Wow, $330 for a keyboard. I love the passion and the thought they put into it, and I expect that for the small quantities they expect to produce that is the right price to sell it at, but at the same time it seems to cross into the unsustainable price point.
People pay thousands of dollars for a virtual weapon in online games. That a week later, is deemed worthless by the next expansion release. I think you're vastly underestimating what people will pay for, if you think $330 is in the realm of "too much" for a hand made keyboard.
I love typing and keyboards. I own quite a few of them (use them for some time and then give them a place in my office). The most expensive I have gone is 260 euros. The stretch to 330 usd (which will be like 300 eur or so) is something I would consider. So yeah.. People surely would buy it :-)
I need to be clearer, it isn't "too much" for a keyboard, the question I have is if it is sustainable. Or put another way will the keyboard.io folks ever get the chance to make a 'model 2.0' ?
This is my reasoning on that. As a bespoke item it carries a premium price for folks who value its design points.
A short anecdote; I have a pair of Roger Sound Labs studio monitor speakers that I love, probably paid twice what similar high end studio speakers cost but the folks at RSL were passionate about speakers and made the kinds of quality choices I would make when building speakers myself. That quality is evident in that here it is 30 years later and the speakers still sound great and still as they did when I bought them. Sadly, RSL no longer exists.
I think about that and similar vendors where I have gone out of my way to pay a premium to get a product that isn't working so hard for profit margin that it has compromised the durability or quality of the product. Those vendors are fragile.
If they make a really high quality product with the best components and engineering margins to insure decades of service, you only buy one unit and your done. Others will buy the same unit, but once the market is saturated you are stuck, you aren't selling any more, you still have bills and staff to pay. You need to either move on to a different thing, or shrink dramatically in size to be the maintenance organization.
A Bosch engineer was talking to me about predicting whether or not a particular spare part would be available 100 years from now. For things like machine tools, there are lots of them that have been in service for 100+ years. However, if you collect old computers, you know just how hard it can be to find parts to repair an S-100 machine like an Altair or IMSAI, or Apple II or PET parts. Forget finding a new set of DTL transistors for a PDP-1. Even the Alto project that kens and company are working on, that machine is 20 years old and you can't buy new disc packs for it or r/w heads for the drive. (both considered 'consumable' parts by the Alto)
So at the end of the day, can a company like keyboard.io survive by "only" charging $330 for a keyboard that they have nominally already sold to 2,000 backers. What is the total addressable market for that keyboard? 5,000? 10,000? And it serves a market (desktop computers) which is in steep double digit declines.
Even with big budgets such niche products find themselves lost (I've got a Microsoft 'commander' here you can play with :-))
My thinking then on this artisanal keyboard is whether or not they made the right choice by going to China. It seems like something you will sell a few thousand of, tops, and if you can make/keep all of the tooling in house you can control your supply chain fully.
Anyway, while I can't go that high for a keyboard, I know folks who will. I won't be surprised to find out they are already backers of this project. But from a long term "these guys will be impacting the way we think about keyboards for the next 30 years" I don't think they have set themselves up for even a shot at that. For that, it would have to sell for $1,000 each. That would give them the extra runway to develop additional fabrication capabilities in house and push the envelope on all sides.
I think you underestimate the market for high end keyboards. Kinesis has been doing this for a while for example and they don't seem to have a problem sustaining themselves or coming up with new versions. I bought a Kinesis Advantage 10 years ago for $350. They recently announced the Kinesis Advantage 2 for a similar price point. http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/
I'm sure it's not a huge market but it's enough to sustain a company that wants to focus on making premium accessories. I don't think keyboards are going anywhere anytime soon. Sure, the consumer market is shrinking but the average computer user was never going to spend $300 for a keyboard. People spend that when they do serious amounts of typing all day, and there doesn't seem to be a decrease in the number of people that need to type for a living.
WTF? Is this really true about the thousands of dollars for virtual weapons? I know little about the modern gaming world so I would love a little bit more context.
Yes, it's completely true. Why would I lie about something so stupid? Echoing Fury at the start of Diablo 3 went for $14,000. Everyone, including myself was playing/gaming the shit out of the auction house at the time, make tons of real money. Manticore bows were going for hundreds, to thousands all the time.
The d2jsp marketplace for Diablo 2 items has been around for what FIFTEEN YEARS? Selling all kinds of virtual weapons for crazy money. https://www.d2jsp.org
Thank you. This is eye-opening. I wonder what the typical customer profile is for these purchasers. I got into programming so I could make games, then avoided that line of work because I tended to become addicted.
Same here, and adoration aside, I've gone from, "Goddamn it, I think I need surgery," to, "I have no pain at all" in a few years. Stretches, and a new keyboard.
The Ergodox EZ is the closest competitor that I can think of and it is $295. $250-350 is what I would expect a pre-assembled two piece (split) mechanical keyboard to cost.
There are 3 keyboards in this space (split with mechanical switches) now: the Ergodox EZ ($295) (which I'm typing this on right now), the Keyboardio ($329) and the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard ($220). The Keyboardio and UHK are still under development; I preordered the UHK about a year ago and its delay has been OK (a few months, it seems). I also ordered the Ergodox EZ at the same time, that one wasn't delayed and shipped last December. Each of them has a slightly different focus/gimmick - Ergodox is more DIY and customizable, UHK has a bunch of add-on modules like trackpad and thumbcluster that can be clicked in, the Keyboardio is more 'artisanal' with the wood and all.
I didn't (pre)order the Keyboardio because it uses non-standard key caps - I don't think they'll be in business very long after they ship because I don't think their pricepoint is sustainable vis a vis the size of the market. At least on the others you can easily swap out most parts. The UHK is sourced locally (i.e., EU) as well, which I think gives them an advantage in the long run. Then again, even if such a keyboard lasts for say 5 years - I'll have gotten my money out of it several times over, considering it's the main 'tool' I have in my hands each and every day.
It looked at the original schedule for the UHK and some of the recent updates. It looks like they are a little more than a few months late? I wish them all the best but I don't think they are going to be around long enough to deliver on the "add ons," let alone the long run.
I thought the UHK had a nonstandard keycaps or two?
Original plan was Sept AFAIK, now they're aiming for December delivery for the keyboard, April for add ons. I'm not sure if they'll make December, but even if it were to become February, that'd make < 6 months of delay - not that bad IMO. I did order some of the add on modules; we'll see if they get around to ever delivering those. I thought it was madness to take them on in the first place. I don't have any real reason yet to expect the keyboard itself to not be delivered. The update I got this morning makes it look like they're plugging along as the same pace of the last year or so.
I use keyboards all day, every day. I currently have three $200+ "ergo" keyboards (two for PCs, another one for a Mac). They serve me well as nearly frictionless devices that turn my keystrokes into money. In the past I have paid more for keyboards that sucked. I have built my own keyboards. I will stick with a good keyboard brand for a decade, no problem.
The current state of keyboards is pretty bad. Microsoft lost me as a customer about ten years ago because they started going cheap on keys (which is a shame, because the original Ergo keyboard they did in the early 90s was nearly perfect, and I have several cow-orkers who are still using those, those and similar ones). The market is full of "gamer" keyboards with various clickity-keys and little differentiation. Their layouts are uniformly terrible.
I don't know if the keyboardio keyboard will be any good. It may be an ergo disaster that I am unable to type on. But I'm pretty sure I want to buy the next keyboard that keyboardio does, assuming they can survive as a company and keep making new designs.
I think there is an untapped market for keyboards that don't suck. It may not be a massive market, but it's definitely nonzero. The ergo market currently doesn't have very many players, and none that really understand tech workers.
I've briefly tried a prototype of keyboard.io and if you like the concept I think you're going to be pleased. But it's of course also personal and you won't really find out until you used it for awhile.
Yeah. I really want a split ergonomic keyboard with mechanical switches and thumb clusters, but there's absolutely no way I can spend $300 on a keyboard. Like you, I understand why they are doing it (combination of small production run and no compromises), and agree that in some sense it's "worth" the asking price. But I've been following this project since the beginning, and I'm completely priced-out.
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