I love it, from what I see. I will definitely be an early buyer (US version...).
I wish we could all have a real conversation about key layouts, though. The layout with the less reachable left shift and right enter/return is just dumb. It's like putting the door lock control on the outside of your car door so you have to roll the window down to reach out and unlock the door. In place of where the door lock belongs, they put the hood release lever. Obviously that would be a really stupid design since we need to unlock the door much more than we need to open the hood. And that's how I feel about the tradeoffs between the US and US International layouts.
The tilda and backtick key is much less used than the shift key, so robbing reachable space from shift to put that less needed key is absurd. So is pushing squeezing the return key out of reach of the right pinky. Someone who was not a touch typist designed this, and they should be made to pay for the guaranteed loss in productivity that comes from using it.
Sorry for the rant. But really, I wish this could be resolved. It sucks that I cannot walk into an Apple store in Europe and get one with "good" US keyboard. (You can still order US layout in Europe.)
Like you I have issues with the iso layout, my dislike comes from the enter key. It’s a fundamental layout issue that trips me every time. Especially on Apple products, where the right side of the keyboard is brought in by .25/.5U, so that the descending portion of the enter key is stupidly narrow
I wish we could all have a real conversation about key layouts, though. The layout with the less reachable left shift and right enter/return is just dumb. It's like putting the door lock control on the outside of your car door so you have to roll the window down to reach out and unlock the door. In place of where the door lock belongs, they put the hood release lever. Obviously that would be a really stupid design since we need to unlock the door much more than we need to open the hood. And that's how I feel about the tradeoffs between the US and US International layouts.
The tilda and backtick key is much less used than the shift key, so robbing reachable space from shift to put that less needed key is absurd. So is pushing squeezing the return key out of reach of the right pinky. Someone who was not a touch typist designed this, and they should be made to pay for the guaranteed loss in productivity that comes from using it.
Sorry for the rant. But really, I wish this could be resolved. It sucks that I cannot walk into an Apple store in Europe and get one with "good" US keyboard. (You can still order US layout in Europe.)