Why I Love Prototype Runs and Helping Keyboard Designers
The Migra TKL Prototype by Thebloodyez “This is my keyboard. There are many like it, but this one is mine.” - William H. Rupertus. In another life, if Major General William H. Rupertus, the Marine who coined the United States Marine Creed, had been a keyboard enthusiast, we might've gotten this line instead. All joking aside, this has been an article that I’ve wanted to write for quite some time. There are many reasons why we love the keyboard hobby, and today, I wanted to introduce you to one of mine—prototype keyboards and helping keyboard designers by joining prototype runs. Now, it’s not risk-free, and one should weigh the pros and cons of joining a prototype run, so I encourage you to pay attention to the disclaimer portion of this article. I know that there are prototype runs for keycaps, switches, and other cool things in our keyboard hobby, but for this article, I’ll be focusing only on keyboards. Also, please know that not every prototype run will be handled...
Dec 31, 2024
Having been into mechanical keyboard for a couple of years now I have my share of small keyboards. In fact just about all of them are Planck based and one thing I learned quick about myself is that I could not live without arrows. Before my conversion to mechanical boards I would have laughed at the very thought of a 1u backspace or not having a standard T configuration for navigating (I also would have known what 1u was). For me, vi style arrow keys. I'm still not 100% there, but it seams like the way to go for me.
So here is my topic: