Also, one always can map the Enlgish and "Native" keymaps in one's operating system, while using an ANSI keyboard and change to each keymap as needed, just to be able to write in the desired manner, but I tend to think that, that implies more strain to your fingers.
#Ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017 iso#
Maybe the bigger frequently pressed keys in the ANSI layout are easily to reach and find without looking and, like you say, minimize the fatigue, but after a while using an ISO keyboard, it is just a matter of time and muscle memory. That's whay I vote for the ISO layout, in my opinion, it can adapt to more keymaps without issues (or at least, less issues than the ANSI layout presents). Wouldn't know if one layout is more ergonomic than the other, but definitely I find the ISO one to be more versatile / flexible I say this because the ability of the ISO layout to adapt to many more different keymaps than the ANSI one, for example, I can map my ISO keyboard to the English (US, GB, etc.) language without losing any characters, but it isn't the same story the other way around, If I map any ANSI keyboard to the Spanish (Spain, Latin-America) language I wouldn't be able to use the " characters (since they are assigned to that extra ISO key), and for that matter, would be the case for any language that uses more characters than the English language. I'm an ISO keyboard layout user (Spanish), I've been using ISO layout since the very beginning I started my computer related career. How about you in this respect? Let us know in the following poll until it's open! Also, as a developer, I strongly dislike that my native layout unnecessarily remaps dozens of characters like !, # compared to the standard US layout.
![ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017 ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017](https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/mk_SEDT_otherviews01-640x352.jpg)
On the Hungarian layout the ISO key translates to "í" which is a Hungarian accented character, but I write Hungarian text almost solely with US characters, without accents. For example, I as a Hungarian should use ISO but using ANSI.
![ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017 ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017](https://www.topmate.cc/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/美版-scaled.jpg)
On the other hand, it's also interesting to see that a fair number of people use the opposite standard that they should be using based on their home country.
![ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017 ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017](https://4.img-dpreview.com/files/p/E~C50x0S797x598T1200x900~articles/5265660826/Kolude_4.jpeg)
Regardless of ergonomics, many of you have made it clear that the ISO key is a necessity for you and some of you are too used to the L-shaped Enter and aren't willing to unlearn your muscle memory. Backslash is closer by 1 unit and there's an extra ISO key but they aren't that frequently used so it's not a great tradeoff. Enter and Left Shift is pressed at least hundreds, if not thousands of times per day and they're about 1 unit (20 millimeters = 0.8 inch) farther from the center on the ISO layout. How much farther, exactly?īased on the above, it's hard to argue that ISO is more ergonomical. Now we have an extra ISO key painted in yellow, but Left Shift and Enter got farther from the center of the keyboard which is a bummer given their frequent use. (Please note that we won't provide a full-blown ISO layout, but a half-ISO layout featuring the extra ISO key and a bar-shaped Enter key.)
![ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017 ergonomic keyboards for mac 2017](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qCpdZm.jpg)
I also painted Left Shift and Enter in green and Backslash in blue because these keys differ on ANSI vs ISO. There's a thick red line in between to show the center of the keyboard for measurement purposes. Let's start with ANSI.Īs you can see, the keys of the home row on which our fingers reside in touch typing position are filled with red. Lately, I've written about the ergonomics of the "6" key and given the vast popularity of that post, I decided to compare the ANSI and ISO keyboard layouts in the same manner from an ergonomics standpoint.