Auf Wiedersehen, Das

I am typing this out on a Keychron K8 wireless mechanical keyboard. The beloved Das Keyboard has been relegated to the closet, simply because it commits the cardinal sin of the modern digital word: having a cord. The wireless Keychron’s convenience of movement outweighs the higher typing quality of the renowned Das keyboard. Admittedly, it’s rather decent on Keychron, but the Das has that extra bit of solidity and sturdiness.

The Das is also significantly more expensive. As always, you definitely get what you pay for.

I would say any mechanical keyboard is better than the standard stuff. The increased response and feel to the fingers is what makes them such a sought after accessory for the computing enthusiasts crowd. The Keychron K8 isn’t the best at delivering those attributes, but it’s just about the only game in town if you want a wireless mechanical keyboard that’s catered to the Mac platform. It comes right out of the box with Mac-centric keys. The media keys on the ‘F’ row work correctly with the OS with zero tweaking.

Perhaps the best attribute about the K8 is that it’s quieter than the Das keyboard. It makes clicking and clacking through these blog posts in the morning a more pleasant experience for me and perhaps my sleeping housemates. Relatively speaking, of course: mechanical keyboards are innately loud. If quietness is your supreme, then mechanical keyboard is not for you.

Hopefully this Keychron K8 unit will last for a very long time, though as with all wireless electronics, the life of the battery will dictate everything. I bought the poverty-spec model without the hot-swapping capability and only white backlighting. It was on sale for about $65 dollars on Amazon. No affiliate money for me if you buy it through the link.

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Testing, one two.

Apple Airpods are magical

The Apple Airpods are awesome. 

I finally bit the not inexpensive bullet and purchased a set of these wireless earphones. Not since the original iPad have another Apple product been engineered so profoundly complete and joyful to use. Steve Jobs would've been proud of Airpods.

They are, in essence, Earpods with the cords chopped off, therefore if Earpods weren't particularly comfortable for you, then Airpods are going to be more of the same. Thankfully the corded version have alway fitted me wonderfully, and with the Airpods on it's supremely comfortable; no amount of extreme head angles have yet to dislodge them. They simply disappear from thought once I put them on. 

I didn't think going wireless with regular earphones would make such a big difference, but it truly does. Walking around listening to music on the Airpods is the closest facsimile to having background music playing me while I go about daily business. Unlike the equally awesome Bose QC35 headphones, Airpods weight almost nothing and doesn't block outside sound, so my motive freedom is way less encumbered. I can walk around with Airpods all day, though sadly the meager five hour battery life puts a stop to that fantasy.

Connecting the Airpods to the iPhone is so painlessly easy It would be an insult to call it pairing. All I had to do was flip open the charging case and a graphic instantly popped up on the iPhone prompting a click to complete.

Thanks to whatever voodoo magic Apple has done with the W1 chipset in the Airpods, the bluetooth range is fantastic. The Airpods don't feature an on/off switch because the sleep/wake is instantaneous: as soon as I insert Airpods into my ears, sensors know to power on and resume connection. Conversely, taking them out automatically pauses whatever is playing and it will turn itself off after a period of inactivity. 

So now when I use other earphones and headphones I am baffled as to why they can't similarly act this intelligent. Making people do such a thing seems to be a forte of Apple: when Touch ID came out, inputting a passcode to unlock other devices were an utter pain.

Apple often get lambasted for calling its products 'magical', but if there ever is one device that deserves that moniker, it's the Airpods. It just might be my favorite consumer tech product I bought this year.