Fans of mechanical keyboards who’re additionally Windows customers have life fairly simple. There are sufficient readymade PC keyboard decisions on the market to bridge the English Channel, and the Windows consumer craving the responsiveness, springiness, and sensory satisfaction of an excellent mechanical wants solely to close their eyes and point.
Mac customers have a more durable time. Yes, you’ll be able to plug any mechanical keyboard into any piece of Apple hardware and get the letters and numbers to enter correctly instantly. But the modifier keys—Control, Command, Option—aren’t correctly mapped for macOS. The symbols on the keycaps do not match both. (Which one was Command, once more?) All of the worth provides that make a mechanical keyboard really feel platform-native—issues just like the media controls, quantity knobs, Spaces keys, and sleep-wake buttons—in all probability will not work in any respect.
There are already a number of stable Mac-friendly decisions available on the market (Keychron specifically makes some good options), however the latest and most intriguing one is the MacTigr from Das Keyboard.
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Photograph: Das Keyboard
The Texas firm makes a few of our favourite mechanical keyboards, together with fashions within the beefy Professional sequence and the modern Prime 13. The MacTigr takes all of that hard-earned Das mojo and boils it down right into a full-size mechanical keyboard with a minimal design and pure plug-and-play Mac compatibility. (Just a few years in the past Das Keyboard put out a variant of its 4 Professional keyboard for Macs. It was high quality, however the MacTigr is smaller, extra succesful, and extra fashionable.)
The skinny physique is all steel, with an aluminum chassis topped by a metal plate. It feels sturdy (it’s 2.5 kilos) and it has a matte black end that makes it look kinda stealth. There’s no backlighting. A set of media buttons that sit above the 10-key pad management Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube within the browser, or no matter media participant you final touched.
The quantity knob, one thing Das has been together with on its higher-end keyboards for the reason that daybreak of time, is particularly luxe. It’s coated with a comfortable and grippy silicone. Hidden inside are detents that quietly click on as you spin the quantity up and down. Next to the media keys is a devoted sleep button that places your Mac to mattress with one press. The MacTigr is a USB-C keyboard, so it solely helps fashionable Macs with USB-C ports, although it additionally has a twin USB-C hub instantly above the F12 key, the place you’ll be able to connect charging cables or different equipment.
Point and Click
The true mechanical keyboard obsessives all have a favourite change kind. The change, the springy mechanism beneath every key cap that registers every press, provides a keyboard its character in addition to its signature auditory click on. If you’re sitting subsequent to somebody with inexperienced or blue switches, that click on will be loud. (Key change sorts are differentiated by coloration.) The MacTigr is loaded with Cherry MX Reds, that are on the quieter finish of the colour spectrum. Yes, it’s nonetheless a mechanical keyboard and it nonetheless clackity clacks like a Ducati, however it’s quieter than most.
The Cherry MX Reds are linear switches, so that they register every keystroke with nearly no bodily resistance (or “bump,” in keyboard parlance). This makes the MacTigr surprisingly delicate; it took me a full week of follow earlier than I might kind at my regular pace with out repeated keystrokes. Since that attending to know you part, it’s change into a trusted favourite.
