A little over a decade ago, the patents expired on the MX switch design. The first clones (mostly from China) were cheap and terrible. Then came the ones which were cheap and almost as good. Then came the ones which were better than the originals, and eventually the ones which were more innovative too.
Meanwhile, Cherry kept making the same product line which they had since the 1980s, with relatively minor improvements.
> Cherry kept making the same product line which they had since the 1980s, with relatively minor improvements.
Cherry was an American company that manufactured in the US until the automotive division was sold to a German company with keyboard switches thrown in. They moved production to Germany to capitalize on the perception of German quality. So, it’s not really surprising that it stagnated - it was a somewhat unwanted portion of a company and all the original folks got left behind.
> was sold to a German company... So, it’s not really surprising that it stagnated
As a German I _really_ feel this
Interesting, do you have any examples of the latter two categories? Looking for a replacement for my Cherry-Keyboard.
In this case, I'm talking specifically about the switches. There are various options from Gateron, Kailh and Outemu (including switches made by these companies but sold under different brands) which are widely regarded as superior to Cherry's options.
In terms of keyboards, a good all-rounder suggestion is to take a look at some options from Keychron.
I found a mini-keyboard from dealnews.com for $20 with multicolor LEDs, that seems reliable.
I found another at Best Buy with red LEDs, but otherwise similar, and I gave it to my coworker. He wore all the letters off the keycaps before he retired and took it home, but it was otherwise reliable.
I think these were both blue switch-based.
Several genuine Cherry keyboards were in the e-waste pile at work, so I rescued them. I am using one on a test PC with rhel8.
https://www.dealnews.com/Redragon-S107-BA-Gaming-Keyboard-an...
https://www.dealnews.com/Aula-F75-Gaming-Mechanical-Keyboard...
https://www.dealnews.com/K4-RGB-Tenkeyless-Mechanical-Gaming...
I wish that Cherry could get a cut of these.
I think magnetic hall-effect switches in standard keyboard are interesting innovation. Basically allows you to tune at what point of key press they activate.
Well, there's Gateron and Keychron.. But from what I gather Cherry still are considered the choice if you want longevity.
IMO Outemu blues are better than Cherry's. They're actually clickier.
Bought first board with swappable switches this month. And bit later about 70 different samples from Ali. Just the cheer quantity of that number is crazy to me.
Have to figure out if there is anything there when they arrive. But I think that is not even inclusive of some more expensive chinese brands.
Still, it is another interesting example how something can end up standard. That is the pin layout and the stem for keycap.
> Just the cheer quantity of that number is crazy to me.
The count is a bit inflated because different colorways of the same design by the same manufacturer are often sold as "different" switches, but even if you filter those duplicates out there's still a ton of distinct ones out there.
> The patent for the Cherry MX design finally expired in 2014.
OK, but did it really? I've seen this claim pop up occasionally, but nobody ever points to the patent in question. A quick Google search for "cherry mx patent 2014" shows the oldest result as being a Reddit comment from 2017 (https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/6am47a/comment/dh...):
> The patent expired in 2014. Many people have been paying the same price for mechanical keyboards with cheaper Chinese MX switches without knowing.
And an Ars Technica article from 2023 (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/hands-on-with-cherry...):
> For 20 years, Cherry’s patent on mechanical switches made it the only player around. That patent’s expiration around 2014, though, released the floodgates and allowed countless copycats and switches with varying levels of modification to the cross-stem design to pour in.
However, what seems to be the actual Cherry MX switch patent (US4467160A) was filed in 1983 and expired all the way back in 2003. So what exactly expired in 2014?
That line is wild, btw.
We've been paying less and actively avoiding lower quality Cherry branded MX compatible switches.
There is no reason to ever pay Cherry's pricing when Kalih and Gateron completely control that market now.
Also, the patent they're discussing, afaik, isn't MX specific, but more a specific thing in how Cherry's switches work (including the MX). Kalih and Gateron both built their businesses on making patent-avoiding designs that are superior.
Historically, before I went to laptop, I always bought Cherry.
I was looking for a portable external keeb recently, and I looked to Cherry and they simply had nothing which even approximately matched the form factor I needed. I wanted to buy from them, but couldn't.
that website is horrible, you can't reject the advertising cookies
At this point it seems inevitable that most of Europe is going to experience severe economic struggles.
Manufacturing in Germany is dying, making anything which is cost competitive is impossible and the measures trying to fix it are miniscule compared to the magnitude of the problem.
Germany doesn’t compete in cheap manufacturing, they compete in highly precise manufacturing. There are bunch of things that are only manufactured in Germany. You don’t hear those companies that much because they are not public but they are well known by the people who work in specific industries. When you combine them, they are way bigger than the German companies you hear everyday which are laying off people or closing factories.
For some reason, every time Europe is mentioned, there is always a comment about how Europe is struggling but when you look at the quality of life, happiness or life expectancy, all those numbers are higher than the US. People should stop obsessing with GDP.
> There are bunch of things that are only manufactured in Germany. You don’t hear those companies that much because they are not public but they are well known by the people who work in specific industries.
There is small town of 35,000 inhabitants around the corner from where I live. It produces 50% of the world's surgical equipment, from a base of around 600 companies.
There are good reasons why "made in Germany" is not as dead as some people want us to believe.
A common talking point is that the number of people working in engineering is decreasing over time. The implication is that "we are making less", but the real story is that "we are making things more efficiently".
A case in point is agriculture in Australia, where a crop farm might be as big as a thousand acres, whereas its common in SEA for a family to have just one or two acres. The huge scale is enabled by multi-million dollar tractors, drones, huge irrigation systems, etc...
German manufacturing is the same.
Google says that the average farm size in Australia is 10,000 acres. I didn't think they were significantly smaller than the farms in Saskatchewan Canada which average 2,000 acres.
certain people want the rest of the world to become like china and india, top down sweatshops so they can squeeze just a little more dollar out of people
I know many of these companies and I have even been invited to some of them.
I am not some American desperate to insult Europeans. I am a German, I work in the German industry, my livelihood depends on this economy.
>When you combine them, they are way bigger than the German companies you hear everyday which are laying off people or closing factories.
This plainly is not true. Even the "small champions" are struggling, because they are mostly suppliers to the large companies. A very significant part of the "Mittelstand" exists as specialized suppliers to the German car, Aerospace and Railway companies. If those are struggling, then the suppliers feel the pain just as much.
I am not German, but I live in Germany and things can be debated in detail and from various viewpoints. Things are rarely black and white.
But I am getting kind of tired of the canned half informed opinions like "outrageous energy prices" usually although not always followed by "closing cheap nuclear will do that for you". Energy like natural gas is still elevated compared to 2021 but it's nowhere near outrageous anymore. Electricity as an end consumer I can now get cheaper than in e.g. France, and they just announced dirt cheap industry prices etc. So things can be complex, what was the case in 2023 might not be in 2025. Things change but it takes too much effort to question if what was true two years ago is still really true, so we are stuck with these lazy views.
GDP is a leading indicator. You can't fund European-style transit and social services forever if there's less money coming in.
Which is why is not a good indicator...
Government overspending, for example, increases the GDP.
Even those companies are struggling nowadays with quality of goods made in China improving extremely fast.
> For some reason, every time Europe is mentioned, there is always a comment about how Europe is struggling but when you look at the quality of life, happiness or life expectancy, all those numbers are higher than the US.
But quality of life in Europe is decreasing fast. Pension is becoming unsustainable. Govts are going bankrupt. Infrastructure is collapsing. People correctly see that Europe as a whole will fall behind in some years unless things change
Govts are going bankrupt
No they aren't
Infrastructure is collapsing
No it isn't
>Govts are going bankrupt
>No they aren't
They might not be "going bankrupt" in the sense that they're imminently going to default on their debts, but debts have reached unprecedented levels[1], and show no signs of stopping. If you know someone who's racking up serious amounts of debt on sports gambling or whatever, it's safe to characterize that as "going bankrupt", even if you think they'll be able to make the minimum payments on their credit cards for the next few months.
[1] https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20251018_SRC..., https://www.economist.com/special-report/2025/10/13/across-t...
And millionaires and billionaires become more and more.
The problem isn’t money but the distribution.
Volkswagen payed 4.5 billion in dividends in 2024
>Volkswagen payed 4.5 billion in dividends in 2024
How does that compare to Germany's deficit? Or their impending pension obligations?
As the article goes into, Cherry had their lunch eaten because they barely made any attempt to innovate for decades. They coasted on their patents until they expired and then they were eaten alive, not just by cheaper alternatives, but by superior quality alternatives too. They were doomed regardless of where they were based.
> Manufacturing in Germany is dying
no surprise given the high taxes, extreme energy prices, massive bureaucracy, ridiculous regulations, work-hating employees and extremely business-hostile culture
I think it’s mostly the loss of Nord Stream
This is it.
A lot of people seem to be pushing some weird "anti-environmental" when the simple reality is that all energy costs
I cannot understate the impact of Russian Energy being cut off. Right now we're paying roughly twice as much than we used to for compressed natural gas brought via tanker ships from the us. I genuinely believe that the war in Ukraine is mostly about energy dependence on Russia and Ukraine losing its transfer fees through their old pipelines
It's just one piece of the puzzle. The cost for Co2 certificates is a more major reason. Starting 2027, hedge funds can buy these certificates which will be the nail in the coffin. It's basically Bitcoin on steroids with the difference that people buy Bitcoin out of free will, while the industry is forced to buy these certificates which get more scarce over time.
Anyone can already buy those certificates - but as its an artificial market where rules can be changed politically it's actually way more resistant to such things than regular markets, so if those hedge funds feel like they want to lose some billions they can certainly do that. There is a large enough stockpile of certificates + leeway when to submit them that any short term market squeeze will just be dealt with politically.
This argument, namely that politics can lower the price (by emitting extra certificates) when it gets too high, contradicts the whole reason for the mechanism in the first place: They claim a free market can find the right price better than politicians. But then they interfer anyway?
The price will rise much larger than a dumb, fixed increase-schedule would. Because the "market" wants it's profit.
It's the loss of Germany's last nuclear plants in 2023[1]. For a country supposedly aiming for net zero the shutdown of their nuclear infrastructure was a huge "own goal". Really sad to see.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/europe/germany-nuclear-phase-...
Strange that the share pf renewables has beem steadily increasing
Cost is not everything. Quality matters a lot.
If things are of higher quality, higher cost is acceptable to many.
As a trivial example, talking about a ca. 5 EUR purchase here, I bought a German-made pencil sharpener (Möbius-Ruppert nr. 0603 "Vertex").
It's basically a small metallic block (brass) with two holes with blades attached. It is surprisingly heavy and while it may sound strange, the sharpening result is simply excellent. (I bought some Japanese-made pencils to pair with it)
Chinese sharpeners can be had for under 0.5 EUR at best, they can be very cheap.
However, I had Chinese sharpeners and they actually were the reason I ended up buying a German one. Unless I lose the German sharpener, I will never need to buy another.
Yeah well there are now plenty of Chinese designed products with quality as good or better than what you get in Europe: roborock, dji, bambu labs. The old Chinese = bad quality is no longer true.
One thing that the Chinese are really good at is cost innovation, reducing costs as many ways possible to make their products affordable for the majority. Their aim for good enough quality.
I bet the sales ratio of the Chinese vs the German sharpeners exceed 20:1
Just stop trading manufactured products with Asia.
Their people are still transitioning from agrarian hardship to urban factory life, and there seems to be a zeal that comes with this transition, a willingness to work hard for what here today would be considered little.
Good for them. But in Europe we had this transition already and we became disillusioned with the lifestyle tradeoffs.
Having our people do nothing productive while all of our life objects are made by others is not sustainable and it is awful for the morale of our peoples. It needs to be stopped.
> It needs to be stopped.
forcing germans to buy everything at 10 times of what it costs now is not the way to rescue the country
Can you please think through what would happen a bit further? What you say here is a first order analysis on a very short time scale. It does not capture the end state of such a change. The acceptable transition period for a change depends on the severity of the problem the change is targeting, and in this case here the problem is quite severe, so our acceptable transition period should at least be measured in half decades, not weeks.
No, we've been trying it here in Argentina for the last 75 years.
When we started, we were one of the richest countries in the world.
The end state is worse than you can possibly imagine.
It's not the way to rescue the country.
The harsh reality is that the world as it is depends on what amounts to slave labor, and that is priced into (or out of, rather) the goods that are imported. The mental and economic gymnastics involved in justifying it or pretending otherwise are just window dressing.
How is Apple not a forbidden product after this wall comes down?
Perhaps you can limit the allowed manufactured units to India, but the U.S. also wants those.
>Their people are still transitioning from agrarian hardship to urban factory life, and there seems to be a zeal that comes with this transition, a willingness to work hard for what here today would be considered little.
You don't find hordes of Chinese peasants in their dark factories.
Do you think that JLCPCB offer such prices because they have 2000000 lowly paid machinists drilling the pcb holes manually? China invests in all kinds of automation like crazy
Deindustrialization isn't fun. Don't worry, some of us have been down that road.
Sincerely, the American Rust Belt
