Spoiler:
The click is slightly stiff and not as smooth as I would expect from an ALPS, but still miles better than most Cherries and clones I've tried. It reminds me of the amber ALPS with the tactility taken down a notch. The stem is creme colored with no ALPS logo and according to the WIKI it has the tell tale 4 mounting tabs, making it a clone. Unfortunately, I can't tell who made this switch as none of the casting numbers (3A74) yields anything in Google.
The Windows keys is a welcome surprise which is normally mapped to the option key on the Mac. I’ve seen other Montereys with blank keys where the Windows keys are located. I never understood why they added them, since some of those keyboards were manufactured well before Windows 95. I guess their prescience paid off in retooling cost savings.
This keyboard brings back fond memories for me. It’s probably my second Monterey keyboard. My first one came with my cheap, generic, sheet metal box 386 back in the late 1980’s. It didn’t have a brand, but I do distinctly remember its cute fake grill marks located at the upper right corner. I wish I knew which switch it had, but I remember it being tactile, clicky and lightweight. My guess is it was either a SMK blue or ALPS white. It didn't really matter. The keyboard was just a compromise since I couldn’t afford a Model M or Model F. At the time, IBM PS/2s were newly introduced and older IBM models weren’t ready for the landfills yet. Apple keyboards, on the other hand, while not quite up to IBM standards, were way better than everything else, but were even more expensive and incompatible.
When I was growing up, even among techies, keyboards were just not a topic of interest. Discussing tactility and clickiness branded you as an overly eccentric nerd even among nerds. Keyboards receive the least amount of buying consideration as most users only care that it works. In fact, most prefer bland, quiet mushy keyboards over clicky and tactile ones. Computer manufacturers who one made excellent keyboards, Apple and IBM, never highlighted it as a selling point. Even Mattias, who still makes some of the arguably best mechanical keyboards, caters more to the keyboard louts and dilettantes than aficionados. It warms my heart to see the growing appreciation for mechanical keyboards. Sadly, it comes too late at a time when the desktop is slowly being retired as the primary computing platform.
