First, to clarify, I don't own a MacBook. But I was burning time in a Best Buy a few days ago and I wandered over to them and started typing and I absolutely loved it. The 2016/17 MacBook Pro has a relatively new keyboard switch. It has a tiny amount of travel (maybe like 1mm?) but every keystroke was still satisfyingly tactile. I was also impressed with the fake click vibration thing that the touchpad does. Very interesting hardware.
This has me, a vocal lifelong critic of everything Apple, wanting to buy a MBP. The keyboard was just so good, and that's compared to some great other keyboards. I have a ThinkPad that, while still chiclet style, is a really great laptop keyboard with my favorite touchpad of all time. I have an old Asus Zenbook that has a keyboard I'm fond of for such a small machine. On my desktops I have either blue or brown Cherry switches depending on what rig I'm at. But I can't get this butterfly switch out of my mind. It was effortless and my accuracy was surprisingly high, especially for my first time using the keyboard. I've always hated Mac products, but this experience has my mind fabricating excuses so that I can allow myself to buy one.
So are there any similar keyboards out there? Any switches with super shallow travel but still a nice clicky-ness? Or am I destined to buy one of these fucking things and then wait it out until Linux support is all sorted (currently no sound + other issues)?
No keyboard exists with the butterfly switch currently.
Also fun fact.....there is no reason to hate apple and install linux.
OSX is based on BSD. If you rip out the stupid telemetry and tracking crap out of the kexts and other random software, you can actually get a fairly BSD-ish experience.
While you don't have as much control over the UI as linux, you do actually have substantially more software and OS control than what windows gives you. So its a really nice middle ground where you don't get linux level control, but you still get a unix based OS with a nice shell and very solid app support.
Do apple not sell those wireless keyboards anymore? Or have they not updated them to the new ones yet. Maybe when the new Mac Pro comes out they will have them and you can just get one from someone with one. No one I know with an imac actually uses those wireless boards, they all plug in regular membranes just to have the full normal layout.
The new Apple Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad looks like it has really shallow keys as well. The description says "scissor" switches though, so I don't think they're the same. I use a new MBP for work every day and it took me a while to get used to the keyboard, but it is extremely satisfying to use once I got used to the short travel. As far as I'm aware, there isn't anything else like it.
Well, there are reasons, but it's subjective. It depends on what you're looking for in a computer. That's a whole other topic though so I'm not going to go into specifics.
Haha, I agree! But between the price of their hardware and the absurdity of their business practices, that purchase is tough to swallow. Still though, I'm almost leaning toward buying one and then installing Fedora as soon as those beautiful folks sort out its eccentricities.
But if I could find a keyboard that gave the same experience, perhaps I could fend off these urges.
Prices......meh. The base price for a lot of their stuff is somewhat competitive. Their upgrades are ridiculous. Especially ram upgrades.
Business practices, yes. 1000 times yes. I really hate their "innovations" (dongles) especially when it comes to the professional arena. I think they constantly leave their pro-sumers out to dry.
