Enlarge / Keychron's new C3 Pro mechanical keyboard. (credit: Keychron)

It's not officially autumn, but any parent back to ushering their kid to school before starting their own day of responsibilities will tell you it feels like fall. Alongside the start of school are usually new tech product announcements . This week, I had my eyes on a new smattering of PC keyboards (as you may have heard , I could use an upgrade). But many keyboard announcements felt like more of the same.

Take Logitech's keyboard releases this week. On Tuesday, it announced the G Pro X TKL wireless (dongle, Bluetooth, or wired) mechanical keyboard . It's part of Logitech's high-end series of gaming peripherals, but those accessories tend to appeal to non-gaming power users, too. For example, I've had great success using some of Logitech's gaming keyboards for work, including low-profile ones that helped speed up my typing. That's not what you're getting with the new G Pro X TKL.

• 

  Logitech's G Pro X TKL in magenta. [credit: Logitech ]

Enlarge / FlatFootFox's TypeBoy with TypePaks installed. (credit: TheStuChef/Reddit )

There's nothing like that burst of anticipation when first sliding a game cartridge into its slot. Who would've thought someone would ever bring that nostalgic, uniquely tactile experience to a wireless mechanical keyboard?

Meet FlatFootFox's TypeBoy . With a name ostensibly nodding at the Game Boy, the wireless, split mechanical keyboard build has more in common with the Game Boy Advance than its purple and gray color scheme.

• 

  Two TypePaks. [credit: TheStuChef/Reddit ]

I've seen mechanical keyboards that pay homage to classic Nintendo consoles and classic console games . I've even seen keyboards that look like Nintendo consoles . But this is the first time I've seen a mechanical keyboard that requires a Nintendo game cartridge shell and slot to function.

Enlarge / Cherry's new MX2A mechanical switches (from left to right): Red, Blue, Brown, Black, Speed Silver, Silent Red. (credit: Scharon Harding)

For 20 years, Cherry's patent on mechanical switches made it the only player around. That patent's expiration around 2014, though, released the floodgates and allowed countless copycats and switches with varying levels of modification to the cross-stem design to pour in. Typically, consumer choice is a good thing, and there are companies making switches that offer much different (sometimes better) experiences than the switches Cherry makes.

But there are many mechanical switches these days that don't add anything to the market. Some rip off what Cherry already offers with a cheaper price tag or only help mechanical keyboard makers save money by not paying another company for switches.

Seemingly in response, Cherry announced its MX2A series of mechanical switches this week. The new switches are almost identical to the company's MX Red, Silent Red, Blue, Brown, Speed Silver, and Black counterparts. The differences are inside the switches. In most cases, I noticed improvements to the feel of the new switches, but are they enough to warrant the introduction of even more switches and, likely, confusion?

Enlarge / Some people hate to hear other people's keyboards on video calls, but AI-backed side channel attackers? They say crank that gain. (credit: Getty Images)

By recording keystrokes and training a deep learning model, three researchers claim to have achieved upwards of 90 percent accuracy in interpreting remote keystrokes, based on the sound profiles of individual keys.

In their paper A Practical Deep Learning-Based Acoustic Side Channel Attack on Keyboards ( full PDF ), UK researchers Joshua Harrison, Ehsan Toreini, and Marhyam Mehrnezhad claim that the trio of ubiquitous machine learning, microphones, and video calls "present a greater threat to keyboards than ever." Laptops, in particular, are more susceptible to having their keyboard recorded in quieter public areas, like coffee shops, libraries, or offices, the paper notes. And most laptops have uniform, non-modular keyboards, with similar acoustic profiles across models.

Previous attempts at keylogging VoIP calls, without physical access to the subject, achieved 91.7 percent top-5 accuracy over Skype in 2017 and 74.3 percent accuracy in VoIP calls in 2018 . Combining the output of the keystroke interpretations with a "hidden Markov model" (HMM), which guesses at more-likely next-letter outcomes and could correct "hrllo" to "hello," saw one prior side channel study's accuracy jump from 72 to 95 percent—though that was an attack on dot-matrix printers . The Cornell researchers believe their paper is the first to make use of the recent sea change in neural network technology, including self-attention layers , to propagate an audio side channel attack.

• 

  The keyboard comes with detachable "Super Buttons." [credit: 8BitDo ]

Iconic, impactful, and unforgettable, the original Nintendo Entertainment System ( NES ) changed the video game industry for good when it came out in the '80s. Originally released as the Family Computer, aka Famicom, in Japan, the landmark console still holds a place in people's hearts, whether it's through cherished maintained consoles, DIY designs , or old-school titles. Now that nostalgia can trickle down to your fingertips, too.

Today, 8BitDo, a gaming peripherals maker with a flair for retro designs, announced via Twitter a mechanical keyboard that will give '80s Nintendo fans the warm fuzzies. 8BitDo, likely aware of Nintendo's stringent legal team, doesn't outright state the keyboard's similarity to the original Nintendo console. And the product's name, Retro Mechanical Keyboard , is vague and unrevealing. But the colors, extra buttons, and color scheme names—N Edition (with NES colors) and Fami Edition (with Famicom colors)—are enough to bring you back to your '80s gaming den.

Both the N and Fami Edition have console-controller-looking "B" and "A" buttons where FN and Menu keys are expected. The keys, as like the rest of the keyboard's keys, are programmable without software or using 8BitDo's Ultimate Software V2.

Enlarge / The Brydge Max+, one of the company's last iPad products. Brydge focused on aluminum builds, laptop-like hinges, and—before Apple decided it would offer them—integrated trackpads.

Brydge, a company that once aimed to make high-quality iPad keyboards that all but transformed them into MacBooks, has gone out of business. The company's website is just a logo , employees and preordering customers haven't heard anything in months, and 9to5Mac has a detailed telling of Brydge's downfall , supported by conversations with nearly a dozen former employees.

You should read the whole investigation if you want to know how badly managed growth, a hostile workplace, the pandemic, and the nerve-wracking nature of trying to work with and alongside Apple led to Brydge's shuttering. You'll read about business, leadership, and marketing decisions that, with hindsight, point toward an inevitable conclusion. But there's also an inside story about what it's like trying to hitch your wagon to the whims and preferences of the world's largest technology corporation.

• 

  A Brydge 9.7-inch iPad keyboard from 2018. [credit: Ars Technica ]

Brydge is best known for making Apple accessories, and particularly keyboard cases for iPads, with a focus on materials, design, and functionality that aimed to go further than Apple's own accessories. They were made from aluminum, had a more laptop-like hinge, and their keyboards were backlit. In October 2019, Brydge tried to get a six-month jump on Apple by releasing the trackpad-included Pro+ for iPad Pro. Because iPadOS 13 didn't have native trackpad support—that would arrive with iPadOS 13.4 in March 2020 —Brydge's keyboard used an Assistive Touch accessibility workaround. The trackpad and its implementation disappointed critics like Six Colors' Jason Snell .

Enlarge / Microsoft's "green-eye" mouse, the first Microsoft-branded mouse the company sold. (credit: Microsoft )

If I asked you to name Microsoft's best-known and longest-lived product, you'd almost certainly say "Windows." But another one of the company's products has been on the market for even longer: its mice.

Microsoft started selling its first computer mice in 1983 , a year or two before the Macintosh and other computers made pointing devices standard-issue and two years before the first version of Windows was released. The Microsoft Natural Keyboard followed in 1994 . Since then, the company has offered a range of Microsoft-branded PC accessories, from successful ones like the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard to short-lived experiments like Microsoft SideWinder gamepads and joysticks .

Microsoft-made mice and keyboards aren't going away, but the Microsoft brand name is. The company told The Verge that it will stop selling Microsoft-branded keyboards, mice, and other accessories following a series of layoffs that affected its hardware division. The company will refocus its efforts on higher-end Surface-branded keyboards and mice, which represent just a tiny fraction of all the accessories Microsoft currently sells .

Enlarge / A type ball from a 1961 IBM Selectric typewriter. (credit: Getty )

There are some feelings you just can't re-create. And to IBM Selectric loyalists, neither beam spring keyboards nor buckling spring designs nor a modern mechanical keyboard can replicate the distinct feel driven by that legendary type ball. In the '60s and '70s, the Selectric was an office staple, but the growth of PCs and daisy wheels forced the machine into retirement by 1986. That hasn't stopped people from buying, restoring, and selling Selectrics, though. The problem is, IBM stopped making the single printing element that makes those typewriters so special. You can find the type balls online, (including options claiming to be used and never used ) and at stores carrying old electronic components. But you'd save time and resources if you could make your own. It took years for someone to find a way to make the Selectric golf ball 3D-printable, but now someone claims they have.

A tinkerer named Sam Ettinger recently shared his Selectric type ball 3D-printing project on Hackaday and Github and shared the files on Printables , as reported by Hackaday . But beware: These finalized versions haven't been tested or printed by their creator. Earlier this month, Ettinger shared a video on Mastodon of the prior version in action, admitting that some letters weren't usable.

Ettinger said he typed this using a previous version of his 3D printable type ball featuring a Cherokee layout. (credit: settinger/Printables.com )

The new models are reportedly 0.2 mm shorter to address this and adjust the letter rotation, since it was "90 degrees off." Because of this, we can't verify how successful these models would be in real use.

Enlarge / Model F Labs' Classic Style F104 Model F keyboard starts at $420. (credit: Model F Keyboards )

IBM’s Model F keyboards are prized among keyboard enthusiasts. Introducing buckling spring switches over a capacitive printed circuit board (PCB) in the early 80s, they’re considered the grandfather of mechanical switches. Despite their prestige, Model F keyboards were no more by the following decade and, due to outdated technologies, have become very rare and can be tough to use with a modern computer. Targeting retro keyboard fans who don't want to deal with long searches, repairs, or mods, Model F Labs recreates IBM's Model F keyboards with modern OS support, and it recently introduced the iconic buckling spring switches in a classic full-sized keyboard, as well as some unique form factors.

Buckling springs

With the tactile buckling of the internal spring and the click of the flipper against the capacitive PCB, the keys in IBM's Model F keyboards inspired today's mechanical switches. Popular in banks, they replaced IBM's beam spring keyboards with a lower-cost design that was also less bulky. Early Model F keyboards had keycaps that were the same size, and keycaps were also removable for customization.

By 1985, IBM was making Model M keyboards , also popular among keyboard collectors today, with keys featuring a buckling spring over membrane and lower manufacturing costs.