I hope other manufacturers don't follow their lead. Greasy, bacteria covered, minimal travel keyboards are a great way to make people hate typing.

If your minimal travel keyboard is greasy and bacteria covered, I guarantee you your maximum depth mechanical keyboard is just as greasy and bacteria covered.

Not if you have a slightly textured keyboard and clean it on occasion. Apple's dead flat plastic keys on their laptop and bluetooth keyboards are a perfect growth medium for bacteria, while also accreting oil much more readily.

What's anti-microbial about bumps?

In my experience it just creates more hard to clean grooves for bacteria and dirt. Not exactly a challenge for microbes.

I think greasy and bacteria covered might just be a personal problem, and not a symptom of short key travel ;)

No, its a common complaint that the keys still look greasy post-cleaning on Mac keyboards. Apple doesn't texture them with an anti-microbial texturing, preferring to leave them deadpan flat. This speeds the accretion of oils and gives bacteria a nice, comfortable surface to grow on.

What is "anti-microbial texturing"?

How does longer travel prevent grease or bacteria? If anything, bigger keys have larger surface area for grease and bacteria to stick on. There was a joke that programmer can survive a month by eating what he shakes out of their keyboard, does not really apply to Apple keyboards any more.

The anti-microbial coating (aka the small matte bumps on your standard keyboard) impair bacteria growth and slow oil accretion on the keys.