When using a laptop, sacrifices often need to be made using a desktop setup requires none of those sacrifices, yet we’re making them anyway. Some have blamed the overly flat, thin aesthetic of scissor-switch desktop keyboards for giving them repetitive stress injuries, but the biggest knock on these keys is their feel-with less space, there’s less clickiness, and keys “bottom out” with much less force. But while taking up less room on your desk, lower-profile keyboards sacrificed a lot to get there-including heft, key actuation, and ergonomics. The fact that it seems to have driven some mainstream computer makers away from providing cushier keyboard experiences when vertical space isn’t at a luxury is unfortunate.Įarly PC keyboards were both heavy and extremely definitive in keyfeel-the IBM Model M, with its buckling springs, was a beast compared to the simplistic and minimal Apple Magic Keyboard, for example. Unfortunately, that switch ended up getting used on a bunch of keyboards that weren’t attached to laptops. The scissor switch is a perfectly fine option for laptops where space is a luxury. “But that changed at about that time, and Sony was in the vanguard.” “Before then, chiclet keyboards were evil, rubbery things,” notes Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza. If you’ve typed on a laptop keyboard in the past 15 years, you’ve likely used a descendant of this design, which effectively was a 2004 take on the 2011 MacBook Air. It kept the key relatively firm while still ensuring flatness. The X505, in its efforts to take thinness to the extreme for the time, came up with a new approach to keyboards that was quickly emulated throughout the industry: It used scissor-switch based keys to press down on rubber domes, and put flat, chiclet-style keycaps on top of those switches. In 2004, Sony released a Vaio-branded laptop that most people have probably forgotten about but nonetheless casts a large shadow over modern computing. Why did big companies fall out of love with great desktop keyboards?
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