Das Keyboard Model S Professional for Mac

You may have heard that mechanical keyboards are making a comeback. Correction: If anyone you live or work with has started using one, you?ve definitely heard. These are peripherals that return typing to its glory days, where you don?t just create letters from nothing, you summon a distinctive sound, and can feel a firm bounce beneath your fingertips as you do so. Few companies have hawked their wares as energetically as Metadot, which over the last several years has released a series of mechanical keyboards intended for use with PCs. Now that there?s the Das Keyboard Model S Professional for Mac ($133 list), that?s all changed. Apple owners now have a substantial-feeling, legitimately clicky keyboard to call their own?provided they don?t care about how it looks.

We?ll get to that in due time. For now, let?s review what the Das Keyboard is and why you want it. It?s of fairly typical size for a desktop model (1 by 18 by 6.5 inches, HWD), but is heavier than most these days (about three pounds). That?s because, instead of using a lighter dome-switch (aka membrane) mechanism that creates electrical signals by pressing two circuit board traces together using rubber ?domes? beneath the keys, it uses honest-to-goodness mechanical switches like the ones you once would have found in a typewriter. This causes the keys, and thus the keyboard that contains them, to have a much sturdier and more responsive feel than you?ll find in even dedicated Mac keyboards.

Because the specific switches used in this version of the Das Keyboard are Cherry MX Blue, you also get outstanding feedback for both your hands (the unquestionable press down and a light bounce back up) and your ears (the satisfying ?click? that, until the advent of cheap PC keyboards, always told you typing was occurring). And because those switches are gold-plated, you also get unusual durability: Each key is rated for 50 million presses, several times more than on an average keyboard, and cannot rust.

But if you?re in for some chicly retro typing, everything else is sparklingly up to date. The keyboard works with all Mac operating systems, and requires no additional drivers. (We had to perform a brief setup procedure to help Mac OS X 10.7 Lion identify the keys, but it took just a few seconds, and the keyboard worked fine afterward.) It connects to your computer with a 6.6-foot USB cable that terminates in two connectors: one for transmitting the keyboard data, and one for driving the two-port USB 2.0 hub you?ll find in the keyboard?s upper-right corner. (It?s compatible with USB-based KVM switches as well.) The F6-F11 keys even double as media keys for Rewind, Play/Pause, Forward, Mute, Lower Volume, and Raise Volume, and F1 also functions as Sleep; to activate these functions, hit a blue-labeled function key in the lower-right corner.

Provided you?re disposed to this sort of typing?and, as it?s been a while since Macs went down this road, it?s possible you may need a little coaxing?you?re almost certain to find this ideal for whatever you want to do. In fact, aside from the price, which is admittedly high even for mechanical keyboards, this Das Keyboard has almost no significant drawbacks.

Except its design. We wouldn?t normally knock a product as good as this for something this mundane, but this keyboard is a special case. For better or worse, Macs are generally treated by Apple (and seen by its customers) as design statements, in which form exists in blessed union with function. Any company aiming an external piece of hardware at that audience must take that into account, and Metadot hasn?t. This keyboard is?sorry, there?s no other way to put it?black: matte on the keys and glossy everywhere else. And it's more distinctly angular and asymmetrical than you will ever see from an Apple product. On PCs, where keyboards can be (and frequently are) any color, this is less of an issue. But used with a Mac, this Das Keyboard stands out?and not in a good way.

True, Apple has occasionally utilized black in its keyboards in the past, and even does so on its current lines of laptops. In all these cases, however, it?s as part of a larger, more elegant design usually based on an abundance of silver and white. The complete absence of that here makes the Das Keyboard look like an out-of-place port from the PC, something that sends the wrong signal. We wish these things mattered less for Macs, but alas they do, and many people like the computers specifically for that kind of consistency. Metadot has cleverly demonstrated that in one unsuspected place: The keys (which contain Command and Option, of course) are labeled with lower-case letters, just like you?d see on an official Mac keyboard. So there?s no lack of attention to detail, and when we asked our contact about this, he said that white may be an option in the future; that?s definitely something to watch for.

Whether the Das Keyboard Model S Professional for Mac is ideal for you, then, depends on your personal taste and tolerance level. If you don?t mind having something on your desk that looks this astonishingly different from everything that surrounds it, you?ll have a hard time finding a better typing keyboard than this one. But if how your computer setup looks is just as important to you as how it works, you?re probably going to find the Das Keyboard an unwelcome interloper?though we?d encourage you to consider putting aside your prejudices so you can feel what you didn?t know your fingers have been missing.

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