Thanks for the example!
It's a good looking keyboard. How different is it from Lily?

> should support are the ones who are constantly updating through all the delays and being transparent. Not the ones who just sit in silence with no updates.

But the only thing it changes is that you just support more communicative options. It doesn't encourage them to choose better suppliers.
Maybe the problem is the fact that everybody wants to cheap out and have 50% of the profit from an item, so they are choosing China and other cheap and affected sources.
I have a vision, that a person who wants to make a group buy doesn't want to end at one action. In my perfect world this person would do the whole thing professionally, by for example hiring a worker and buying a CNC machine to create switchplates and to pack them. And of course you can extrapolate it further to other parts of the keyboard.
In this way you have to pay worker, you have to invest money in tools and you have to really commit.
What I see happens instead, is an enthusiast who has a good idea and sometimes even skill in graphic design. At best. At worst it is a business who is a fan, but also wants to purely earn as much as possible. None of it is bad, but the latter is cheaper and that's what appeals to people. What I am preaching is that we should choose the former option. What changes? With the proper demand and pressure from customers, both will get professional - the enthusiast and the businessman. In order to provide a basic quality of service (meeting deadlines, or even having the product in stock instead of doing a pathological form of fulfilment) they will have to choose local manufacturers or will have to have proper backoffice (facility) to manufacture in house. Yes, it will lower the income (profit) but it will give us a normal quality of service.

[deleted]

It’s hilarious people here think they’re hot shit over one of the geekiest hobbies I’ve seen. I still love the hobby tho

The vast majority of the time the group buy runners are giving what timeline they are given by the manufacturers. What you recommend is pretty unrealistic. I agree that the manufacturers should be held to a higher standard but at the moment everything is messed up globally. China still has mandatory Covid shut downs closing and ending production, the global supply chain is actually still messed up, there are a ton of things outside of the runners control that are affecting all of these group buys. The runners you should support are the ones who are constantly updating through all the delays and being transparent. Not the ones who just sit in silence with no updates.

Heh.

Damn. I didn't know u could use c*m that way

[deleted]

The lulu from boardsource Was also pretty much on time.

You got it wrong. You don't put any thermalnpaste between cooler and cpu because they are perfectly flat.

I think there is a downvote bot in this sub. Even innocuous questions or comments gets downvoted.

You clearly don’t seem to understand how industrial manufacturing works, or that GBs exist in other markets (also know as crowdfunding) to meet niche market demand for custom products that wouldn’t get made otherwise. GMK and others like Signature Plastics without GBs would continue to make the standard black on white keycap sets they sell to commercial customers like on point of sale terminals.

There’s plenty of more generic options available for those not wanting to join a group buy, in addition to extras from previously run group buys. People don’t realize that before group buys, your options were essentially prebuilt keyboards with Cherry Blues, Reds, Blacks, or Browns (or equivalent from Gateron, Kaihl, etc), with beige, black on white, or sometimes white on black keycaps. Group buys is why there’s the customization that exists in the hobby, and what developed a new niche market.

Nobody has to join a GB, also, the clone manufacturers could easily offer to pay a royalty to designers - they choose not to because they don’t care about IP and make more profit not doing so. They don’t want to work with designers, they brag about stealing and have even stolen the trademarks for known entry level brands like Kaihl, Outemu, Vortexgear, Anne Pro.

At the end of the day, if you’re not the one being harmed it’s easy to be entitled about IP. But there’s no reason to pretend you’re better than others because you chose to not support the creators.

These aren’t digital goods either, there’s a significant fixed cost to setup and incremental to make more, it’s not like the near zero marginal cost for digital goods.

Also, clones exist for in stock keycap sets, simply cuz they can. Counterfeits exist for high end keyboards as well. The hobby isn’t just $50-200 keyboards, people spend thousands on some keyboards, and group buys are not for people new to the hobby.

I got the tri mode pcb, so far I haven’t had any problems. I feel like I read somewhere about someone else’s problems with the wired pcb, but if it persists I’d contact qwerty keys.

Nice try, don't be discourage, just keep practicing.

I don't understand why bilingual keyboards are almost always English + Japanese, and the few that aren't are usually something weird like English + Norse.

I just want an English + Greek keyboard that doesn't look ugly as sin. There's only one such keycap set I've found out there, and it's hideous.

See the who harming the x argument thing. I havr heard that over the decade's in music film games etc

Clones in this case are a symptom of the GMK setup. Games for instance used to have bad piracy but steam made games purchase easy and reasonable and piracy dropped.

Then look at tv and movies. Netflix made big inroads to piracy. Then companies got greedy and started their own services. Made watching harder and piracy went up

If GMK made keycaps and listed what they made clones would not have the same impact. But as they announce then make you wait 1-2 years clones come out and have a head start. GMK are the ones hurting the artists here imho

That logo glow is somethin else ✨🥹👍🏻

Ikki68 auroras should’ve definitely arrived btw.

But why no ISO-Nordic layout? It would have been the perfect fit :(

Theres meta with keyboards? What is the meta?💀. Im building/modding my first keyboard soon just waiting for my ktt kang whites to come. Idk if that meta or not lol. I got a rk84 to do the mods on

I would say we should collectively either only attend group buys from hosts that meet deadlines or we shouldn't attend any. At least that's what I am planning to do.

I only managed to hear that Keyrative is meeting their deadlines so far. I will be glad to learn about other sellers.

So what is your suggestion to alleviate this problem?

This.

People helping out in the questions thread aren't certified keyboard professionals that know everything. We're just enthusiasts like yourself that take the time out of our day to help out new people in the community.

It's not much bigger than a TKL, about 5cm.

I always remember the Bruce Lee quote going something along the lines “in the beginning a punch is a punch and a kick is a kick. Then you learn more and everything becomes unique and intricate. Then you learn enough and a kick is simply a kick and a punch is simply a punch.” Not exact but how my brain remembered it after all these years.