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Long time I haven’t posted an update about the second round of /dev/tty. As you all well know I wasn’t very happy with the dye-sub quality of the first drop and –honestly– how Massdrop handled the whole development phase.
Fortunately this time things are moving smoother. I’m getting prototypes at a constant pace and the first impression is very good.
Some of you may have noticed that /dev/tty has dropped again. Waaaay sooner than I expected actually. As you know by now I don’t like to rush a product release and considering the round 1 hiccups, I would have liked a couple of weeks more to plan a good fight strategy.
Anywho. Device Terminal (that’s how you pronounce it!) round 2 is up and kicking. The official name would be /dev/tty1 (it’s 0-based) and we have approximately a month to fix the issues we encountered in the first iteration. Namely the drunken legends. MassDrop reassure me that they made so no more bold, tilted, not-centered legends will leave the factory. I hope they will let me check that before shipping to customers.
Warning: this is a rant.
Important: the following reflects my opinion and my opinion only. I report the facts at the best of my knowledge/understanding but they are not necessarily accurate.
Of course I’m going to talk about /dev/tty keycaps set and the MT3 profile. The two are actually very different projects.
MT3 is the new profile we designed. It was a long process but it went relatively smooth. We had many iterations of the keys, I got plenty of prototypes both 3D printed and injected. We were able to fine tune the shape up to the very last minute. Indeed the profile came out beautifully, better than my expectations actually. The result is a wonderful new and original profile.
I was expecting the same process to happen for /dev/tty which is the first color scheme released on MT3.
It has been a long journey but it was well worth the wait. I’m usually very critical with my own work but this time we are pretty much close to perfection.
Let’s start with the keys layout. The most avid of my followers know that we designed a completely new profile called –very unoriginally– MT3. The goal was to create a retro looking shape without sacrificing ergonomics. I’m typing on these little guys from some time now and it’s incredible how natural and pleasing these keycaps feel.
I just received a new batch of prototypes. These hopefully are the very last prototypes I’ll see before the pre-production samples.
We had some issues selecting the –hell too many– colors present in the /dev/tty set and that took more time than I anticipated. Also finding the right legend thickness took some trial and error but the manufacturer has been very helpful and I’m glad to let you know that everything is sorted out.
I’m possibly biased but these are the best keycaps ever produced on planet Earth.
It has been a quiet couple of months but the work on MT3 profile and /dev/tty keycaps is proceeding at a steady pace.
The first step was to 3D print a full set of keys to check the ergonomics of our new design. We made very few updates to make sure that everything was spot on and then we proceeded to production. What you see pictured here is the very first batch of PBT injected prototypes. They are not final by any means, the color is not finalized yet and we still have to work on the surface texture, but we are getting closer to the real deal and I wanted to share with you the progress.
I just received the first full set of MT3 prototypes and I couldn’t hold myself, I had to show you the beauty of these things :) Bottom line is: they are better than I anticipated, and I’m usually very critical about my work.
Sorry for bad quality audio/video I just rushed it out.
By now you should know that I’m a retro-junkie. Signature Plastics SA keycaps are the closest we can ask to a vintage looking set but I’ve always seen it as an “hack”, not to mention that it is mostly an ABS set.
Few years ago Topre released the Hi-Pro keyboard which featured a wonderful set of high profile keycaps in a retrolucious beige colorway. I knew it had to be mine!
The keyboard was indeed sexy but the keycaps seemed still wrong, too high, too sharp and anyway still limited to topre switches. That got my maker-sense tickling and it is basically how the MT3 profile idea was born.