At this point it’s probably clear that
every time I
say “the worst keyboard ever made,” I am being cheeky. These are not the worst keyboards ever made. There
is no worst keyboard; the world of keyboards is just too complex for this to be possible.
Even more importantly, though, I believe there is always something you can learn from a keyboard you don’t like. Sure, the Ukrainian keyboard has an atrocious build quality, the TI calculator keypad is weird to press, and the abKey is far from a Revolution.
But there are things in either of them that can surprise and delight. Just like I have a whole chapter dedicated to the Model M, I have another one in defense of one maligned keyboard that I think is actually wonderful (you’ll have to see what it is). And, I just searched this newsletter for the word “inspiring,” and it turns out I used it much more often that I suspected.
So you bet all three keyboards above will be in the book, because ugly and interesting is often better than beautiful but not.