A new standard in baling wire

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The [wiki]Mitsumi membrane lock[/wiki] switch—Caps Lock in the Mitsumi version of the Apple Keyboard II (M0487)—must be one of the most horrible switches I've seen. The follower arm for the latch track is just a piece of loose copper wire that hangs out of a hole. It's even more desperately awful than SMK and Monterey switches!

What's more amazing is that I managed to get it all back together, and it still works! (After a FML moment when I'd amazed myself by figuring out how the follower mechanism went back together (the photos I'd already taken really helped) and then realised that I'd lost the spring. Eventually found it by treading on it.) The spring got bent when removing it, as this switch is not meant to come apart, but it still works (I put the bent bit inside the recess).

That said, it feels much nicer than the [wiki]Alps lock[/wiki] switch. You get a perfectly smooth linear action and a gentle click, while the Alps switch has a grinding tactile feel that gives you the feeling that it's completely broken, not that it's locking. I was surprised how bad the Alps lock switch felt when I got my first mechanical Mac keyboard the other week (a salmon [wiki]Apple M0116[/wiki] from skryl at GH).