I’ve recently been looking at some of the heavily marketed mechanical keyboards on the market. Take your pick of companies… Razer, Das, CoolerMaster, Ducky, Matias, others.
I actually own a das Model S Professional for Mac that I bought less than 6 months ago but have already retired. I was using it on my hackintosh. For some reason its KRO is poor. I don’t know if it’s a Mac issue or a keyboard issue, but I regularly had problems with missed keys even though I am certain the keys were struck. I know because it’s repeatable. So even though there are many who regard the das Model S Professional as a very good keyboard, I think it’s not worth anywhere near its price. Cherry MX blue switches are nice, but the das is doing something between the switches and USB that renders the whole experience rather suboptimal.
And of course the keycaps on the das for Mac are low quality. The printing wears off very quickly, and isn’t very readable even when new. For someone that switches keyboards and operating systems multiple times per day by necessity, poor keycap printing is a problem. I replaced the keycaps with a custom set I designed myself and bought from wasdkeyboards.com. I used black on white and had no signs of the keycap printing wearing off after many months of every day use. If you insist on buying a das keyboard for your Mac, I highly recommend replacing the keycaps with ones that are actually useful. You can find my design here.
My conclusion: the Unicomp buckling-spring keyboards are still king of mechanical keyboards, being based on the venerable IBM Model M. For the Mac, you want the Spacesaver M, in black or white.
I’ll give the Matias Tactile Pro the runner-up spot. Note that I have not yet tried their Quiet Pro, which has modified Alps white switches and is quieter than the old Tactile Pro.
What am I using right now? A moshi luna backlit keyboard. Yes, it has scissor switches, which most mechanical keyboard lovers despise. However, the moshi luna is the closest thing I’ve found to my Macbook Pro’s keyboard, so it’s at least familiar to me. And I do like the backlighting, though I could live without the silly bling of the lighted acrylic surrounding the keyboard. In fact I might paint it or cover it with very thin aluminum.