Apple used to use full mechanical keyboards on their laptops -- the Powerbook 1xx era (with the exception of the 100) had wonderful keyboards. Good feel, good travel. Over time they flattened down, buy the ibook/tibook era they were super flat. Still mechanical, and popping the tabs at the top opened it up for memory/disk access. The downside there was that they were flexy, and not great to type on.

The island keyboards came in when they put the keyboard base inside the aluminum case and screwed it in with 60 of the smallest screws you've ever seen. Pain in the ass when you needed to replace one, but _way_ more solid and better typing experience.