An Apple Extended Keyboard II.
I don't know if it's actually meant to be the Model M competitor or not, but that's what I read on some blog.
The last couple weeks we've been going through the inventory of old stockpiled gear that we keep in case a keyboard in a lab breaks or something along those lines. Well, we had a bunch of really old stuff that was just going to go out in the trash. One guy that I work with is like an Apple aficionado (owns stock in Apple, he's Apple certifiable, etc.) so my boss set these under his desk for him to keep. That was about a week ago.
Today, I was asking him if it was mechanical (I thought I remembered reading they have ALPS switches), because there were a bunch of other old keyboards that we threw out that looked like they came from around the Model M era, but they were all different brands and all had rubber domes. When I asked this he was just like I dunno, you want it? So obviously I said hell ya and ran it out to the trunk of my car immediately so I wouldn't accidentally leave it at work.
I'm no Apple fanboy, but this thing is pretty awesome to me.
I'm currently using a G710+, but I'm going to swap it out for a bit. If it can perform as well for gaming then I might just use it permanently. I just need to clean it first. No major discoloration, but it is a little grimy, and very dusty from sitting in a cupboard for who knows how long.
I haven't plugged it in yet, but I'm super excited to. The switches, if I had to compare them to Cherry, I'd say they're kind of like a mix between browns and blues, which is perfect for me because I feel like browns are a little too smooth, but blues are just too noisy. I know they're ALPS, but I'm not sure which color.
Oh ya and I got an old Apple ball mouse too. I won't be using that for anything, but it'll be joining my collection that I'm going to make a display of when I have space for my own tech cave.
Both use ADB plugs, but I managed to find a USB adapter that was going to be thrown out with the rest of the stuff.
