Re: Keyboard Madness!

[guertinp@IRO.UMontreal.CA (Paul Guertin)]

shack@onyx.southwind.net (Randy Shackelford) writes:
>Hmm, I remember when I got my //e eleven and a half years ago (!) and a ][ plus
>owning friend tried it out and told me the keyboard felt flimsy. Oh well.

Early ][ Plus keyboards were great to the touch. The keys were smooth,
concave, and did not require much force to push. Apparently, Apple
changed suppliers in mid-run, because I have a late ][ Plus (its former
owner bought it one month before the //e was announced) with a different
kind of keyboard (the key layout is the same, however). The keys are
much more stiff and it feels a lot like a vt100 keyboard. I don't like
it very much.

The best keyboards I've ever used, however, were typewriter keyboards.
I don't understand why even $50,000 workstations have such bad keyboards
compared to $500 typewriters. (And don't get me started about key
layout, which at Sun Microsystems is obviously done by a commitee of
wild baboons).

I must admit that I never understood what the deal was about the
Caps Lock key. I've seen keyboards where it is the second-largest
key. Bigger than shift, bigger than return, bigger than control.
In the next revision, it will probably overtake the space bar too.

Paul Guertin
guertinp@iro.umontreal.ca