The 1st-gen NeXT keyboards use Alps key-switches, like the Apple keyboards of the late-80s. The one I have is rock-solid and one of the finest keyboards I've used.
It also had some clever innovations:
- It is very compact. It has the same width as a traditional PC keyboard, but without the top row of function keys. That means it's only 5 rows high.
- Consequently, the Escape key is next to the "1" key, where the backtick/tilde key would normally be. However, the tilde is an important character in Unix, so if you hit Shift+Escape as if to type a tilde, you'll still get a tilde character. It's a nice touch.
- The Control key is next to the "A". Command and Option keys are on both sides of the space bar.
- There is no Caps Lock key. To engage Caps Lock, press Command+Shift; green LEDs on both Shift keys light up to indicate Caps Lock.
- There are no home/end/page up/page down keys. They are replaced with Power, Volume up/down, and Brightness up/down. All NextSTEP applications support the traditional Emacs shortcuts for Home/End/Page Up/Page Down etc., and that tradition lives on in OS X.
- The hardware (cube, monitor, or printer) has no buttons or switches of any kind. Power, volume, and brightness can only be controlled from the keyboard (like a modern laptop). That means you can't turn the machine on or off without the keyboard, and the keyboard connects to the monitor!
The OS X keyboard technically still has a Caps Lock key; but you're free to remap it to any of the other modifier keys (or none of them) in the keyboard prefs. Being a Vim user I don't use Control much, so I put it to ⌘ to call up Alfred more easily.
I actually prefer the feel and sound of the NeXT keyboard over the model M. Though I much prefer the layout of the model M to the NeXT. Coding was a pain on the NeXT keyboard - no pageup/dn home/end keys. But it was fantastic for writing papers and working with mathematica, frame, etc.
IIRC the vertical bar (or was it the tilde) was in a totally nonstandard and awkward place too... didn't seem very smart considering it was still a UNIX machine.
The navigation keys were not such a big deal once you realized that all text fields accepted basic Emacs keystrokes for cursor movement.
Unless you like emacs. No Caps Lock taking up precious space, Control/meta/super keys in great position, and the emacs keybindings work not only in emacs, but system wide.
