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I still have the beige ADB keyboard that was bundled with my first Mac. It has endured fifteen years of punishment furiously converting the ideas in my head to words on a page. My trusty friend and I together wrote stories, books, magazine articles, email, complaints I never sent, and passionate love letters that I did. Millions of letters, hundreds of thousands of words, channeled though a keyboard that was big, heavy, and solid. It took up a huge swath of desk space, the keys picked up dust bunnies in the cracks, and during the past year the ink wore off several of the vowel keys.
I held on to my friendly beige warrior through a decade and a half of different Macs, from the original Mac II to a heavily customized Power Mac 6500. But the steamroller of progress cannot be avoided forever, and with the Mac universe switching to
USB, I was finally forced to retire my old friend. True, I could have bought more time with a USB to ADB adapter, but like some kinds of extraordinary life support, it would have served only to prolong the inevitable.
Enter my new ally: a teensy little graphite-colored plastic toy. It looked great in front of the
iMac, but compared to my old beige workhorse, a few days of use confirmed it to be a slick yet unqualified pretender to the throne. Of all the changes in the Macintosh product line during the last several years, few are as welcome as the ultimate retirement of these original
iMac-style keyboards and mice. Those twin ergonomic abominations will go down in Mac history as two of Apple's biggest mistakes. Unfortunately, it took Apple several years to bury the flawed devices. As a result millions of users, including me, got stuck with a substandard user experience.
Mouse clicks and keyboard taps are every bit as important to the user experience as windows and pull-down menus. That Apple allowed the miniature keyboard and hockey-puck mouse to remain in the marketplace for years is a good example of how Apple occasionally mistreats its customers and exploits their loyalty. (Another: the ridiculously small amount of factory-installed RAM). While I'm on the subject, offering the Pro Keyboard and Pro Mouse at a price higher than most similar third party alternatives to users who have recently spent over a thousand dollars for a new computer heaps insult atop of injury.
I tried for several months to make due with the small keyboard. Maybe I just need a little more practice, I kept telling myself. It will get better given just a bit more time. In hindsight, I was fooling myself from the start. It never got better; in fact, it got worse. My error rate soared and my frustration level kept inching upward. Disgusted, finally I went in search of a new physical user interface.
I looked closely at the Pro Keyboard. It is pretty, uses standard drivers, and appears to be a high quality, long-lasting component. But while standing in the store something emotional tugged me away. A voice whispered in my head that it was plain wrong to reward Apple with more business to repair what was their mistake in the first place.
Heeding the whisper brought me to consider third party alternatives. With millions of junk Mac keyboards in circulation, I imagine making replacements for them is a pretty good business. The first unit I looked at was from
Macally. Their standard model keyboard keys felt a little soft and uncertain when pressed. The overall quality did not give the impression it would be with me for years to come. Next I tested a model from Micro Connectors. Again the quality paled in comparison to my big beige friend, but compared with the Apple rubbish sitting on my desk at home, either one was a significant improvement. Because I liked the loud solid click of the keys, I chose a Micro Connectors model SMK 8112JU. In graphite, of course.
I'm not sure my new acquaintance will become a good friend. We have only been together for a short time. Now I have a forward delete key again, the keys click when I type, and my fingers are about the same size as the keys, which is as it should be.
Now all I need to do is replace that damnable hockey puck of a mouse.
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"Goodbye, Old Friend, I Miss You
Already"
