard Keyboard, but as I used laptops more and more, I got used to laptop keyboards and soldiered on. But while many of my friends and colleagues have always been obsessed with the tools of our trade-computer keyboards-it’s never been something I’ve spent a whole lot of time worrying about.
Yes, these days I do a lot of podcasting, but I am a writer at heart.
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