It seems like the computing industry has never really come to consensus on how to make a good keyboard.
I’m an avid Model M user myself, and I’ve managed to convert some of my friends over to ‘80s-style clicky keyboards made by IBM and Unicomp. In my own opinion, IBM came the closest to making a truly good keyboard – and for all I know they did. The buckling spring technology used by vintage IBM keyboards gives really nice tactile feedback, but does so with the added expensive of auditory feedback. Given, some people like the sound, though for people like me trying to type while others are sleeping, it can be something of a nuisance. The reason I say that for all I know IBM did in fact make a perfect keyboard is the existence of a Soft Touch Model M, a buckling spring variant with sound-dampening grease injected into each of the springs. Of course, I’ve never had the opportunity to type on such a keyboard, let alone even see one.
Compare that to Lenovo (formerly IBM)’s keyboards today, which we have in use in one of the computer labs at school. These keyboards are quite the opposite: whisper silent with almost no feedback whatsoever. Personally I’d rather have the tactile feedback with auditory feedback than no feedback whatsoever, though this seems to be the way things are going nowadays: cheap squishy keyboards.
Even laptop keyboards, which I formerly considered an alright-but-not-great compromise of tactility and sound, are really starting to lack. A number of today’s new widescreen laptops are forsaking the blank space to the sides of the keyboard in favor of a numerical pad, which further squishes down the available impact space per key, not to mention shrinking keys such as Backspace, Shift, and Enter down to unacceptably small levels. On top of this, some engineer had the great idea to have the user’s hands glide over the keyboard, resulting in tactile-less “glossy” keyboards, glossy much in the same regard as newer LCD monitors lacking a proper matte finish.
But wait – didn’t we figure out back in the 1980s that membrane keyboards were no good, and instead relegate them to cheap items like TV remotes? Lately they’re cropping up everywhere, from smartphones to Apple’s most recent keyboard offerings. Though I’m sure Antony will disagree with me, the new Apple membrane keyboards remind me of drumming my fingers on my desk rather than typing, and after awhile can actually make my fingers hurt. The same goes for the cramped keyboards on cellphones and the new breed of subnotebooks: when the keys become smaller than my fingers, I have a hard time typing anything – ideally this is where handwriting recognition would have come into play. It worked great even on ancient Palm OS devices from the 1990s – why is it terrible on Windows Mobile and nonexistent on the iPhone?
Bizarrely, I actually know people that can type faster on a BlackBerry thumbboard than on a proper computer keyboard…