*Model*: Matias Tactile Pro
*Key Mechanism*: ALPS mechanical switch
*Cost*: $125
*Other Features*: Integrated USB hub
It took me a long time to work up to this one. In hindsight, I should have trusted the reviews on the web and tried it earlier.
The 8 hour review. As in, I’ve had it for only 8 hours, so these are purely first impressions. Firstly, most keyboard enthusiasts don’t care too much about the looks but I’ll describe briefly what I thought about it. The Apple-ish clear plastic casing looks OK, not great. I would say the Apple pro wireless keyboard looks better. The keys also are a slightly more offwhite color than the Apple keyboard, which makes it look somewhat foreign. The guides on each key telling you what characters you get if you hit option and that key are pretty useful. Other keybords should totally do this. The spacebar has “Matias tactilepro.com” printed on it. That’s kinda lame. I just payed you over a hundred bucks on this thing, you don’t have to advertise your stupid website to me.
Now on to the important stuff: the feel. To put it succinctly, I like it very much. I actually really liked the Datadesk Smartboard (the keys, not its major flaws), so I had high expectations for the Alps switches in the Tactile Pro, and I must say, it did not dissapoint. They are nice and light, give easily, and give you good feedback when the key has gone down far enough to register as a keystroke. It’s the crispness of a buckling spring mechanism without its stiffness. Typing on this keyboard is actually fun, and makes me want to type
some more.
No all is perfect, but its few flaws are easy to overlook. The caps-lock key, as stated in other reviews, is not the same type of switch as the rest of the key. Its a membrane switch. My guess is because it uses an LED, they probably need a switch with an LED and Alps didn’t make those.. but only a guess. Same goes for the numlock key.. which doesn’t work on a Mac anyways so who cares. I kinda wish the caps-lock key wasn’t that way, since I do remap it to control, but the membrane switch is not bad enough to be super annoying.
The typing noise is well… loud. But I think it sounds nice. It sounds better than the tingy sound that the buckling spring makes. I still think I prefer the slightly quieter cherry switches in the Kinesis boards though.
Overall, after 8 hours of use, I’m pretty happy with my purchase. I definitely should have tried it before the SmartBoard. I probably would have stopped at this one had I gotten it earlier. I’ll add more thoughts as I get around to using it more.
The one week review. Well, if you’re been reading the blog, I think you know the conclusion. While this keyboard feels very nice to type on, it has some ghost key problems that make it impossible for me to use. Specifically space-p-o-capslock and s-i-o-q are two “squares” in the key scanning matrix that cause ghost keys to be registered. “space-p-o-capslock” is the more annoying of the two, since my work often requires me to type “p4 opened” which results in “p4 op <control-o>” because my caps lock is mapped to control. The control-o in bash shell causes a new line, which means I have to retype the command.
Turns out there is a reader on MacInTouch that reports the same problem, and warns fast typists to stay away. If only I had seen that earlier. Also, I’ve contacted Matias about a bugfix model (on 4/25/06) and they told me that their supplier ran out of the switches so there will be no new models.
So as a final verdict.. if you don’t mind the occasional ghosting, it’s a great keyboard. But if you type fast, then it’s likely to annoy you, in which case I recommend you to spend your money elsewhere.

The full keyboard. Self-advertising on the keyboard (matias.com on the
spacebar) seems somewhat unclassy.

Grey-stemmed ALPS mechanical switch.