If we had to say what is the oldest peripheral of the personal computer, it would be the keyboard, they have been with us since the first models, since it is the basic way of interacting with the PC, either to write data or to enter commands. . However, today we bring you examples of the purest evil. That’s to say, worst keyboards ever. Which will make you wonder about the evil of human beings.
The basic thing about a keyboard is that it lets you do your job with ease. By adapting from one keyboard to another, you can have complications. Especially if you go from membrane to mechanical or change the type of keyboard. It usually doesn’t take long for us to get used to our fingers and for our muscle memory to develop. But most of the time it’s based on the simple concept of “if something works, don’t touch it”. Of course, there are people who want to reinvent the wheel or just design things with the thought of doing harm or simply without thinking.
What are the worst keyboards of all time?
Regardless of the platform, keyboard design hasn’t changed much since the dawn of computing. Although we have variants, they all follow a series of rules in terms of design, such as the distribution of the keys and their size. However, there are things like the interaction with the keyboard, the type of switches used and the feedback they give when interacting with them which are very important.
These are seemingly trivial things, because we don’t care about them until we experience them. It gives us the feeling that this quality keyboard that we bought on our PC and which has always been faithful to us works with normal performance. Then, when we go down to hell, we come back to reality. It’s like eating at a good restaurant all the time and finding out that the cook has been changed for the worse. However, we must also take into account that there are things that are badly done, without following any criteria.
However, today 95% of the keyboards sold are good, that’s why we decided to save from the museum of horrors some historical pieces in which you just have to imagine using them, scenes from Hell of Dante. Although we warn you that they are unfortunately not all who should be.
Atari 400
The Atari 400 was originally going to be a video game console, but at the last minute they decided to add a keyboard to the design. The result? The horrible thing you see in the picture below that was literally impractical. That’s to saycompletely flat keys without any sort of tactile response where we couldn’t tell if we pressed them or not.
ZX Spectrum 48 KB
Yes, the Spectrum was very mythical and all that, but its keyboard with rubber keys was hideous and worse than hitting a family member. Besides having a unusual key layout compared to a standard keyboard. And yes, it’s from the same era as the previous case and it was a way to save money by harming the experience for the end user. In fact, we were going to give several examples of Sinclair’s computers, but we thought the most mythical was enough.
Celluon Epic Projection, undoubtedly one of the worst keyboards
If we leave the past times, we are left with ideas that may seem very science fiction, but for practical purposes they are an ugly idea. An example of this is a keyboard that is projected onto the surface. So you end up needing much more expensive and complex hardware than a conventional keyboard only to end up performing less than expected. The reasons ? They are obvious, without key feedback, since you’re not physically there and a lousy response.
Apple’s Butterfly Keyboards
Those of Cupertino were a big brand until they decided to make aesthetically very beautiful computers, but with bad decisions that got them in trouble more than once. An example of the worst keyboards of all time was their Butterfly keyboards.which led to a series of problems that I cause them to be prosecuted and having to redesign their MacBook keyboards in later revisions.
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