Drop Mech Keys Meetup Recap - Thanks for Visiting!
As you may have seen, we just hosted our first meetup in quite a while here at Drop HQ (Corsair HQ, but they seem to like us enough :) )! It was a blast to get to meet so many enthusiasts local to the bay area—it had been 10 years since I was last hanging out with keyboard nerds in the bay, at KeyCon 2014. We had a great time hosting everyone at the offices, checking out all the very nice boards y'all brought, and sharing some of our own projects/spaces! I knew it would be fun to host in the Game Room when I first saw it in person, but seeing it come to fruition was still so cool. Alright, I'll stop blabbering on now. xD Picture time! (Oh, real quick - there will be more of these! Stay tuned for more info and to catch the next one!)
May 15, 2024
Input Club organized a Kickstarter, which Massdrop claimed violated the terms of their agreement, since they were selling the switches outside the realm of their "website store" which they say was the limitation of the agreement. Input Club says they understood it to be a sourcing agreement, which means they could sell the switches as part of their keyboards or as replacement parts. Massdrop said they can't sell the Halo switches any more, they got into a whole lot of legal kerfuffle, I'm not sure how it shook out in the end or if it's still going on, but basically the Halo design was tweaked and IC developed a new box-style switch with Kaihua. Massdrop retained the name of the Halo switches, and I think calling the other ones "Hako" was a bit of an act of defiance from IC.
There's a good article about the drama on toms hardware: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/massdrop-input-club-halo-switches,35468.html
Different strokes for different folks - both great switches. @psiclone If you can, I'd recommend trying both to see which you like better.