8 ms·

This release will finally add support for the Apple Magic Trackpad 2

eponeponepon 8y ago
Neat news. I've been thinking about trying one of those out for a while now - I really want to find a pointing/clicking device other than a traditional mouse as my hands age, but nothing's properly worked yet.
- q3k 8y ago
  Have you tried a trackball? (like the Logitech MX Ergo)
  - eponeponepon 8y ago
    Oh yes - definitely not for me generally! I find them okay for some gaming purposes though, oddly enough.
    - dpwm 8y ago
      I've actually played quite a few FPS games with a Kensington trackball. It takes some getting used to, but if you set the ball up so that a 180° rotation corresponds to the cursor travelling the width of the screen it seems to work well. Disable acceleration on a trackball – whatever your use.
  - joshschreuder 8y ago
    I tried this recently and got fairly bad pain in my thumb (bottom towards the palm area). I’ve since switched back to just using my old vertical mouse and the pain is gone. It’s a shame because I did get used to it and quite like using the ball.
    - mkl 8y ago
      Maybe try a Kensington Expert Mouse [1]. I use these a lot. I'd suggest the wired version - the wireless one seemed to interfere with my Bluetooth keyboard (probably the keyboard's fault though). [1] https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/expert-mouse-wired-trackball/ https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/exp...
      - eikenberry 8y ago
        I've used the Kensington SlimBlade for years and really love it. The only difference from the Expert Mouse is that instead of a scroll ring you just spin the ball in place. Completely eliminated the RSI I was getting in my mouse hand and is my favorite hardware for mouse-like functionality. https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/SlimBlade-Trackball/ https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/Sli...
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  I still wonder how well it'd work without Apple's software to drive the thing. Apple's trackpads are always less magic when using Windows, for instance.
  - teekert 8y ago
    Yes, isn't it crazy how this seems to be something that is soooo hard to duplicate? I never feel the need for a mouse on my macbook, switch to Windows or Linux: I immediatly set out out to find my mouse (in contrast, external mice are just a pain in MacOS I feel that the acceleration is way off, like I'm mousing through sticky mud, and methods to adjust it were removed 5-6 versions of osX ago.)
    - zapzupnz 8y ago
      On the topic of the mouse, I suspect you (along with nearly everybody else I know) is used to Windows-style tracking. Me, I'm used to macOS-style acceleration, so using mouses on other machines always feels inaccurate to me. But back to the topic, it is rather interesting how hard trackpads are to replicate on other systems with the same level of quality as Apple's own trackpads under macOS. I suspect that's why one of the recent Windows 10 updates brought in consistent APIs for trackpads and multi-touch gestures. If Microsoft are only just getting around to it now, I've my doubts there'd be any consistency on the matter over in Linux land. Not so much for lack of trying, but in a land of multiple desktop environments each with their own ways of doing things, the uncertainty of whether we keep improving X or focus everything on Wayland … well, I doubt the using the Magic Trackpad 2 under Linux would be all too pleasant.
      - pantalaimon 8y ago
        Well both X11 and Wayland based desktops are switching to libinput now, so there is consistency for once.
        zapzupnz 8y ago
        That's grand. Good news, even if I'm late hearing it.
- danieldk 8y ago
  On macOS, they are absolutely awesome. The Magic Trackpad 2 has a motor for haptic feedback. Applications like OmniGraffle use this to give a subtle vibration when you are dragging an object and it aligns with another object. So you can feel the alignments when you’re dragging. Very useful undersold feature.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    I've been a fan of Apple's trackpads for a long time, but I was still surprised at how much the addition of haptic feedback improved them. Just getting away from the hinged click mechanism was nice, but being able to adjust in software the force required to click is a really great feature, and it doesn't require support at the application level.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      Note that supporting Force Touch does require applications to play along.
      - titanomachy 8y ago
        He's talking about something different, you can actually change the force required for a basic click.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        Yes, I’m aware. I’m just clarifying that Force Touch, which is separate but easily confused feature, requires support from applications. “Basic clicks” are handled by the OS, and the amount of force necessary for one isn’t particularly important to apps.
- mrweasel 8y ago
  I use the external Apple trackpad exclusively, it is in my opinion the only viable pointing device right now. Why Apple is the only company making these is beyond me.
  - eponeponepon 8y ago
    > Why Apple is the only company making these is beyond me. Loosely defined patents and a litigious corporate nature, at a guess.
    - avian 8y ago
      I find a classical clicky-button mouse to be superior to trackpads (or Apple’s weird no-button mice) and I am extemely happy that not all industry is blindly copying Apple at this point.
      - rrdharan 8y ago
        Do you mean superior to trackpads generally or have you specifically tried and rejected the Magic Trackpad 2? I ask because like the parent poster I love the Trackpad 2 on macOS but I hate most other trackpads when using them with Windows/Linux. Meanwhile I also hate using most mice I've tried on macOS including the Apple ones but am fine with mice on Windows/Linux. I imagine there are probably tracking speed and acceleration settings that would make the unpleasant combinations work better but I usually give up after making a few simple tweaks. I wasted a lot of time tweaking low level Synaptics parameters in the config flies when trying to make the Magic Trackpad work well for me on Linux and I think I've exhausted my lifetime supply of patience for excessive pointer setting adjustments.
      - Lio 8y ago
        That’s fine if bring a mouse with you when you’re on the move. I don’t care for mice. I don’t see why Dell, Lenovo, etc. can’t provide a laptop with a trackpad that works well under Linux. Maybe it’s better on Windows I don’t know but the XPS 13 trackpad is, if I’m being genenerous, not great.
- aasasd 8y ago
  Touchpads are great for clicking and scrolling, especially if you set it up to 'click' with just a tap. Alas, it's much worse for dragging, so e.g. graphic design is problematic. Even with dragging via double-tap-and-drag, supported by MacOS, it's a big nuisance, especially dragging outside the touchpad area (which you can do by changing fingers mid-drag). I've heard good things about vertical mouses: they're supposed to keep the lower arm from being rotated unnaturally, and the hand position seems to be more relaxed. But I still have doubts about pressing the thing, as that seems to be the root of RSI. In my experience, staying away from computers altogether works much better for the hands than any devices I've tried, which is not good news for a computer geek.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    > Alas, it's much worse for dragging, so e.g. graphic design is problematic. What kind of dragging operations are you talking about? Drag and drop operations and box selection are no more difficult on a Mac trackpad than with a mouse, and running out of trackpad area was pretty rare even on the pre-Touchbar generation before they almost doubled the size of their trackpads. Drawing might be harder, but neither device is at all good at that task; that's what Wacom is for.
Illniyar 8y ago
Shouldn't that be a driver? Why would pointing device support require a kernel update?
- Nullabillity 8y ago
  Linux drivers tend to be developed and maintained as part of the kernel rather than external plugins. That said, there are still a few bad actors who refuse to do this, notably Nvidia.
- rombert 8y ago
  Drivers are usually part of the kernel source tree.
- frutiger 8y ago
  For the most part, Linux ships with drivers in the kernel source tree. This ensures it will remain maintained, and allows the developers to evolve subsystems in an incompatible way and update drivers accordingly. The syscall interface is always maintained however. As Linus would say, “never break userspace”.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nqi 8y ago
  Some clever brain thought drivers should be part of the kernel. I personally think that's what's prevented Linux from conquering the desktop because of GPU vendors having no stable API to build upon. That is also the reason Android phones get no updates. It was a horrible decision.
  - gronne 8y ago
    Oh THATS why android gets so few updates.. (pardon the sarcasm). Its all because of those damn linux renegates - ruining software for the rest of us. Somebody ought to stop the linux bullies preventing those poor corporations from updating their products.
wodenokoto 8y ago
What I don't understand is why you need a whole new version of Linux for support for an specific brand of touch pad. Why aren't these things a driver?
- auscompgeek 8y ago
  They are drivers. It's just that the drivers are now in-tree, so they will work out of the box.
- elsjaako 8y ago
  Linux had a different model than windows. It doesn't really have separate drivers. This has a number of upsides and downsides, let me mention just one. Windows used to have a really bad reputation for stability. I'm sure a lot of this was windows's fault, but a lot of this was bad third-party drivers that crashed. You might remember that nvidea does have a driver for Linux. The approach they took isn't really supported, which is one of the reasons why graphics drivers are always such a nightmare under Linux.
  - ivanfon 8y ago
    One upside is simply the fact that you don’t need to hunt down drivers and install them. I’ve had to install wifi drivers for a Windows machine before. Hunting for the right driver, downloading it and transferring it from my phone was quite a pain, as opposed to the wifi just working on Linux.
    - jlarocco 8y ago
      That's not entirely true. It works that way because your distro maintainer built a kernel with nearly every module turned on to support the widest range of hardware out of the box.
      - ufo 8y ago
        Sure, but that is the default configuration that most Linux users will encounter.

Neat news. I've been thinking about trying one of those out for a while now - I really want to find a pointing/clicking device other than a traditional mouse as my hands age, but nothing's properly worked yet.

q3k 8y ago
Have you tried a trackball? (like the Logitech MX Ergo)
- eponeponepon 8y ago
  Oh yes - definitely not for me generally! I find them okay for some gaming purposes though, oddly enough.
  - dpwm 8y ago
    I've actually played quite a few FPS games with a Kensington trackball. It takes some getting used to, but if you set the ball up so that a 180° rotation corresponds to the cursor travelling the width of the screen it seems to work well. Disable acceleration on a trackball – whatever your use.
- joshschreuder 8y ago
  I tried this recently and got fairly bad pain in my thumb (bottom towards the palm area). I’ve since switched back to just using my old vertical mouse and the pain is gone. It’s a shame because I did get used to it and quite like using the ball.
  - mkl 8y ago
    Maybe try a Kensington Expert Mouse [1]. I use these a lot. I'd suggest the wired version - the wireless one seemed to interfere with my Bluetooth keyboard (probably the keyboard's fault though). [1] https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/expert-mouse-wired-trackball/ https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/exp...
    - eikenberry 8y ago
      I've used the Kensington SlimBlade for years and really love it. The only difference from the Expert Mouse is that instead of a scroll ring you just spin the ball in place. Completely eliminated the RSI I was getting in my mouse hand and is my favorite hardware for mouse-like functionality. https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/SlimBlade-Trackball/ https://www.kensington.com/p/products/control/trackballs/Sli...
zapzupnz 8y ago
I still wonder how well it'd work without Apple's software to drive the thing. Apple's trackpads are always less magic when using Windows, for instance.
- teekert 8y ago
  Yes, isn't it crazy how this seems to be something that is soooo hard to duplicate? I never feel the need for a mouse on my macbook, switch to Windows or Linux: I immediatly set out out to find my mouse (in contrast, external mice are just a pain in MacOS I feel that the acceleration is way off, like I'm mousing through sticky mud, and methods to adjust it were removed 5-6 versions of osX ago.)
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    On the topic of the mouse, I suspect you (along with nearly everybody else I know) is used to Windows-style tracking. Me, I'm used to macOS-style acceleration, so using mouses on other machines always feels inaccurate to me. But back to the topic, it is rather interesting how hard trackpads are to replicate on other systems with the same level of quality as Apple's own trackpads under macOS. I suspect that's why one of the recent Windows 10 updates brought in consistent APIs for trackpads and multi-touch gestures. If Microsoft are only just getting around to it now, I've my doubts there'd be any consistency on the matter over in Linux land. Not so much for lack of trying, but in a land of multiple desktop environments each with their own ways of doing things, the uncertainty of whether we keep improving X or focus everything on Wayland … well, I doubt the using the Magic Trackpad 2 under Linux would be all too pleasant.
    - pantalaimon 8y ago
      Well both X11 and Wayland based desktops are switching to libinput now, so there is consistency for once.
      - zapzupnz 8y ago
        That's grand. Good news, even if I'm late hearing it.
danieldk 8y ago
On macOS, they are absolutely awesome. The Magic Trackpad 2 has a motor for haptic feedback. Applications like OmniGraffle use this to give a subtle vibration when you are dragging an object and it aligns with another object. So you can feel the alignments when you’re dragging. Very useful undersold feature.
- wtallis 8y ago
  I've been a fan of Apple's trackpads for a long time, but I was still surprised at how much the addition of haptic feedback improved them. Just getting away from the hinged click mechanism was nice, but being able to adjust in software the force required to click is a really great feature, and it doesn't require support at the application level.
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Note that supporting Force Touch does require applications to play along.
    - titanomachy 8y ago
      He's talking about something different, you can actually change the force required for a basic click.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        Yes, I’m aware. I’m just clarifying that Force Touch, which is separate but easily confused feature, requires support from applications. “Basic clicks” are handled by the OS, and the amount of force necessary for one isn’t particularly important to apps.
mrweasel 8y ago
I use the external Apple trackpad exclusively, it is in my opinion the only viable pointing device right now. Why Apple is the only company making these is beyond me.
- eponeponepon 8y ago
  > Why Apple is the only company making these is beyond me. Loosely defined patents and a litigious corporate nature, at a guess.
  - avian 8y ago
    I find a classical clicky-button mouse to be superior to trackpads (or Apple’s weird no-button mice) and I am extemely happy that not all industry is blindly copying Apple at this point.
    - rrdharan 8y ago
      Do you mean superior to trackpads generally or have you specifically tried and rejected the Magic Trackpad 2? I ask because like the parent poster I love the Trackpad 2 on macOS but I hate most other trackpads when using them with Windows/Linux. Meanwhile I also hate using most mice I've tried on macOS including the Apple ones but am fine with mice on Windows/Linux. I imagine there are probably tracking speed and acceleration settings that would make the unpleasant combinations work better but I usually give up after making a few simple tweaks. I wasted a lot of time tweaking low level Synaptics parameters in the config flies when trying to make the Magic Trackpad work well for me on Linux and I think I've exhausted my lifetime supply of patience for excessive pointer setting adjustments.
    - Lio 8y ago
      That’s fine if bring a mouse with you when you’re on the move. I don’t care for mice. I don’t see why Dell, Lenovo, etc. can’t provide a laptop with a trackpad that works well under Linux. Maybe it’s better on Windows I don’t know but the XPS 13 trackpad is, if I’m being genenerous, not great.
aasasd 8y ago
Touchpads are great for clicking and scrolling, especially if you set it up to 'click' with just a tap. Alas, it's much worse for dragging, so e.g. graphic design is problematic. Even with dragging via double-tap-and-drag, supported by MacOS, it's a big nuisance, especially dragging outside the touchpad area (which you can do by changing fingers mid-drag). I've heard good things about vertical mouses: they're supposed to keep the lower arm from being rotated unnaturally, and the hand position seems to be more relaxed. But I still have doubts about pressing the thing, as that seems to be the root of RSI. In my experience, staying away from computers altogether works much better for the hands than any devices I've tried, which is not good news for a computer geek.
- wtallis 8y ago
  > Alas, it's much worse for dragging, so e.g. graphic design is problematic. What kind of dragging operations are you talking about? Drag and drop operations and box selection are no more difficult on a Mac trackpad than with a mouse, and running out of trackpad area was pretty rare even on the pre-Touchbar generation before they almost doubled the size of their trackpads. Drawing might be harder, but neither device is at all good at that task; that's what Wacom is for.

Illniyar 8y ago

Shouldn't that be a driver? Why would pointing device support require a kernel update?

Nullabillity 8y ago
Linux drivers tend to be developed and maintained as part of the kernel rather than external plugins. That said, there are still a few bad actors who refuse to do this, notably Nvidia.
rombert 8y ago
Drivers are usually part of the kernel source tree.
frutiger 8y ago
For the most part, Linux ships with drivers in the kernel source tree. This ensures it will remain maintained, and allows the developers to evolve subsystems in an incompatible way and update drivers accordingly. The syscall interface is always maintained however. As Linus would say, “never break userspace”.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nqi 8y ago
Some clever brain thought drivers should be part of the kernel. I personally think that's what's prevented Linux from conquering the desktop because of GPU vendors having no stable API to build upon. That is also the reason Android phones get no updates. It was a horrible decision.
- gronne 8y ago
  Oh THATS why android gets so few updates.. (pardon the sarcasm). Its all because of those damn linux renegates - ruining software for the rest of us. Somebody ought to stop the linux bullies preventing those poor corporations from updating their products.

wodenokoto 8y ago

What I don't understand is why you need a whole new version of Linux for support for an specific brand of touch pad. Why aren't these things a driver?

auscompgeek 8y ago
They are drivers. It's just that the drivers are now in-tree, so they will work out of the box.
elsjaako 8y ago
Linux had a different model than windows. It doesn't really have separate drivers. This has a number of upsides and downsides, let me mention just one. Windows used to have a really bad reputation for stability. I'm sure a lot of this was windows's fault, but a lot of this was bad third-party drivers that crashed. You might remember that nvidea does have a driver for Linux. The approach they took isn't really supported, which is one of the reasons why graphics drivers are always such a nightmare under Linux.
- ivanfon 8y ago
  One upside is simply the fact that you don’t need to hunt down drivers and install them. I’ve had to install wifi drivers for a Windows machine before. Hunting for the right driver, downloading it and transferring it from my phone was quite a pain, as opposed to the wifi just working on Linux.
  - jlarocco 8y ago
    That's not entirely true. It works that way because your distro maintainer built a kernel with nearly every module turned on to support the widest range of hardware out of the box.
    - ufo 8y ago
      Sure, but that is the default configuration that most Linux users will encounter.