Review of the Matias OS X Keyboard

KeyTronic makes some of the best keyboards I've ever used, but I'm sorry to say they make very few USB keyboards, and the one I have is starting to get on my nerves. It's well built, but the key follow-through is chunkier than the KeyTronic Lifetime series I love so much (that's only available for PS/2—and yes I've tried PS/2-USB adapters, but I couldn't find one that didn't break some of the keys).

I've heard of (and blogged) several new keyboards that have gotten press for one reason or another in the past year or so. I know several people who like the Happy Hacking keyboards for their programmer-friendly layout and small size, but it lacks one of my favorite features on most keyboards, a number pad. Das Keyboard is like a regular keyboard, but with no labels on the keys, which I could get away with but would only consider useful if I were remapping the keys in some way and found the labels distracting. The yet-to-be-manufactured Optimus keyboard is flashy, but difficult to imagine using, at least until they actually getting around to making one. In any case, picking a keyboard with a gimmick is probably the worst way to find a keyboard with a good feel to it, but without hands-on experience, I don't have many other ways to make a selection. All Office Depot has are cheap generics, Logitech and Microsoft, none of which meet my taste, and I don't have many other opportunities to try keyboards.

So I decided to try a Matias OS X Keyboard, which is famous for putting the Mac OS X keyboard mappings for symbols directly on the keys, as well as the Mac symbols for the meta keys. It also features an extra Control key where the Caps Lock normally is (ala Happy Hacking, because who uses Caps Lock, and isn't there a better use for a key on the home row?), and an extra tab key on the number pad. Print Scrn, Scroll Lock and Pause have been replaced with F13, F14 and F15, and three dedicated volume control keys (mute, lower, raise) have been added. Insert has been replaced with Help, which actually removes a feature from the board, though I never used "overwrite" mode, at least not on purpose. Command and option are in the Mac standard places (closest to the space bar, and one out, respectively). In short, it's a very Mac-focused keyboard, and a welcome one, considering that, as far as I know, Apple is the only other company that makes keyboards specifically for Mac use. (Am I wrong?)

A few first impressions: It's very soft and quiet, with little pressure required to activate a key. Nothing problematic, but may be a matter of taste. The surface on the keys are rough to the touch, because, guess what, they've printed all these extra characters all over the keys. Maybe printing the symbols on the front edge of the keys, Commodore 64-style, would have been more fun. It otherwise feels like a $30 keyboard, not as well built as my beloved KeyTronic Lifetime (which, incidentally, can be bought for $25), but on par with other inexpensive keyboards.

While I was charmed with the idea of having the symbols printed on the keys, it didn't take long after using the thing to realize that I have little use for them. I thought I might like handier access to accented characters and whatnot, so I could break the habit of using lazy Arabic "equivalents" in words like "naive" and "resume" (*ahem*) just because I can't be bothered to remind myself of the correct key combinations. But in truth, I have already memorized the main keystrokes for characters I use (option-e e for é, option-u o for ö). There are a few I enjoy knowing about and haven't memorized, but I think I would learn them quickly enough if I used them. Not to mention that I do most of my document authoring in environments where I can't just use the characters directly (like hand-edited HTML).

Also, the symbols are not very legibly printed, and a few are barely reminders of what the symbols are supposed to be. I have to look pretty closely to find and use a symbol I haven't already learned.

I expect the biggest win for me will be the extra control key. I use Emacs extensively, and Unix users swear by a control key on the home row. I've never had the luxury before, so I'll have to get used to it. I look forward to trying the num-pad tab key as well.

Mac users swear by having the command key next to the space bar as well. I'm not yet convinced it's any better next to the spacebar as it is one further out, like on non-Mac (Windows) keyboards. But it is a heavily used key in OS X, so I can imagine people who are used to it in the Apple place want it to stay there.

I'm still trying to figure out how to use OS X's Help key feature, which I gather is an old Mac thing. I notice that Emacs 22 built for OS X binds the Help key to its own help command, which is awesome.

At $30, the Matias OS X keyboard is worth a shot, if any of these features are of interest.