Market Lull?

Community General
33

Anyone say Norbazzar? Please?

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34

still waiting to find out why Project URSA went dark :neutral_face:

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35

I personally have reached endgame myself, which was more or less just returning to the HHKB I started out with haha. I’ve been thinking of getting rid of my non topre stuff because I just don’t end up using it.

I’m excited by the prospect of more topre projects in the future but ultimately I found my preference and it leaves me limited in desire for a lot of what’s in the market now

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36

I understand the person designing it had a life crisis and won’t have time to work on it for the foreseeable future.

37

We do find ourselves at a relative low point for buying but that’s to be expected with summer, loosening restrictions outside, inflation, and basically 2.5 straight years of hobby growth (many GBs to deliver thru the remainder of 2022).

But - there’s plenty of stuff to be excited about coming up! For me: multiple Topre projects upcoming for Alice and 40s fans, some fun trackball/pad implementations being tested, and finally receiving all my GBs

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38

any trackball/pad stuff for 60% and up?

39

i can’t DM you on here for some reason. Do you know the address of matt3o’s discord? I can’t find it anywhere

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40

Weird, I’ll check my settings. In the meantime, he has it linked in his most recent blog post: matt3o

41

Not that I’m aware of - most of them are 40% unibody split with columnar stagger. Which makes sense given that the proper ergonomic crowd tend to use trackballs more frequently from what I can tell. Tho if the implementation is sound and repeatable, hopefully we will see some larger boards with it too!

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42

There are a lot of good points in this thread and it feels like there are a lot of factors in play, both in the mech community and the wider (real) world. Personally, it feels like the market has matured a LOT in the past two years both in terms of number of people in the hobby (or dabbling) and number of products available.

There are huge numbers of in-stock boards, caps, and switches from more vendors than you can count, but all of this breeds a sort of lukewarm interest. You can dip into the mech world, buy a really solid budget/mid-range board from Keychron or Epomaker and be out in less than a week. It’s not the same level of focused excitement when everyone is looking at the shiny new whatever and waiting weeks or months until they can get their perfect setup.

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43

I think for a few years now the hobby has taken a turn for the worse, entirely becoming about what could be bought and sold, not what could be done that’s interesting in the keyboard world itself. Now supply has finally slightly surpassed demand and status signalling (or FOMO…) means less when anyone can pick most things off a shelf.

I hope we can all turn towards the doing and making side of the hobby, like modernizing history (similar to Matt3o’s, Norbauer’s, and Keymacs’s attempts at retro futurism), or towards pushing the boundaries of what we can do with what we build (similar to the technology jumps possible because of QMK or maybe even the Wooting One).

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44

One of the problems of the hobby is also the dependence on the MX switch platform, which is a huge limitation to interesting switch designs (no, I don’t consider the same switch in 1000 different colors an interesting design). There are quite a few hobbyists who design PCBs for other switch platforms (Alps, Space Invaders, SMK, Topre etc.) and even switches with inspiration from those other platforms (like the Zeal Clickiez) but they are really rare and too much of a trouble to use, because you need to harvest those switches from other keyboards. I just hope manufacturers start making switches based on those platforms but without the drawbacks the originals had. Who wouldn’t buy a modernized version of Alps that’s compatible with MX PCBs and has MX mounts? I for one know I would.

Keyboards-wise, I also agree we should turn towards DIYism. 99% of the keyboards sold are generic and have nothing interesting going on, same for keycaps, switches and every single keyboard part. Unique and interesting designs are unfortunately very hard to come across.

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45

My only relevant observation on this topic is that I’ve noticed many keyboard vendors are offering discounts and running sales–something relatively new in this hobby for me. That would tell me that supply is outstripping demand. I can only guess as to why. Could the hobby user-base be shrinking?

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46

Exactly that. Back in February I speculated that something like this is likely to happen and right now we are definitely heading in that direction.

I’m curious to see how this plays out, especially with the GBs that are in production and likely going to hit the market in turbulent times. People on the lookout might soon find r/mm to offer some very tempting deals.

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47

This is my jam :guitar::drum::notes::saxophone::banjo:

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48

I’ve been watching the geekhack IC/GB threads for a few years and noticed that the IC is down by at least 50% posts per week (and has been for months). The GB thread is down less. (Maybe someone else mentioned this already?)

Personally I am on keeb haitus until my outstanding group buys come in. I have about 5-6 that are now around 2 or more years old. Mostly I am just annoyed at all of my unfinished projects because of this. Eventually I’ll get that TLK layout I am still waiting for… one way or another… eyes dremel.

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49

Agree with pretty much everyone else seems to be an evolutionary time rather than revolutionary. Definite slowdown on releases (at least in regards to things I am interested in). The turning away from GMK at least compared to a year ago (imo maybe not the worst thing long term 1.5-2 year group buys were getting out of control).

But here are a a few things I am optimistically about (even if they aren’t as sexy as a brand new keyboard case…

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50

It’s like they heard you. :rofl:

This is actually pretty amazing since I totally wanted to try more ergo layouts AND a topre anything.

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51

im glad to see this–the designer sounds vaguely familiar (viktus) but I cannot place it.

i’m in a weird place of coming from little to no appreciable mx or alternative layout experience and i went straight into the topre koolaid. so it’s interesting to see/hear about what i consider mx-land stuff being done in EC. i hope that the sound signature and roundedness of topre isn’t lost in translation especially since custom projects will make use of other plate materials, mounting styles, and case materials.

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52

It’s a bit of both for sure. Part of it is for sure the economy putting pressure on consumers to be more conservative with their spending but also there has been a tonne of innovation over the last 2 years with new products constantly coming to market. This can result in burnout and consumer fatigue in the market which I think has been happening now in the enthusiast tech market. Seasonality for the first time since the pandemic started is finally playing a factor with less people staying indoors and diverting their spending towards travel and other hobbies like sports which are picking back up.

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