Griffin Jones (via John Gruber):
The Apple Desktop Bus Keyboard is first to include a power button, the Snow White design and the ADB port, three welcome additions. The lower key travel makes sustained typing a little easier. The mechanism has a very cleanly defined click, although it feels more brittle than premium. I rate it 4⁄5 stars.
This was a terrific keyboard that I first used with an Apple IIGS. It arguably feels better than the Apple Extended Keyboard II, but it’s missing the page navigation keys and function keys, and it had the arrow keys arranged in a line. So I ended up using the latter with my Macs, even into the USB era.
The AppleDesign Keyboard is a cheap cost-cutting imitation of the Extended Keyboard. It doesn’t even have an embedded Apple logo, just its silhouette punched into the mold of plastic. The symbolism that Apple was only a shadow of its former self in the mid-90s could not be any clearer. I rate it 2⁄5 stars.
This one just felt bad. The keys sprung up slowly like it was sticky inside, and they didn’t click enough when pressed down.
From 2007 to 2016, this [Aluminum Keyboard] keyboard design reigned supreme across all Macs. The flat black keycaps are more attractive and higher contrast, for sure, but at the expense of usability. I rate it 4⁄5 stars.
This is what I’ve been using since encountering Bluetooth flakiness with the wireless version and macOS 10.12, along with missed keystrokes when logging in even on later releases. (These problems seem to affect all Bluetooth keyboards, not just Apple’s.) I’m not sure why he says it has black keycaps. I still like this keyboard. The only flaw has been that the letters completely wear off.
For notebook keyboards, I still think the generation before the butterfly (e.g. on the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro) was better than the post-butterfly scissor design (e.g. on the 2019 MacBook Pro).
Previously: