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Mechanical Keyboards

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bhtooefr:
I actually tried Dvorak a while back, and didn't like it - not because of having to learn a completely new layout (that was frustrating, but not really it), but because my QWERTY typing style is actually to move my whole hand (and sometimes arm, even) to get it to the characters that I want, so I didn't really have much of the downsides of QWERTY, and I found it uncomfortable to keep my hands in one place.

Really, at some point, a moderator should split this out into CLICK. :P

mtmerrick:
Yeah, I agree - I don't type "properly" either. I type on the left ⅔-¾with my left hand in a kinda crawling motion, keeping my right hand on the mouse or the arrow keys and jump over to the far right of the letter keys if I need to use those letters.

On a small keyboard (my Bluetooth keyboard, a netbook, smaller tablet) I can type with my left hand exclusively.

Akima:

--- Quote from: mtmerrick on 14 Apr 2013, 15:23 ---Touch typing is all but impossible without learning your specific keyboard. EVERY keyboard has enough differences from the next that your muscle memory and layout memorization from your keyboard aren't applicable to the next one you go to.
--- End quote ---
On the full-sized keyboards of desk-top computers, terminals etc. the differences are pretty trivial. On any working day, I might type on keyboards from several different manufacturers: Apple, Sun, HP, generic PC hardware etc. I don't have a problem touch-typing on any of them. A few differences in function-key placing would be about it. Laptops are more of a problem.

I am a fast touch-typist, and a huge fan of old-school mechanical keyboards. No rubber-sheet keyboard, never mind a touch-pad/glass pseudo-keyboard, can compare with the tactile feed-back and finger-friendly force-curve of a switched keyboard. I can't get on at all with the modern, horrible rubber Mac keyboards, and on my personal machine I use a Matias Tactile Pro. I bought mine three Macs ago in 2005, so it is an older model that looks like this. The since-deleted "power button" above the F13 key is a relic of older Macs that you could turn on/off from the keyboard. Since at least my old G4 machine, all it does is bring up the same shutdown-menu you get when you press Ctrl-Eject.

bhtooefr:
Actually, it goes back even further than that.

First ADB computer was the IIGS (and ALL ADB keyboards have the "power" button), and it had its own keyboard (you can certainly use it with no issues at all on any ADB Mac, but that keyboard was only sold for the IIGS). And it didn't have soft power, just a switch on the rear. It was the RESET button (the 8-bit Apple II usage model being dependent on being able to easily (partially, anyway) reset the machine with a Ctrl-Reset sequence, and fully reboot with OA-Ctrl-Reset - more on that later).

The Macintosh II, several months later, was the first machine to actually use that button for power. (Although, it was intended from the beginning as a power button - ADB even has a dedicated pin for that - just that the first Apple product to have it, didn't use it as that.) And, any ADB Mac, you can do Cmd-Ctrl-Power (or I think it even works on USB ones, even x86 - I'd try it on my MBPR, but I don't want to do a hard reboot right now) and get an instant reboot. So, that power key isn't just Mac legacy, it's Apple II legacy, straight back to 1977 (and, actually, any Apple I keyboard needed to have a reset key, too, so even though Apple didn't have an official keyboard (although they recommended a specific Datanetics part), it goes back to the Apple I, in 1976).

Speaking of Cmd, and power being the reset key... notice how every ADB keyboard, and quite a few earlier USB Mac keyboards, has an Apple logo on the Cmd key? That's not a gratuitous logo (well, it is gratuitous on the USB keyboards). It's for Apple IIGS compatibility - see, by the time the IIGS came out, a lot of software referenced the Open Apple key for keyboard shortcuts. So, when the Apple II and Mac lines were unified as far as peripherals, Open Apple became Command, Closed Apple became Option (although the logo never appeared on that key). And, the Open Apple and Closed Apple keys? They appeared on the Apple II line in the //e, in 1983, albeit implemented in a rather quirky way - they were actually tied to the joystick buttons 0 and 1 (so that nothing keyboard-related had to be changed, the Apple II keyboard subsystem really having descended from early ASCII terminal keyboards, and not the modern OS-handled modifier setup - for instance, Ctrl isn't handled by the OS or ROM, it actually shifts the entire keyboard down by 0x40 and ignores shift, IIRC - so Ctrl-G (ASCII 0x47) becomes BEL, or ASCII 0x7). But, those buttons came from the Apple /// - meaning that the Apple logo being on the Cmd key is a bit of 1980 legacy (although you could argue that it's 1983, because no Apple /// software runs on the II).

Redball:

--- Quote from: ankhtahr on 14 Apr 2013, 15:16 ---I can't type on a touchscreen very well, I just can't find the keys blindly. I need to rest my fingers on the homerow, which is impossible on a touchscreen.

--- End quote ---
One of the more awesome displays of typing virtuosity: Barmymoo, on an iPad, about as fast as I can type on my laptop.

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