The Keyboard Apple Should Have Made
Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at 12:40PM 
As you may have gathered from reading MacTexan.com, I’m a bit of a keyboard freak. My wife often comments on how many old keyboards I have stacked in my “IT supply closet”. Well, there’s a couple of reason for that. Firstly, I almost never use the cheap keyboards supplied by PC manufacturers by default. They are invariably total crap. Dell is the worst. I’m a big fan of Dell computers. I have an Optiplex running Linux right now. I use it as a file/media server. The keyboard that came with the box was a $10 throw away. Functional, but that’s about the best I can say. I used it for two days before switching to a full-sized Apple keyboard and putting the Dell clunker back in its box and into my closet. After 30 years in the IT business, this process has been repeated a dozen times at least. Next, I’m a sucker for the latest and greatest. I often replace perfectly good keyboards just to try something newer or prettier. Sometimes these newer, prettier keyboards don’t suit me. The action may not be to my liking or the layout doesn’t please me. Whatever. That probably adds another half-dozen to my pile. I’m also a bit nostalgic. I still have my old, original IBM mechanical keyboard that came with my first computer (a real-deal 8088 IBM PC). Besides Apple, IBM was the only PC company to supply a truly high-quality keyboard with their machines. I keep it even though it no longer works properly, thinking I’ll get around to repairing it someday. I’ve had it almost 37 years now. I just can’t bring myself to discard it. It brings back too many good memories.
