81–90 of 246 posts
Unfortunately, no numpad is definitely a dealbreaker. Looks like a really cool product, but the numpad is a _must_ for any keyboard you want to do real work on, at least in my opinion.
Very cool looking, but there is an ocean of mechanical keyboards already available with the US keyboard layout. I would explore making ISO international versions. That market is underserved. Because I wanted a mechanical keyboard with a CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 layout with Mac modifiers, I had to design my own layout in SVG for a Max Keyboards custom job. Keep in mind, I did not want to design my own, but I had to!
I don't understand the overwhelming praise. This product is just bizarre. Who is this for? What's with the giant numbers and tiny symbols? I know where the numbers are from muscle memory. I don't have the symbols memorized. Haptic feedback when you use the command key? Why? No number pad or page up/page dn, which would be something useful. This is like The Homer of keyboards. Does it play La Cucaracha out of the spea…
Me and my preorder
Love the design and have also wanted a super low profile mechanical keyboard like this! I have one question though - what is the travel or activation distance of the keys? The one thing I actually like about the magic keyboard or Microsoft's designer keyboard is that the "click" is immediate and the entirety travel distance of the key is the activation bump. I dislike any amount of the "extra" travel distance (I'm no…
The travel distance on the Altar II switches is 1.8mm, so about 0.8mm more than on a MacBook keyboard. Similar to those keyboards, there is very little pre-travel on Altar II keys. With regard to Windows keys that is a possibility. We shipped our previous keyboard, Altar I, with both Mac and Windows markings on the keys.
How long are preorders/is the preorder discount available? I may seriously consider this.
The promo website is something to behold and by itself is sufficient reason to chuck a buck at the possibility of Altar II coming into existence. Thank you, good luck, and looking forward!
If you'll indulge me for a moment, because I never get to talk about this stuff: the corner radii of the cards on the site are actually "squircles" rather than perfect rounded corners. To me this is much more pleasing to the eye. The squircles are achieved by creating a PNG mask which is then 9-sliced and expanded to mask off the edge of the cards. Another mask is used for the stroke and laid on top of the first mask, to give the gradient border effect.
I respect that you're doing a single variant up front, and I understand the business challenges and risks of going wide on a niche product like this... but as a single datapoint, I'll pay double for an ortholinear with similar features and style.
This looks awesome! The thing I'd want to know is how much of the configuration lives on firmware vs. in the macOS app? If the app is a thin config editor and the mappings remain on-device, that's very different than if the dial and haptics stop working when a future macOS release breaks the app. Also, is there any commitment on firmware being flashable/open if the company someday isn't around?
Everything lives on the keyboard itself. The app just configures files on the device, basically. The keyboard also works without the app of course. This approach has the added benefit of making your configuration portable. For example if you remap your dial, and move to a different computer, your remapped dial will persist. There are a couple of small quality-of-life features that do require the app: for example if y…
The single wide space bar is an even worse offender than row staggered or qwerty.