My beef with Apple keyboards
There’s a lot of talk about the new apple keyboards, are they good, do they suck, etc… well this post isn’t about them. I’ve gone through a lot of keyboards in my time, good, bad, clicky, quiet, whatever. I know my preferences, but really, as long as I can type on it ok, in general I am fine with it.
In recent days, I’ve had the white apple keyboard. Didn’t have any real problem with them, a little wide for my taste, but whatever, it matched the decor so I let it slide. Well, the first one broke a couple months back. Had a little incident with water and never came back. I was surprised a little, I’ve had several keyboards take a bath and come back after a few hours, but you know… that’s life. Went out and got a new one.
Fast forward two months or so, to today. Happily working away, and then … wha? what? What’s happening? That’s right, the space bar isn’t working anymore. As some of you may realize, the space bar is a pretty important key so it breaking essentially means new keyboard time. Two months that one lived. Nothing happened to prompt this death, it just died.
The problem, as I see it, is the ingenious design of this keyboard:
See the two gutters on the right half of the keyboard? The space to the left and right of the arrow/home keys? Yeah, that part grants direct access to the innards of the keyboard. It’s basically an express lane for any fur, crumbs, and whatever nasty stuff happens to come by your desk directly into the fiddly bits of the keyboard. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, ok, maybe not the dumbest, but still it ranks up there.
They added a little plate for that type of space above the arrow keys, all they needed to do was extend that out to the gutter between that area and the main keyboard and the gutter and the numeric keypad. A few more square inches of plastic, but no. And that cost me $60 in replacement keyboards already. Sigh. Whatever else anyone’s beef with the new keyboards are at least they are all covered up.
I guess I’ll order me up a Happy Hacking Keyboard (why did I ever switch off it??) and keep this one as a spare in case the HHKB ever dies (unlikely, the last one I had lasted several years and was still going with it’s bad non-USB self).
August 28th, 2007 at 9:41 am
trade you a back USB HHK for an apple bluetooth one. :)
August 28th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Heh, alas I don’t have a bluetooth keyboard, just the plain ol’ wired up one.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:48 am
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November 21st, 2007 at 7:20 am
[...] next time you have keyboard recovery needs (like when I hated my Apple keyboard) you might consult this list of the 22 best keyboards. Although, honestly? You might not. You know [...]
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I’ve a real problem with my keyboard that came with my iMac a couple of years ago. I really need to eat my wheaties in the mornings before I hit the space bar. Nearly all the keys have gotten sticky, I’m now thinking due to the crap that found it’s way in under them. And I didn’t used to eat at my computer, now? How much worse can it get? I miss keys, words join together etc. I pulled it apart and gave it a darn good clean, but no, didn’t work.
Sound like there are a few complaints about the space bar not being reactive on the new aluminium Apple keyboard too. All I ask is an easy to use, quick, keyboard. I’m a touch typist so want something fast. I’ll check out the best keyboards from Breakfast Links. Thanks.
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Geri, definitely get yourself a new keyboard - those old apple keyboards are the worst. I know exactly the spacebar issue you speak of, sigh. I heartily recommend the happy hacker keyboard - it isn’t perfect but it’s the closest I’ve come to perfection. Of course perfection is in the eye of the beholder! Let me know what you end up with. :)