Vortex M0110 keyboard review (Gateron Pro Retro White)

[Chyros]

Today we look at a retro keyboard inspired by an Apple icon; the Vortex M0110! Not a true 1:1 replica of the original, but instead a modern reimagining. Hope you enjoy the video!

[Muirium]

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Some interesting legend choices there.

Oddly, at least in the Apple circles I keep, the M0110 is quite unknown. Sure, the OG Macintosh is praised for what it kicked off—the desktop operating systems we all use today are still just incremental improvements on what the little Mac team cooked up for windows, icons, pointer, mouse, menus, palettes, etc. etc.—but the keyboard it came with is only ever mentioned for its absent arrow keys. Steve Jobs insisted no arrows, to force third party software to embrace the mouse. I've not heard anyone pining for the M0110 like the greybeards do for their Apple Extended Keyboards.

Yet it is of course the greatest layout of all time, for those of us who love the HHKB.

[Polecat]

←⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Some interesting legend choices there.

Oddly, at least in the Apple circles I keep, the M0110 is quite unknown. Sure, the OG Macintosh is praised for what it kicked off—the desktop operating systems we all use today are still just incremental improvements on what the little Mac team cooked up for windows, icons, pointer, mouse, menus, palettes, etc. etc.—but the keyboard it came with is only ever mentioned for its absent arrow keys. Steve Jobs insisted no arrows, to force third party software to embrace the mouse. I've not heard anyone pining for the M0110 like the greybeards do for their Apple Extended Keyboards.

Yet it is of course the greatest layout of all time, for those of us who love the HHKB.

I sold my HHKB (which wasn't a real HHKB) so what do I know? But I loved the M0110. Not the mouse so much, that was more of an irritant to me, but the feel of that keyboard was just lovely. You mentioned greybeards and the AEK, so what does that make us original M0110 users? (hint--mostly dead and buried--that was 40 years ago now!)

[Muirium]

An unreal HHKB, you say?

The only well known Mac nerd I’m aware of who started with the original Mac was John Siracusa who was fortunate enough to have one bought for him new as a child. I’ve listened to him on podcasts for years, and the only time he’s mentioned the M0110 was his glee to set it aside for an M0110A at the earliest opportunity. He’s got objectively poor taste in keyboards though, as someone with an attic full of AEKs and the like but who uses one of Apple’s current desktop chiclets by preference; and full-size at that. I don’t tune in for keyboard tips.

[depletedvespene]

←⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Some interesting legend choices there.

Oddly, at least in the Apple circles I keep, the M0110 is quite unknown.

Well, of course. As form factors go, the M0110 is awful (and that's not counting the intentional omission of the numpad). There's a reason it was replaced with the M0110A as soon as Jobs was out of Apple.

And then there was that lazy copycat that took the layout, added a keyboard-side modifier just on one side and didn't even bother thinking how to use the one new key...

[depletedvespene]

←⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Some interesting legend choices there.

Oddly, at least in the Apple circles I keep, the M0110 is quite unknown. Sure, the OG Macintosh is praised for what it kicked off—the desktop operating systems we all use today are still just incremental improvements on what the little Mac team cooked up for windows, icons, pointer, mouse, menus, palettes, etc. etc.—but the keyboard it came with is only ever mentioned for its absent arrow keys. Steve Jobs insisted no arrows, to force third party software to embrace the mouse. I've not heard anyone pining for the M0110 like the greybeards do for their Apple Extended Keyboards.

Yet it is of course the greatest layout of all time, for those of us who love the HHKB.

I sold my HHKB (which wasn't a real HHKB) so what do I know? But I loved the M0110. Not the mouse so much, that was more of an irritant to me, but the feel of that keyboard was just lovely. You mentioned greybeards and the AEK, so what does that make us original M0110 users? (hint--mostly dead and buried--that was 40 years ago now!)

Back in the day, the CS dept. at my university had far too many Macintoshes and at least two professors who loved them (also far too many, indeed), so we had no choice but to use them. The teacher assistants, me included, had to do all the menial work of test grading, which included making the spreadsheets, and...

Most of those "OG" Macs (actually, most of them were "fat Macs"; those old enough will remember the term) came as-is, and there were a few external hard drives available upon request; when any of us scored one, our work time halved. There were exactly TWO M0120 numpads, but those were permanently reserved for two particular professors, so we couldn't do spreadsheets with them (*)... it was so bad that a couple years ago, I got an M0120 for myself, just to satisfy my lustalgia.




(*) This was well before the time of cross-compatibility, so doing them in the PC lab with Lotus 1-2-3 and then moving them over to a Macintrash wasn't an option.

[Muirium]

'Awa and back tae DOS wie ya!

The platform wars ended long ago. The mouse and, more ubiquitously by far, the touchscreen won. We are but ghosts who remember the thrill of battle. Fanboy versus fanboy, by the nighttime light of cathode rays, dug into bulletin boards, the crucible of men.


Returning to Chyros's review:

Is the QMK model wireless/Bluetooth like the "triple mode" model? Their website's pretty pictures aren't matched by cogent text. Try clicking on "Specification."

In any case, facing the "no Control key!?!" situation Chyros did, I'd have remapped Caps Lock to Control, which you can do quite easily on the Mac without any software at all. Open System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Modifier Keys and you can rejigger mods as you like. Windows may not do it, I don't know, but there's always AutoHotKey. Don't suffer in silence!

[Chyros]

Returning to Chyros's review:

Is the QMK model wireless/Bluetooth like the "triple mode" model? Their website's pretty pictures aren't matched by cogent text. Try clicking on "Specification."

In any case, facing the "no Control key!?!" situation Chyros did, I'd have remapped Caps Lock to Control, which you can do quite easily on the Mac without any software at all. Open System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Modifier Keys and you can rejigger mods as you like. Windows may not do it, I don't know, but there's always AutoHotKey. Don't suffer in silence!

No, the Triple Mode version is the non-QMK/VIA/Vial version (confusingly). Ctrl where Caps goes is an obvious mitigator, as is autohotkey, but you have to understand I deal with a different keyboard every week and usually change out every two or three days xD .

[Muirium]

No, the Triple Mode version is the non-QMK/VIA/Vial version (confusingly).

Oh, now that's a bugger! If I were getting one of these, I'd likely still get it in that wireless version, though for reasons I'll get to in a moment.

Ctrl where Caps goes is an obvious mitigator, as is autohotkey, but you have to understand I deal with a different keyboard every week and usually change out every two or three days xD .

This is Deskthority, you're not the exception to the rule around here! I like switching up keyboards plenty, too. I’m on the blue Alps FK-555 now, for instance, versus the NEC the other day. These two are (mostly) well behaved but I also rotate in tricky buggers like the Realforce 87U and NovaTouch which take a bit more coercion to get the way I want them.

Keyboard-specific rules in Karabiner are the way I go about this. Customise the keyboard once, and it's automatically right every time I hook it back up to my Mac.

Like you, I used to try doing all my basic remaps on the keyboard side. That gets tricky even with Soarer's converter, as so many vintage boards show up with the same default ID. I cooked up crazy kludges to work around specific irritations, but everything was brittle and the next oddball keyboard to come along always demanded a rethink. Enough of that finally got on my tits, and I tried doing my mods at the host side instead. It's been working very nicely.

Helps when you like the one computer lifestyle, like I do. I don't have to keep anything in sync. If I were plugging boards into random computers, I'd be gnashing teeth like you again.

[depletedvespene]

…
Keyboard-specific rules in Karabiner are the way I go about this. Customise the keyboard once, and it's automatically right every time I hook it back up to my Mac.
…
Helps when you like the one computer lifestyle, like I do. I don't have to keep anything in sync. If I were plugging boards into random computers, I'd be gnashing teeth like you again.

To each his own, of course. I very much avoid customization of anything below the national layout layer of the keyboard's customization on the computer itself (and then again, only on what matters to the alpha keys), as this setup should be privy to the keyboard itself. In order to be effective in this regard, a common general layout needs to be designed, so differing form factors won't have radically different "quirks" and thus rotating in a new keyboard won't signify a problem (even if that means repeating some assignments, OR passing up some ideas that could not be implemented in all form factors). It takes quite some effort, but this can be pulled off — from there, "programming" each new keyboard becomes a simple matter of implementing that template. Sort of...

DO-NOT-go-Leeroy-Jenkins.png (209.82 KiB) Viewed 8010 times

... like this. Just to start. But once the effort has been made, the result is intuitive and switching from one keyboard to another becomes easy, and so is making further additions or refinements.



As the great Dennis Ritchie once said: ... with proper design, the features come cheaply. This approach is arduous, but continues to succeed.

[Polecat]

An unreal HHKB, you say?

The only well known Mac nerd I’m aware of who started with the original Mac was John Siracusa who was fortunate enough to have one bought for him new as a child. I’ve listened to him on podcasts for years, and the only time he’s mentioned the M0110 was his glee to set it aside for an M0110A at the earliest opportunity. He’s got objectively poor taste in keyboards though, as someone with an attic full of AEKs and the like but who uses one of Apple’s current desktop chiclets by preference; and full-size at that. I don’t tune in for keyboard tips.

I was in college when the original Mac came out. But only the rich kids got to own one. It wasn't 'till a few years later that a buddy and I started a newsletter, which we did on a typewriter at first. When his dad bought a Mac 512 we talked him into letting us use it. I had played with Fortran and MBasic and CP/M and system development kits, but never a word processor. First time my buddy fixed a typo and reprinted the page without retyping the whole thing was when I realized what a computer was really for. Until then I had assumed it was to solve all those messy calculus problems that I had to do with a pencil and paper.

My first computer was a CP/M box with a Televideo terminal and a big, clunky daisy wheel printer. I eventually built a PC from parts and was given a Mac 512, which was modified into the equivalent of a Plus with piggyback SCSI and memory boards. What I most remember about the M0110 that came with the 512 was that its switches felt so much nicer than the Televideo's.