BMW started off making aircraft engines over a hundred years ago when powered aircraft were first being developed .... which is why their logo is a circle with four different coloured quarters, it's the image of a spinning propeller
Just don't ask them what they were doing between 1933 and 1945
No idea. Yamaha was doing pianos long before they were doing motorcycles, so it can't be them. I can't think of a company that started with motorcycles and then moved into pianos.
Yamaha has the beginner wind instrument market by the balls right now. Conn-Selmer became garbage over the last 15 years or so, and Jupiter has been known to be "the nicest dogshit in the business" for some time. Yamaha literally just had to maintain the same level of instrument quality while the former "great brands" became cheap stencil crap.
I can't speak to the quality but I'd imagine they're great. Most composers and arrangers I know use a pretty simple MIDI keyboard setup, or have become keyboard power users in their software and use a QWERTY keyboard.
Personally, I'm in group 2 (QWERTY keyboard) I have a digital piano at the workstation to test out voicings, but when I actually write I'm using keybindings on a QWERTY keyboard. Full disclosure - most of the writing I do is for schools, so I use notation software.