Ergodox is staggered keyboard, not ortholinear. It is columnar staggered keeb, but still staggered.
hauleth
Nicd
dimitarvp
I honestly have no idea. My best shot at explaining it was that the Apple Magic Keyboard is Bluetooth and thus operating on battery – and keyboard lighting can drastically reduce battery life. But outside of that, it’s a puzzle to me as well.
It’s always tempting to hand-wave this to some sort of a mythical “Apple culture” or stuff. But I’ve been in a lot of offices and co-working spaces and one of the top complaints always was “even if I dock my MacBook I still can’t find a good mechanical keyboard for it, damnit”.
It’s a huge market opportunity. The CODE keyboards will get my business. It’s a double win really: I only ever heard good things about them, and they are the only viable choice for a Mac keyboard.
They are quite expensive but meh; this is a 2-year investment at the least. If not 5.
simon
I found this link when I was researching keyboards as a result of this discussion topic. It might help others decide on what they want or need and it also helps clarify the various terms:
https://www.keychatter.com/2015/03/04/ergonomic-mechanical-keyboards-a-primer-and-roundup/
mkunikow
Nicd
There are 4 layers in the keyboard: normal, mod, mouse, and fn. Arrow keys I have in the mod layer in place of ijkl (so I hold the mod key and press one of ijkl for arrow keys). But this is all customisable so everyone can make their own layout where the arrows are where they want.
Similarly F keys are in the number row in the mod layer, and mod-esc is the ¶§° key (very rarely used so I have esc there in the normal layer).
The mouse layer allows me to control the mouse with (among others) ijkl so I have stopped using a normal mouse entirely (the mouse mode is really good).
NobbZ
Everyone? Or only those that like to pay for their operating system? Of my current keyboard I can only use a subset of functionality because Logitech doesn’t support Linux and third party tools only cover backlight adjustment, not the programmable keys.
Aside of that… Without a backlight an UHK is probably not something I’d buy… And even the backlit prototypes I’ve seen so far have light shining through below the caps. After having used my G910 for about half a year now, I really like the precise backlight that only is at the top of the keys.
Shikada
Many of these enthusiast boards have reprogrammable firmware, so the operating system doesn’t matter 
I respect that not having backlighting is a hard no for you, but the typical crowd for these is people who don’t look at their keyboards when they type. Sure, they might love RGB lighting to (arguably) make their boards cool, but not for any practical function.
dimitarvp
I am really happy with my Logitech G600 Orion (on my Win10 PC, and btw I never paid a cent for the OS 
). Really well-crafted, light, durable, and the backlight is very precise and non-intrusive indeed.
NobbZ
You haven’t used Romer-Switches yet 
Their backlight can’t escape below the keys, because the switches are constructed around the LED.
Perhaps you didn’t notice… But I assume it came bundled with your PC and a lot of software you didn’t need. That software you do not need and all the time to uninstall them is a very high price in my opinion. But that doesn’t belong here.