![]() This is probably why IBM gave up on buckling sleeves for portable computer keyboard assemblies after 1996 - they may have seen which way the wind was blowing (laptops were going to get thinner and thinner) thus they jumped ship to use the same tech the industry was moving towards and still uses today. But the fact the sleeve itself is usually the key's stabilising element was probably a reason sleeves were used in the first place, thus a sleeve so small that it needs its own stabiliser would defeat one of the reasons for their utilisation. Theoretically, IBM or Lexmark could have stabilised every buckling sleeve key in a similar manner too. For rubber domes, this issue led to the use of scissor-switches on most laptop keyboards (ie, every key gets its own stabiliser to offset how small the rubber dome is). The smaller sleeve probably has a harder time stabilising the keycap. I guess it may be a side effect of the scaling down of the sleeve and keycap size. It's certainly not a critical issue in my opinion, but I've definitely felt this issue at some point during usage and should be noted if you've used an M3 to M6-1 before and you're not expecting this. However, its keys are a bit more prone to binding than my other IBM buckling sleeve keyboards. Key-feel alone, it's still fine and sports the characteristic snappiness feeling, delicious sound, and lack of mush due to the fundamental differences between sleeves and rubber domes. The key-travel is of course a bit shorter meaning the keyboard feels a bit more 'binary', but not by much since it's only a 0.5mm difference. But, it's definitely the weaker keyboard amongst my collection of Model M3s, M4s and M6s. Since it uses IBM buckling sleeves, I knew I'd probably like this keyboard before I even touched it and indeed I do. ![]() It was only fitting that I wrote pretty much all of this article using the two X0044s, so I've gotten pretty familiar with it over the two months or so I've owned Keyboard A. It may help explain why I believe this keyboard's connection to those keyboards is both cool and, in my opinion, special. Note: I highly recommend you also read the first two sections of my Revealed: IBM Model M3 & M6 laptop buckling sleeves keyboards article either before or after as well. Perhaps due to the latter issue, Apple made this dedicated keyboard (model X0044) available in early 1996 upon the release of Newton OS 2.0. Released in 1993 it was quite ahead of its time but let down by its "high price and early problems with its handwriting recognition feature" and eventually axed by Steve Jobs upon his return to Apple. The Apple Newton itself is an interesting device. I didn't have any evidence during the M3/M6/M6-1 article so it wasn't included in that article either. Whilst I didn't research into this then, the idea persisted in my mind in the following months. During email correspondence, Jack laptop.pics (who has contributed to two Admiral Shark's Keyboards articles now) raised the possibility that his Apple Newton MessagePage Keyboard felt almost like it was buckling sleeve. So when Apple Fellow Alan Kay burst into Sculley’s office and warned him that “ next time, we won’t have Xerox” (to borrow ideas from), he took it seriously.The journey of this discovery stretches back to the 2nd July 2021, a day before I published my seminal Model M4 story article. Although Sculley made Apple profitable by cutting costs and introducing new Macintosh models, he felt lost without Apple’s visionary founder. However, their relationship broke down, and Jobs resigned from Apple two years later after a bitter power struggle. Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple in 1976, had wooed marketing guru John Sculley away from PepsiCo to become the new Apple CEO in 1983. Yet while the Newton was a failure, it galvanized Apple engineers to create something better-and in some ways led to the creation of the iPad and the iPhone. ![]() Even though the device improved dramatically over time, it failed to gain market share, and it was discontinued in 1997. Widely mocked in popular culture at the time, the Newton became a poster child for expensive but useless high-tech gadgets. It was released to great fanfare a year later, but as a product, it could only be described as a flop. ![]() Thirty years ago, on May 29, 1992, Apple announced its most groundbreaking and revolutionary product yet, the Newton MessagePad.
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