Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard
electronicmaterialsoffice.com241 points by aemerson_ 7 hours ago
241 points by aemerson_ 7 hours ago
Hi HN, today I’m revealing Altar II, an ultra-low profile (4.75mm) mechanical keyboard designed to replace your Magic Keyboard. It’s the keyboard I wish Apple made.
Altar II has fully mechanical switches, plus a magnetically detachable dial, haptic feedback, a red backlight, and a native macOS companion app.
I’m a heavy Mac user and I feel that Apple hasn’t given its keyboards the attention they deserve, in terms of hardware, software, and features, so I set out to try and change that.
It was a massive undertaking and it has taken almost 2 years to get to this stage. One of the main obstacles was fitting a reasonably sized battery into the chassis, and aggressive power profiling without messing with the user experience. Another issue was we couldn’t fit any components on the underside of the PCB because there was literally no space to do so (and there are a lot of components).
Around 4 years ago I posted my first keyboard to HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32507172). Its response blew me away and ultimately led to me quitting my job and making and selling keyboards full time. I’ve taken some of the feedback from that original post and incorporated it into Altar II (e.g. the detachable dial).
I’ll be around to answer any questions. Please let me know what you think, I’d love to get some feedback.
To everyone who is about to pile on regarding the lack of a fingerprint sensor: you know it's not possible, we all know it's not possible, the creator of this project knows it's not possible. What are you adding to the conversation when you complain about it? So it's a dealbreaker for you, don't buy it. To @aemerson_: Congratulations on taking a risk. On first look this is great work. The attention to detail on both the keyboard and the website is really impressive. Not defending anyone using Touch ID as a reason to complain about this -- I think it looks like a great keyboard -- but just yesterday I saw this super cool alternative to the hilarious "buy the world's most expensive mediocre membrane keyboard to tear out a tiny part" idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB3lk-PNA6I As near as I can understand it, macOS supports a smart card reader (and apparently will defer to its sign-off for authentication duties when it's present and configured, and Touch ID isn't), so if you emulate a smart card reader you can make your own fingerprint sensor and have it say "I'm a smart card" and sign challenges like a smart card does. The creator is very up front that this isn't equivalently secure for preserving state secrets, as if you carefully tear this device apart you can just short the pins that the sensor part connects when it's happy with the fingerprint. On the other hand, it is hilarious that anyone who isn't a person of interest for the CIA, Mossad, MI6, or FSB would think they're important enough for someone to go to the trouble of using that method to unlock their secrets. Anyone else would just club you over the head or slip you a mickey, and stick your unconscious finger on your fingerprint sensor. Thank you, it's been a real labour of love! People are raising a good point RE Touch ID. It is possible to add a fingerprint sensor. But that fingerprint sensor will never be able to do the things that Touch ID is most useful for: i.e. use Apple Pay. It would be incredibly confusing to have a fingerprint sensor that was usable for some things and not for others. Therefore the better experience today is to not include a fingerprint sensor at all, imo. Congrats on the great job with the Altar II. If I didn't already have too many keyboards, I'd hop on the Kickstarter!
FWIW, I fully agree with your opinion on including a `half working` fingerprint sensor. Get an Apple Watch. It massively cuts the amount of required unlocks. I have an Apple Watch, but kept that feature off because I didn't want the possibility of someone else being able to fiddle with my MacBook when I'm near enough for the watch unlock to trigger. Unfortunately, I would place this in the 'Sometimes but don't count on it' half of the "Things Apple Watch has Proven Itself Reliable For" list. (The only non-timekeeping items on the 'Always works perfectly' part of the list are Apple Pay and the little button that dings your phone when you've misplaced it.) A fingerprint sensor isn't possible, appreciated, but what about a U2F activation button? It could even just be a wireless pass-through for USB to allow your yubikey to work for example (I'm certain this can be done on Linux but unsure about other oses) https://github.com/zimengxiong/tinytouch spoofs as a card reader but won't work with Apple Pay and the like. > It could even just be a wireless pass-through for USB to allow your yubikey to work for example Everyone would be better served with a generic USB hub in the keyboard, not shipping a security key with the keyboard. My favorite keyboard for years was the Dell SK-8135. It had media buttons without messing with your function keys, a volume knob, and two USB ports! For a long time I would argue (as an IT support person who would have to support your wireless keyboard problems) that having a wireless keyboard was wasteful and unnecessary if you never used it more than 3 feet from your computer anyway. The thing about hardware startups is you know they're not in it for the money. Fingerprint sensor is technically possible: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=120964.0 CC @gtsteve fingerprint sensor is easily done. Touch ID-compatible fingerprint sensor from someone other than Apple is not possible as I understand it. I just linked you a post with a Touch ID-compatible mechanical keycap. Reverse-engineered from the Apple Magic Keyboard and requires a donor board, though You could do all that and maybe after many hours it might work, or you could also solve this in 5 minutes by just plug in the magic keyboard to the computer, stick it in a box with a cut out for the touchid sensor, and just stick your mechanical keyboard on top of the box. “requires a donor [Apple Magic] keyboard” is not the same as a third party making a Touch ID-compatible sensor. That’s Apple making a Touch ID-compatible sensor and a third party taking it out and putting it in another keyboard. This does not qualify as a third party Touch ID compatible keyboard. Yeah, but it’s a third party mechanical keyboard with a Touch ID sensor. I suppose if one came across a pile of old / broken Magic keyboards, they could extract a bunch of Touch ID sensors and sell those to a keyboard manufacturer (or in their own keyboard). This does not scale, obviously, but including it as an option could work. Great looking keyboard but why are the numbers on the number keys so large? They stick out like a sore thumb. It reminds me a little of the large number keys (directly underneath the screen) on the original OP-1: Agreed, I love a lot of the design but the unnecessary "quirkiness" in aspects like this are a bit of a turn-off. Same. Feels like the project takes plenty of risks in other ways and should have played it safe with aesthetic design. LOVE the industrial design. HATE the font, especially on the number keys. But, great job overall! I actually like the number font, the presence, but the loss of visibility for the shifted symbols is a huge loss. I know where the numbers are -- I admittedly need more reminding for the symbols as I never explicitly practiced them. The muscle memory for them isn't quite as strong and in low light I need to see them. > symbols need to be lit 100% this. One of my absolute favorite keyboard designs: G915 TKL Lightspeed got relegated to the donation pile because the symbols were NOT backlit. Such a dumb design choice to save a few cents IMHO. The keyboard seems to be missing important symbols, such as - and =, so it's likely not the final design. Because it's backlit I'm guessing changing the eclectic number row design isn't an option that can be easily changed (for this version anyway). Those characters are present. The design of the number row is just so 'out there' that you missed them. Love the design and have also wanted a super low profile mechanical keyboard like this! I have one question though - what is the travel or activation distance of the keys? The one thing I actually like about the magic keyboard or Microsoft's designer keyboard is that the "click" is immediate and the entirety travel distance of the key is the activation bump. I dislike any amount of the "extra" travel distance (I'm not sure if I'm using the right words/description, but I hope you get what I mean) of regular mechanical switches and is the main thing that turns me off from them. Oh also, is it possible to get a Windows version or switch the keys around to accommodate Windows as well? What you are referring to is called the pre-travel distance. There are mechanical key options with very short pre-travel, such as the Cherry MX and Kailh Silver switches. They're mainly used for gaming. https://keychron.ca/blogs/news/kailh-mechanical-switch-guide The travel distance on the Altar II switches is 1.8mm, so about 0.8mm more than on a MacBook keyboard. Similar to those keyboards, there is very little pre-travel on Altar II keys. With regard to Windows keys that is a possibility. We shipped our previous keyboard, Altar I, with both Mac and Windows markings on the keys. It looks like the travel distance on the Microsoft Designer Keyboard is 1.35mm, so not far off. How long are preorders/is the preorder discount available? I may seriously consider this. I've built about 10 mechanical keyboards so far, including a bunch of split ergo ones and low profile variants too. From that, I know the layout matters a lot, as well as the switches themselves; the programability and other features to me are nice but ultimately can be worked around. I'm curious about the switches you're using. On the tech specs it says:
"Dual steel arm scissor switch w/ retention spring, 40gf actuation force" Are they custom switches then? If so, are they most similar to current Magic Keyboard switch feel, or something Choc or MX low profile, or their own thing altogether? The switches feel like a M-Series MacBook with a decent amount more travel and more "snappy", tactile feeling. They feel quite different to, for example, Choc switches (which we used on our previous keyboard). That's really interesting. Hmm... it's too bad that there's no easy way to try out the keyboard and its unique switches before committing. But it's intriguing nonetheless. Can you share how long you're looking to run the preorder/early bird special? Love the keyboard, looks solid. Out of curiosity, why did you make the numbers so big? It looks like an intentional design choice and I don’t know if I like it, but I’m wondering if there’s reasoning behind it that could change my mind Yeah it seems like if they wanted to make it appeal to Apple people they would make it more consistent and subtle. It's all so clean and then the numbers look like they came off a special calculator for people with failing eyesight. The promo website is something to behold and by itself is sufficient reason to chuck a buck at the possibility of Altar II coming into existence. Thank you, good luck, and looking forward! Thank you so much! A genuinely silly amount of time went into the website. If you'll indulge me for a moment, because I never get to talk about this stuff: the corner radii of the cards on the site are actually "squircles" rather than perfect rounded corners. To me this is much more pleasing to the eye. The squircles are achieved by creating a PNG mask which is then 9-sliced and expanded to mask off the edge of the cards. Another mask is used for the stroke and laid on top of the first mask, to give the gradient border effect. That is a silly amount of detail that in many ways is what Apple design is known for. It looks nice on mobile but I initially viewed it on desktop and found it unpleasant to use. In the 1980s a company called Quotron developed a contactless keyboard. The main circuit board contained a bunch of LEDs and some sort of photo diodes or photo cells, all arranged in a grid. The keys were simply plungers that when pressed down interrupted the light beams shining into some of the receivers. The firmware then decided which key had been pressed and generated the appropriate code. The keyboard itself was huge. Us software people used to joke that, in a pinch, it could be used as a surfboard. One of the advantages was that you could pour a cup of coffee into the keyboard and it would just keep working. Looks great, but at this point I’m too used to HHKB layout on custom MX/topre boards to go back to full time typical 65%/75% layouts. Standard Delete/Backspace position in particular is almost grating now. Totally understand if that’s too niche of a market to serve, though. The switches look a lot like the new ultra low profile Cherry switches that Alienware was putting on their laptops a few years ago, is that what they are? I agree that some aspects of the design are disagreeable, but it was an instant buy for me anyway. I loved the idea of mechanical keyboards and tactile feel; etc etc. But I type faster on Magic Keyboard. Being able to have both is potentially a dream come true. Even if it falls short, I want to financially reward the effort. But I am also very interested in the haptics - I like the haptics on Magic Trackpad and would like to see that part of the system advance further. For context, since it is such an underused feature, on Magic Trackpad allows haptic feedback for non-force touch actions; key examples are snapping in pages/keynote and the snap-to-north on two finger rotate in maps. There is a bug where this only works for internal trackpads on macOS Tahoe. I can’t wait to try this keyboard. This looks beautiful. While obviously a Mac keyboard, to what extent is it compatible with Linux? Will there be documentation of its features beyond a standard Bluetooth HID, such that users could potentially develop software that utilizes the speaker and haptic feedback mechanisms? It is fully compatible with Linux with respect to typing, volume control and so on. The firmware source code will be published publicly on Github in the future, as our other keyboard (Altar I) is: https://github.com/electronicmaterialsoffice/firmware-altar-.... Anyone is welcome to play around with it. Hi, I am not a user of mechanical keyboards, but I did want to say nice work on the website. The fonts, the colors, the layout -- I loved it all! Good luck, hope you sell a lot of keyboards. Opened the site, thought it was teenage engineering... Which is a compliment to me, because I always love their designs! Unfortunately as a HHKB user I'm not a fan of low profile keyboards otherwise I would've bought this. I appreciate the TE comparison! I am very inspired by them. Maybe in the future we can make a thicker keyboard for you. It couldn't have been Teenage Engineering: the keyboard was priced less than $999 This is phenomenal. I know everyone is asking for their pet feature in this thread, but I would really like to see this in split keyboard format. They are much more comfortable to use since they put your wrist in a more natural position. And there are hardly any good split mechanical wireless keyboards – and certainly none this thin. Great work on this and congratulations on the launch! Is there any way to prop it up so it doesn't lay flat against the table? I have round foam adhesive dots stuck to the bottom of my current Apple keyboards. It works, but it's an obvious deficiency in the design. Every other keyboard on the market has tilt. I’m assuming it’s not possible for it to include a fingerprint sensor? As much as I’d like a mechanical keyboard for my Mac that’s always the part that gets me. I end up using the one my Magic Keyboard 20+ times per workday. Otherwise it looks beautiful. Unfortunately not possible, at least not securely, and not in a way that users would expect. I really tried. We could include _a_ fingerprint sensor, and even include a special secure/tamper-proof chip, but it would never be able to work with things like Apple Pay. It would probably be able to do some things like log you in to your Mac by spoofing itself as a card reader or secure key. But because we can’t communicate with Apple’s Secure Enclave it would never be a seamless experience. Maybe someday Apple could open up Touch ID like they do with Find My. But for now it’s pretty much a non-starter. Yes, agreed. Beautiful keyboard, but when I heard "magic" I hoped to find a touch ID. That sensor so useful that even though I use a mechanical keyboard, I keep an apple magic keyboard off to the side of my desk just for the touch ID sensor. What I'd love to have is a standalone touch ID sensor that I could attach anywhere -- mechanical keyboard, side of the monitor, under my desk, etc. I guess this is bottlenecked by Apple's IP on the device, so I've considered just hacking one together by deconstructing and extracting an Apple keyboard... I've built a few boxes: https://www.printables.com/model/355924-clickable-touch-id-b... https://gist.github.com/KhaosT/1406a6b6bea38f59e059c2afcb39d... You have to carefully tear down and extract the touch id sensor, and then remount it in a box. I went the battery route so it could stay wireless. The tradeoff is the box is bigger. Thank you, just what I was imagining! I would prefer a bigger wireless box as well. Some people I know just velcro a Magic Keyboard to the bottom of their desktop for this reason. So frustrating that Apple won't sell just a button even at any price. Gotta buy their terrible keyboard for $150 to get that. eyeroll In my setup my laptop is close enough that I can reach out and use the fingerprint reader on it. It is stupid but I got used to it pretty quickly. > In my setup my laptop is close enough that I can reach out and use the fingerprint reader on it. Some mechanical keyboards ship with an embedded USB hub that supports a couple of USB ports that allow users to pick and choose what devices to plug in. I wonder why this feature isn't widespread. Not arguing with the general usefulness of the USB hub, but Apple chooses to make their Touch ID sensor 100% proprietary, so the inclusion of a hub is a separate topic to the comment you're quoting. There's no USB Touch ID reader, other than a whole dang Apple-branded keyboard (which is wireless but will work as a USB device). 20 times a day? You know you can disable touch id for simple password autofill I use my MacBook in clamshell mode 80% of the time, and password autofill just takes over by itself. Fingerprint ID is nice, but my mechanical keyboard is nicer. Well there is this https://github.com/zimengxiong/tinytouch And this as well, if you have a Magic Keyboard around: https://www.printables.com/model/320000-standalone-touch-id-... This is absolutely fantastic, but those gigantic numbers are just bizarre and not at all good to look at. They feel completely out of place there, like you enlarged them by mistake. Not good. This looks incredible but I’m skeptical you can actually produce it for $250 and maintain the level of quality and features that you claim. And it appears you’re offering $100 off of that (or is that the post discount price? It’s hard to tell). I guess I will wait and see. We have spent a lot of time and effort finding manufacturing partners and ensuring they can produce Altar II at the scale and quality we require. In fact we have delayed announcing Altar II for a long time because we wanted to be absolutely certain it was manufacturable and shippable at our price points. Do also bear in mind the final retail price is $349. the $249 price is for early pre-orders only. That‘s the same price as a Keyboardio Model 100 which is split, wooden and has sculpted RGB backlit keys. Whoah. That said, big fan of that volume button! I am sure there are afficionados of these things, but $349 for a keyboard is crazy. I am not sure what you get in return for such a price.. I don't even know if this is going to be a big or a tiny ask, and I don't know if I'm going to end up with this beautiful product at all, but just in case it's going to be trivial to do so, could you add an option or extra keycaps to have Caps Lock key physically engraved as "Control"? IIUC the ctrl-caps swap itself isn't so rare, but actual keycaps engraved as such seem to be relatively rare. It's apparently a UNIX thing, and old Apple, NeXT, some of DEC, Sun, HP UNIX, Sony NEWS, even IBM XT, many of modern Mac JIS, etc. seem to/did/do have the legends for that key as "Control", "CTRL", or "Ctrl". I think that adds even more to the cool factor. Caps Lock is such a tragic throwback. Even after decades of ridicule "Caps lock is cruise control for cool" keyboard designers don't get that we don't want it. I for one really appreciate Caps Lock. I always remap it as Compose. Looks very interesting, love to see the innovation/effort to go beyond the usual. What would be great for me is a version with Mac/vt-100 style number pad. Even mechanical keyboards that claim to be Mac focused largely have PC number pad layouts, and that is a pain with some software like Pro Tools keyboard shortcuts, and some legacy DEC terminal emulation needs. Looks a lot like mistel airone:
https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/9a36520f591f4f8b8e1253ab... I used to use it everyday but the low profile switches sometimes get stuck and it’s also a little bit tiring to type. I currently use nuphyair 60 HE, and I find the low sensitivity keys don’t tire my fingers. Is the battery replaceable? Or is the keyboard going to be tethered-only when the lithium battery degrades after 5-10 years? Order placed. I respect that you're doing a single variant up front, and I understand the business challenges and risks of going wide on a niche product like this... but as a single datapoint, I'll pay double for an ortholinear with similar features and style. I can't go back to a staggered typewriter layout, ergonomic columnar is where it's at. I'm curious what the purpose of haptic feedback on an already mechanical keyboard is? Cool that you've been able to turn this into a livable business though. Good question on the haptics. There's no feedback when press most of the keys. But there is some feedback when you do things like turn the dial, or complete a shortcut (e.g. cmd + c). This is all configurable in the companion app as well. It's feedback for the magnetically-coupled dial, and optionally an accessory to notifications. Really cool! I’d love to try those switches. Can’t imagine using a non-split keyboard though. Great work regardless. Stunning. The thing I find most attractive about mechanical keyboards is that they send a keypress when a key is only partially pressed down. When combined with the tactile bump and audible click created by actuating the key, this means that typing on a mechanical keyboard is much less fatiguing than using a rubber dome or laptop keyboard because you're only pushing the key down partially until you feel the bump and hear the click rather than slamming your finger into the bottom of the keyboard. Does your keyboard still have this feature even with the slim profile? I believe you are referring to the "pre-travel" of the key and yes, Altar II has a very small amount of pre-travel actually. This is partially due to it having such a small vertical travel. You should check into hall effect mechanical keyboards. They can have a floating actuation point for retrigger that is based on detecting press, partial release, press. It's really pretty cool. I am a big fan of the original Altar. I like that you’ve been trying new things with that design like the novel keycap profile. The switches look like cherry ultra low profile switches. I’ve not tried these out, how do they feel compared to the linear kailh choc v1’s you used before. Glad you like Altar I! They feel quite different to the Chocs, unsurprisingly. Although the required actuation force is close to the Choc Reds (40gf on our switch vs 50gf on the Choc Reds), because it's spread over such a small vertical travel it feels much "snappier". There is also very little pre-travel. It's kind of like a much sharper/tactile feeling chiclet switch with more vertical travel, if that makes sense. Great concept! I need eu layout with the extra button next to the left shift. Why I would buy is essentially. Thin, premium typing experience, accessibility features. Don't need the fancy dials, stick out buttons, or a speaker. Dim it down, and it would be perfect Love the keyboard, great job! the website however is a terrible experience. There is so much movement whilst scrolling that it triggers my motion sickness. For those in the comment section looking for a split alternative to this, there is this Kickstarter(be warned of the usual problems with Kickstarters): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-s... or this that is in stock but doesn't exactly follow Apple's layout https://www.ozokeyboards.com/products/jiffy75-wireless-split... The keyboard looks great in general, but jumping into switch design is a huge undertaking. If you're willing to share: how many presses are these rated for? What is the yield looking like for manufacturing these? This is so sick. I'm almost convincing myself to get it but I feel like I would really miss my 36% keyboard with multiple layers too much. Still tho... Very cool looking, but there is an ocean of mechanical keyboards already available with the US keyboard layout. I would explore making ISO international versions. That market is underserved. Because I wanted a mechanical keyboard with a CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 layout with Mac modifiers, I had to design my own layout in SVG for a Max Keyboards custom job. Keep in mind, I did not want to design my own, but I had to! Tu connais Qwerty Lafayette? Je suis gaucher, et j'ai fait le choix idiot quand j'étais jeune de mettre ma souris à gauche. C'est un choix très étrange, mais ça fait en sorte que je n'ai jamais eu à me troubler des touches supplémentaires à droite. Sont juste là, accessible, et pas dans mon chemin. Mon clavier est de pleine taille sans enjeu ergonomique pour moi. J’utilise également une trackball à gauche de mon clavier à cause de douleurs à mon épaule droite. L’avantage de Lafayette est que toutes les touches sont dans les deux blocs 3x5 du clavier. C’est plus ergonomique, la gestion des accents est beaucoup plus logique et confortable et le layer des symboles est clairement fait pour faciliter les déplacements vi. C’est le meilleur layout Qwerty pour développeurs francophones. I love this! Though I don't own a Mac anymore. I expect this to work as a standard keyboard in Linux? Which features are mac-only? Looks great, but sadly no fingerprint sensor is a deal breaker for me. I know it's not actually possible, so not your fault, but it's not for me. I rely on that thing way too much. When I saw the announcement I was kinda hoping that they were taking a magic keyboard, tearing it apart and adding the extra hardware to make having this possible. But seems like that is not the case. If on Mac, consider TinyTouch as a potential biometric hardware supplement when a keyboard does not support: https://github.com/zimengxiong/tinytouch (no affiliation, saw a thread on it here) At this point - make it a tool for agentic work. Leds that tell you that some agent is idle/working and needs attention. Clickable = open the right terminal etc. And dictation button, some cool PTS kind :) Maybe even something like a small LCD display, and it could be touch sensitive so you could switch directly to an agent? Like ... the Touch Bar? :) (I always liked the idea of the Touch Bar, but in practice I only used it to change the volume. I still miss that, though. Now I have to Opt-Shift-Volume to try to get the right volume, which is always halfway between the options somehow.) I love it when people obsessively iterate over something seemingly trivial until it's exactly what they want. This looks amazing, congrats on the launch. I love mechanical keys, but I keep coming back to the Magic keyboard because mechanical keyboards are so clunky. I would order this in a heartbeat if it was available with a nordic layout > ... but I keep coming back to the Magic keyboard because mechanical keyboards are so clunky For a laptop or for a desktop? For a desktop the keyboard sits its entire life on the... desk? And a laptop happens to have its own keyboard. The only people I know who use an external keyboard with a laptop do it precisely because they want a particular mechanical switch / keyboard layout. Are there people taking their Magic keyboard with them in their backpack or car or whatever just to hook it to a laptop? I don't think many do that. So you find a keyboard on a desk looks clunky? Do you need a "not clunky" keyboard to take pictures you post on Instagram? I've got a 60% mechanical keyboard on my desk: its footprint is smaller than some Magic keyboard versions. And, well, vertically there's room on my desk. Clunky might have been the wrong word for it. Chunky? They're almost always too tall for my liking. I rest my palms on the desk while I type, I don't get how people do that with 20mm tall keyboards without straining their wrists. And I don't think people use mechanical keyboards for the switches themselves, but for the tactile typing experience the switches provide. Hence the appeal of this design: Mechanical, yet slim. This looks awesome! The thing I'd want to know is how much of the configuration lives on firmware vs. in the macOS app? If the app is a thin config editor and the mappings remain on-device, that's very different than if the dial and haptics stop working when a future macOS release breaks the app. Also, is there any commitment on firmware being flashable/open if the company someday isn't around? Everything lives on the keyboard itself. The app just configures files on the device, basically. The keyboard also works without the app of course. This approach has the added benefit of making your configuration portable. For example if you remap your dial, and move to a different computer, your remapped dial will persist. There are a couple of small quality-of-life features that do require the app: for example if you want haptic feedback when you receive a notification. This is because the keyboard has no idea what is happening on your OS, and requires some middleware. But all the core functionality requires no app at all. To answer your second question, the firmware for Altar II will be open-sourced, as the firmware for our Altar I keyboard is. You can see the Altar I firmware source code here: https://github.com/electronicmaterialsoffice/firmware-altar-... Both Altar I and Altar II firmware are based on the open-source ZMK (https://zmk.dev). We try to contribute back to ZMK whenever we can because we have benefitted so much from it. Two members of our team are also long-standing ZMK contributors. Rarely have I wanted to spend money on a peripheral as readily as on this keyboard. It looks like it's perfection. I would love this in a 60% keyboard, seems great for travel and work. Any plans to support different form factors in the future? Congrats on the industrial design, that is one of the nicest looking keyboards I've seen in a hot minute. I love this. I type with one hand, & I find mechanical keyboards with lots of travel very difficult because of the speed I type at and the depth that you need to make the key activate. It's a shame about the lack of fingerprint sensor - I wonder if there's any projects out there where you could rescue one from a donor keyboard & just put that in a small profile case nearby? An indie dev beating Apple at its own game is some feat. This inspires me. Would purchase in a heartbeat. Thank you so much. It means a lot to hear that. We're a very small team (1 full time, 3 part time) so going up against a company worth five trillion dollars is quite daunting! Right? When Apple expects $149 minimum for their extremely mediocre membrane keyboard, and its only feature is the one they cheat to keep exclusive, it's embarrassing how much better a tiny team can do. Awesome, seeing it's so thin have you planned for the possible battery ballooning ? I guess it is hidden on the left side under the logo ? The battery is in the logo side, correct. In fact most of that entire area is taken up by the battery! We did expand vertically that area slightly as you can see, to allow for a slightly thicker batter. What a beautiful device. Few questions:
Will it be okay for someone who switches between devices and OSes often? Can I have layers that I can swap between like on a VIA board? What is the click latency? Is USB just for charging or can I use it without BT? The board runs ZMK, which handles layers quite similarly to QMK/VIA. Whether you can bind dedicated layers to output profiles for automated switching in ZMK I do not know, but toggling between layers manually via some shortcut when you switch between devices works for sure. There is a video by one of the ZMK team members where he tested ZMK latency (wired and wireless) against other options on the market - it is, however, fairly dated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWL4nU-vtWs The USB port allows for wired operation while charging. The fact that some products refuse to do this still bothers me (cough MX Master 3). Love what you did, the dedication for 2 years to launch this is awesome. Apple keyboards are near-horrific IMO so you are filling an important niche for sure. I know it is a silly complaint in the mech KB space but the price compared to something like a Keychron K3 makes this a no-go for my preferences. The K3 is very close to what I'd consider suitable as a daily driver at work.
Thank you for including audio of the typing!!!! Again this is my preference, the Alter II is not "thocky" enough for what I like to hear. Clacky and Clicky keyboards are just far too distracting or painful to listen to for extended periods.
Also interesting to see a speaker built-in. I'd have cut it for cost and space. > Apple keyboards are near-horrific IMO I visited a mechanical keyboard shop, tried about 20 of them including low profile variants, then visited an Apple shop. Both shops allowed me to sit down and measure my typing speeds on a computer over many trials. The apple magic keyboard, full-size, gives me about 10-20% faster typing speeds. Over the previous three years I had only used mechanical keyboards. I also found it very aesthetically pleasing to type on, rivalled only by the Logitech pebble in terms of subjective feel. There's something about feeling the whole aluminium frame and plastic membrane flex when I hit a key hard that I find pleasing in a way that isn't matched by many other keyboards. I bought one, and it's the only piece of apple hardware I own. My 3 mechanical keyboards are collecting dust. Thank you, and what you say is completely fair. The Keychron K3 is an excellent keyboard and certainly gets the job done for many people. I would actually argue Altar II is excellent value at $249, especially when you consider the materials, special components, and scale we are at. Altar II is quite a quiet keyboard, and there is a special sandwich of materials specifically designed to make it as quiet as possible. The built-in speaker is interesting. Really it's just there because it's fun, and its nice to get the odd bleep or chime when your keyboard connects or begins charging. For Apple folks I guess, but would be nice to see a pointing stick. Trackpoint keyboards are becoming difficult to find and a suitable replacement would be an instant buy. Looks amazing. Would've been crazy good to include a few OLED keys a la Optimus Maximus [0], which has forever been a dream, even with all the negative reviews. Hey, hooray! I still have my switch-modded Altar I but it ended up being too tall for me, so this is a surprisingly great discovery for my morning. Looking forward to trying a new keyboard :D Out of curiosity, what exactly is a "fully mechanical scissor switch"? And is this the first such switch on the market? If I search for other such products I can only find "metal scissor switch over rubber dome" style. Beautiful, would it work on Linux?
Btw, the website is really heavy for my connection. Absolutely love the design, features, website, attention to detail, and just...taste. It's been quite a while since I mashed that reserve button so quickly haha. Hope it lives up to the design and looks! Looks beautiful, congrats on the launch! I've been looking for a replacement for my Apple Magic keyboard. I would love to buy one, but ISO layout is a must for me, also would like blank or swappable keycaps. It is time to introduce split space bars in every new keyboard designs. The single wide space bar is an even worse offender than row staggered or qwerty. Sold me one, even though it doesn’t have Touch ID. It can be forgiven given the rest. The mdial is amazing. The Nixie tube numbers are fun. The sleekness. And this website with all demo’s is really well made. Also the “about” site is cool. You were not underpromising when stating Apple didn’t spend enough energy here. This is a leap. And I fully trust you’ll deliver. If anything, why not work at Apple after this adventure and get these things (or another next level keyboard) out at massive scale? With this was more in line with corne style split keyboards and really made for programmers like enthium. Looks beautiful and great presentation of your efforts. Hope it lives up to its expectations. All the best Start shipping to Bulgaria please. I’ll buy it right away once you do. Let me know if I can somehow help on my end with that. Speechless on what you’ve made. I don't understand the overwhelming praise. This product is just bizarre. Who is this for? What's with the giant numbers and tiny symbols? I know where the numbers are from muscle memory. I don't have the symbols memorized. Haptic feedback when you use the command key? Why? No number pad or page up/page dn, which would be something useful. This is like The Homer of keyboards. Does it play La Cucaracha out of the speaker if you push the knob four times? You clearly have the technical capabilities but the product requirements are bonkers. Part of the reason for the overwhelming praise is because this is a “Show HN” thread[0]. People liked the amount of effort put in. Keyboards are highly personal anyways, so I wouldn’t be surprised that an average person would disagree with a few design decisions here. There aren't many Mac layout mechanical keyboards out there. This is an addition to the very few choices out there. I don't know why you feel the need to shit on it. Beautiful! Looking forward to the Kickstarter. But also, why is it completely flat? I hate what apple did with the keyboard. They set a bad example with flat keys. They used to have slightly sculpted keys, where your fingers could find the keys and self-center, leading to accurate typing. But typical apple - thin is the target - and everyone follows These switches remind me of the butterfly switches on previous generations of Macbooks....not a great memory Love it! Can you offer full color lighting instead of just red? I’d like to second this. Being able to change the color using the dial would be…satisfying. Any plans for a model with numeric keypad too? Not at the moment. If we did a numpad I would probably do it as a separate device. Personally I don't like how the numpad sits between the edge of my keyboard and mouse. I'd prefer it to the left of my keyboard or to the right side of my mouse. Maybe a bit (a lot) overboard with the marketing snazz on this page. it's a keyboard It's not a miracle. If you're going to have all this 3D imagery, put a glTF model viewer on the page, and let me look at it. though to be told, I definitely want one. low profile keyboards are indeed my jam. I don't know why the hell keyboards need to have batteries though. No one needs a wireless keyboard. Wires are not that much of a pain in the ass. Coiled, self-retracting keyboard cables are a thing. Keyboards do not need to be wireless. Wires are fine, I promise! Wireless mouse? Sure. Wires make the mouse move when you don't want it to move. Wireless credential entry device? Those should remain wired, I think. Well, for programming it's not convenient -- no Insert/Pageup/Screenshot buttons. Why do you need screenshot button for programming? How many times do you press it?
You can just use fn button for that. People are programming on a 36-key keyboards just fine and they don't miss any keys.
It's easier to press fn + something than reaching out for screenshot button, which is usually far away. That way, you don't have to move your hands. The cognitive load of having to press two keys takes its toll and breaks flow, even though it doesn't seem like it should make a difference, at least in my experience. I'm back to TKL or larger. Does a Mac even recognize the screenshot button? I take lots of screenshots and videos and add them to PRs, which clearly communicate what has changed. 15 years of mouse-free professional programming and never in my life have I touched these. 30 years of professional programming and I touch "Home", "End", "PgUp", "PgDn", "Ins", and "Del" every single day. You can do this using fn button, without moving your hand every time you need to press them. It's very convenient, when your hand don't move at all and can reach every button. It's also very convenient to not have to remember a bunch of extra combos or perform the gymnastics to press them, especially if you need other modifiers too like shift+pgup, shift+ctrl+pageup, etc you can do it using any button you like. lots of keyboards are entirely remappable. i don't understand how/why one saying they never touch these buttons is some kind of flex, like it's somehow superior to avoid using some keys or something. Would be ever so awesome if the keyboard had feet. As far as ergonomics go, I don't care too much about split layouts and similar nonsense, but my wrists start to hurt really fast when the keyboard is lying flat on the desk. I've bought adhesive folding feet for my laptops. They are awesome. I used a pair for my B104 (a reproduction of IBM beam spring switches in a modern keyboard). I still wish I didn't have to glue any contraptions to devices I type on. What does it feel like to type on? It's kind of like a M-series Mac keyboard but with substantially more travel on the key (we have about 0.5mm more travel), and more of a more definitive sense of when the key is actuated. It's a much more tactile experience than the MacBook keyboards, but that is still the closest comparison. My dream keyboard, if only it could split down the middle for ergonomics :( yea split + ortholinear would be peak Ergo users are never going to be happy. I'd complain about the lack of thumb keys, and then the flatness, and suddenly we're talking about a completely different keyboard. Cramming the fn key into the sacred ctrl-alt-cmd triumvirate is disagreeable. Would require learning and remapping. I prefer fn to be distant as I have chorded for decades with the said trio. I was really excited about Altar I, but no shipping to Brazil, so I gave up on it. Nice to see the idea continues (consider worldwide shipping would be my only feedback on the idea, I guess). I now own a Logitech MX Keys S and I'm quite happy with it. Great work! Have you, or do you intend to, write about the process of bringing this to fruition? Would love to learn more about how a polished bit of hardware like this is designed. there is nothing more satisfying than the thickness of the device being the same thickness of the charge cable terminal. This looks dope, looking forward to ordering in the future. This looks great. Never liked the idea of having to add wrist rests to all these tall bulky mechanical keyboards. Does it support the globe key without having to use karabiner? It does! We do some firmware trickery to make the globe key behave just like the Magic Keyboard. Can you tell me what exactly you use it for? I just want to make sure we have your use case covered. This is very cool and it looks like a lot of effort went into it. Personally, I like the high profile clunky mechanical keyboard experience, so it's probably not for me, but I really hope this does well. I also really hate Apples decision to put the FN key in the bottom left corner, but I understand following their layout. I always swap the ctrl and fn keys on my Apple devices, so I assume you could do the same thing here. Wow, beautiful. Both the site and the keyboard. I put a deposit down. Edit: in reply to the person above because I keep getting a "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." error because I've made 2 posts in this thread apparently... Anyway, it would be neat if in the future the M-Dial slot could be used for a fingerprint reader or something else. Swappable items in that slot. Thank you so much! Really appreciate it. Glad you like the website too, I put a lot of effort into it. If you have any questions I'd be very happy to answer them. Honestly the price seems quite low for what you get (at $249) and what looks like might be a small batch production. I hope you can make a profit after everything is said and done at that price! This price is only for people who reserve before we launch on Kickstarter. I agree it is good value but also I should point out the retail price will be $349 for anyone buying after we fulfil all the pre-orders. Rest assured we are building a sustainable business that will be around for the long haul. Lovely engineering; if you bring it to market(?) I suggest offering if not full customization a range of aesthetics. Black/red is a hard no for me. Something fitting with the existing aesthetic (let's call it "Scandanavian milled", subtle frosting, white text) or warmer ("natural", off-white, orange LEDs) etc etc. One other question: waterproof? I assume that's not possible. Would be a decision maker for me personally probably. Looks nice. However, 2 years and you still squished the arrow keys into the rest of the keyboard. Unacceptable "design" mate. You need to talk with your customers. Unfortunately, no numpad is definitely a dealbreaker. Looks like a really cool product, but the numpad is a _must_ for any keyboard you want to do real work on, at least in my opinion. Maybe if excel is your main software used I could see that, can’t remember the last time I typed enough numbers to make it worth it though. I don't like playing Nethack without it :( But yeah, I guess that's fair, not everybody's workload is going to involve inputting incident numbers, and order numbers, and asset numbers, etc etc etc all the time... even IP addresses, I just find it so much more comfortable with the numpad, whereas I find I have a tough time touch-typing on the number row.
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