Review: Matias Tactile Pro 3 Keyboard

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On April 28, 2008, Dan Benjamin & John Gruber recorded Episode 20 of The Talk Show (the old one) entitled "RE: The Keyboard Episode". First, go listen to that. It will take you 1:02:02 min. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, done now? Good. I was intrigued. Over the past four years I had begun appreciating quality technology hardware. I was beyond the phase in my life of wanting to tinker with hardware and experiment. I was tired of hardware failing on me, being unreliable and having to maintain it. I switched to Apple and have loved their products since fall '06. Their peripherals were another story

I despise Apple Mice and can barely tolerate their keyboards. I've used Logitech Mice for well on 8 years or so and feel they make the best mice in the world. My current favorite is my G500. Their keyboards, however, I feel are not of the same quality. Up until a few days ago I was using a Microsoft Natural ergonomic keyboard. I'd been using this for years. It was just 'okay'. Nothing spectacular but I couldn't really find an alternative that I felt was far superior.

This has been nagging me ever since I listened to that episode of the old Talk Show from April 2008. For Christmas this year I asked my lovely wife to get me a Matias Tactile Pro 3 Keyboard because it was supposed to be a modern version of the famous Apple IIe keyboard that Gruber spoke of from that podcast episode. And boy, let me tell you...

This thing is amazing. Please see my Twitter timeline from yesterday evening:




Link to the audio recording contained within this tweet & the Amazon link.


This keyboard feels nice to type on. Each key press gives this very satisfyingly resonating click that your fingers get used to. It is substantial. I'm back at work in my office this morning typing on an old keyboard (Apple style circa 2005) and this thing feels like a toy compared to The Beast I have at home on my desk.

Would it be too over the top to carry my own keyboard into work each day in my messenger bag? That's not weird, right? Right guys? Anyone?

Intel, Microsoft, and the Curious Case of the iPad

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Brook Crothers:

“That tablet thing? Yeah, we’ll get back to you on that.” That’s a crude but fairly accurate encapsulation of the attitude Microsoft, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices have toward the iPad and the tablet market in general.

Why the cavalier attitude? Before I defer to the opinion of an IDC analyst I interviewed (below), here’s one pretty obvious reason I’ll put forward. All three companies look at their revenue streams — traditional PC hardware and software on laptops, desktops, and servers — and come to the conclusion that the tablet is a marginal market. A deceptively accurate conclusion, because at this point in time — and even 12 months out — the tablet is marginal compared with the gargantuan laptop, desktop, and server markets.

John Gruber had some interesting thoughts on this, and rebutted with this comment:

An interesting take, but I disagree. I think Microsoft and Intel are both taking the iPad’s success extremely seriously. It may be a small market, as of today, but the trend line is heading north at a very steep angle. I think it’s a case where you can’t take what Microsoft and Intel say about it at face value. Intel has no processor to power an iPad-class devic. Microsoft has no OS to run an iPad-class device. Most worrying for these companies may not be the iPad itself, but the fact that iPad competitors — scant though they are, as of today — aren’t running Intel processors or Microsoft software.

Additionally, I think that as more Android driven tablets come out over the next year, they will still be 1-2 years off before they begin to catch up to the feature-set that the iPad launched with in April. And in that time Apple will have released the second version of the iPad, further raising the bar of what they will need to achieve to meet expectations that users have come to expect from the iPad. And even then? I'm sorry, but if I can't get Simplenote, Dropbox, Netflix, Osfoora, Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, Deliveries, Airvideo, Kindle, Elements, New York Times, Angry Birrds, Epicurious, Pandora, NPR, Scorecenter, and MLB At Bat all on this mythical Android tablet? Then you have not yet begun to compete with the iPad.

Microsoft's Language Problem

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John Gruber points out something related to the launch of the Windows Phone 7 category of phones this morning:

Microsoft announces Windows Phone 7, in a press release headlined “Windows Phone 7: A Fresh Start for the Smartphone: The Phone Delivers a New User Experience by Integrating the Things Users Really Want to Do, Creating a Balance Between Getting Work Done and Having Fun”:

The goal for Microsoft’s latest smartphone is an ambitious one: to deliver a phone that truly integrates the things people really want to do, puts those things right in front of them, and either lets them get finished quickly or immerses them in the experience they were seeking.

Who talks like this? This bureaucrat-ese is intended, I suppose, to sound serious. But it just sounds like bullshit.

Here’s how Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007:

Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is.

Facetime Adoption

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Marco Arment wrote an interesting post about the adoption of FaceTime by iOS users over time:

We, the long-time iPhone owners, won’t be the first ones to use FaceTime regularly.

But the next generation of iPhone owners will.

FaceTime is the sort of technology that we “old” people will promptly forget that we can do, and then be shocked when we learn that young people are doing it en masse.