[nottheengineer]

They used to use topre switches which many people swear by and combined it with a modern design. Compared to the gaming keyboards with MX blues and the ultra-cheap rubberdome boards of the time, it was a great package so they gained popularity.

Not sure how they got traction at the start because the main selling point was the weird layout and they didn't have topre switches yet.

This one doesn't have topre either. It still sounds great, but if I wanted MX switches and a trackpoint, I'd go for a Tex shinobi. Shortcut hell is a problem indeed, I want to Alt+F4 with one hand and on a 60% that's impossible to implement without something like spaceFN, which again has to be turned off for gaming.