iMac M1 keyboard and mouse

We use Cherry keyboard and Mouses, both wired. And the wireless stuff goes in a box in a cupboard. It's one of the reasons for us to move to Mac Minis this year.

Opiton, cheap generic USB keyboard and mouse. Plug and play, I've got a 5 year old Dell one tuck away in a drawer that gets pulled out if the Apple Bluetooth ones fail to connect

I'm sure it's a lost cause but I've been hammering our Apple team on offering an iMac without the keyboard and mouse option for Education. I think its ridiculous we have to resort to trading in the wireless keyboard and mouse, or hoping to find someone else who can use it. So far my Apple account team has been pretty useless, but that's nothing new.

I'm sure it would help to have more in the education space complain to their Apple reps as well.

We went with the Cherry KC-6000 for Mac keyboard. We're very happy with the feel of the keys, the fact that it has an Apple key layout, and that it has a good match appearance-wise for the silver iMac. (Note that if you order, make sure you get the one for Mac; there is a KC-6000 with a standard Windows keyboard layout as well. The Mac keyboard is Cherry part number JK-1610US-1.)

For mouse, we went with a Kensington "Mouse in a Box". (We could have gone with a more generic mouse, but this mouse has a reasonably solid feel, and has a longer warranty. The cost wasn't bad either.)

Both are USB-A devices, so we also purchased a Tripp-Lite USB 3.1 Gen 1 Portable Hub - USB Type-C M to x4 USB A (model U460-004-4A-AL) to connect the USB-A devices to the USB-C ports on the iMac. (Again here, we could have gone with simple USB-C to USB-A adapters, but this gave us a couple extra USB-A ports in case students bring in flash drives, and was only slightly more expensive than just getting two of the adapters.)

When I complained to our Apple inside sales rep about the fact that wireless devices were totally unsuitable for a lab environment, the only answer they had for us was to forward a sales brochure from "Secondlifemac.com" offering to buy the keyboards for $30 ea. and mice for $20 ea. The suggestion was that although my complaint was heard and agreed with, there is likely to be no wired keyboards from Apple for the new iMacs.

Have you seen these? https://matias.ca/aluminum/mac/

When we got new machines for our labs they came with the wireless keyboards and mice. I used all the old wired keyboards and mice but still needed a few so made an offer to anyone who would "donate" their wired keyboard and mouse that they could swap for a brand new wireless combination. Just make sure that what you are getting if you do that is working.

@georgecm12 Based on where your University is located I can tell you got the exact same unacceptable response as me. I escalated to the regional manager and that was equally useless. I don't really care if they release a USB-C keyboard and mouse, but I really wish they would understand Education needs an option without any mouse or keyboard.

@dlondon Yes, on paper those look good as well. Nice things about them is that they include the USB-C adapter, and have a USB hub on them to connect the mouse to. The reviews on Amazon, on the other hand, gave me serious pause - lots of complaints about them not registering keystrokes properly.

Cherry is a reputable keyboard and keyboard component manufacturer, which is why I gravitated to them when I discovered the keyboard from them. The drawback is having to get a USB-C adapter for both the keyboard and mouse.

We've got 50 M1 iMacs that are going to be set up in labs, and I'm weighing options between reusing the "old" keyboards and purchasing adapters for all of them or setting up some type of honor system (and potentially lying to the students with claims that we track the GPS location of all keyboards and mice lol)