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Reading this makes me appreciate my Magic Trackpad even more. I hated trackpads for years, until I was forced to use a Magic Trackpad lying around when my mous

Reading this makes me appreciate my Magic Trackpad even more. I hated trackpads for years, until I was forced to use a Magic Trackpad lying around when my mouse broke. After a week I was a convert and I haven't used a mouse for years. Clicking and dragging with one hand, easy, right clicking easy, precision stuff in Photoshop, etc, no problem.. it's nothing like a typical PC trackpad at all, indeed it should probably be considered an entirely separate type of product. Of course, different strokes for different folks too! I know people who swear by trackballs or those weird "nipple" things in the middle of IBM laptops and I couldn't get my head around either.

macintux 8y ago
I’ve long suspected that most people (who use a Mac, at least) who still use mice simply haven’t tried tap to click. Once I discovered that there was no going back. The sheer amount of unnecessary energy wasted on clicking, not to mention the other great gestures.
- alexvoda 8y ago
  Maybe I am an exception but I deactivate tapping on all touchpads (Apple or non-Apple) I use. I find the lack of feedback annoying and if I disable it I can also rest my fingers on the touchpad without causing input.
  - TuringTest 8y ago
    Question out of ignorance, how do you click on the Magic Trackpad without tap to click? From images it doesn't seem to have any button.
    - macintux 8y ago
      The entire trackpad is a button. It used to be a physical click, but recently they’ve switched to the same mechanism used for the last generation(s) of iPhones, where the home button wasn’t actually a button, but gave virtual Taptic feedback.
- stevehawk 8y ago
  I'm just an anecdote but I can't imagine I'm alone in hating 'tap to click'. It's the first thing I disable after a clean OS install.
  - danaris 8y ago
    You are not alone. I find that tap-to-click results in erroneous clicks on a very regular basis.
  - seba_dos1 8y ago
    I'm a touchpad lover and I tend to disable 'tap to click' as well.
- danillonunes 8y ago
  Tap to click was the thing I loved the most when switched to a MacBook (ok, other laptops have it too, but when the entire trackpad is imprecise, tap to click makes things worse). My trackpad broke the “click” and I don’t miss it.
michaelbuckbee 8y ago
I think the keys are that the friction is so much less than on comparable trackpads and the precision is much higher. I'm currently switching from OSX to Windows but a hard requirement was the ability to use my MagicTrackpad on Win10 with tap to click and 3 finger drag (both help tremendously with my RSI). There's a pretty awesome little piece of software called "Magic Trackpad Utilities" that enables that - https://magicutilities.net/magic-trackpad/features https://magicutilities.net/magic-trackpad/features
blub 8y ago
It's very good, but a mouse (e.g the Apple mouse) still has better ergonomics, especially for larger movements and longer use.
seba_dos1 8y ago
I'm using Magic Trackpad 2 right now (I strongly prefer touchpads to mice and needed something quiet). It's just a typical touchpad, but it moves parts of movement handling from the driver into the firmware, so it's a bit harder for the software to screw it up. It feels like a larger version of the Synaptics touchpad in my laptop, but with a haptic feedback engine instead of physical clicking. Having said that, driver support is notoriously bad for most touchpads out there. My laptop touchpad feels pretty bad with libinput, for instance. With synaptics driver it's very Magic Trackpad like - and it's a Lenovo laptop from 2013. The same touchpad feels practically unusable on Windows.

macintux 8y ago

I’ve long suspected that most people (who use a Mac, at least) who still use mice simply haven’t tried tap to click. Once I discovered that there was no going back. The sheer amount of unnecessary energy wasted on clicking, not to mention the other great gestures.

alexvoda 8y ago
Maybe I am an exception but I deactivate tapping on all touchpads (Apple or non-Apple) I use. I find the lack of feedback annoying and if I disable it I can also rest my fingers on the touchpad without causing input.
- TuringTest 8y ago
  Question out of ignorance, how do you click on the Magic Trackpad without tap to click? From images it doesn't seem to have any button.
  - macintux 8y ago
    The entire trackpad is a button. It used to be a physical click, but recently they’ve switched to the same mechanism used for the last generation(s) of iPhones, where the home button wasn’t actually a button, but gave virtual Taptic feedback.
stevehawk 8y ago
I'm just an anecdote but I can't imagine I'm alone in hating 'tap to click'. It's the first thing I disable after a clean OS install.
- danaris 8y ago
  You are not alone. I find that tap-to-click results in erroneous clicks on a very regular basis.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  I'm a touchpad lover and I tend to disable 'tap to click' as well.
danillonunes 8y ago
Tap to click was the thing I loved the most when switched to a MacBook (ok, other laptops have it too, but when the entire trackpad is imprecise, tap to click makes things worse). My trackpad broke the “click” and I don’t miss it.

michaelbuckbee 8y ago

I think the keys are that the friction is so much less than on comparable trackpads and the precision is much higher. I'm currently switching from OSX to Windows but a hard requirement was the ability to use my MagicTrackpad on Win10 with tap to click and 3 finger drag (both help tremendously with my RSI). There's a pretty awesome little piece of software called "Magic Trackpad Utilities" that enables that - https://magicutilities.net/magic-trackpad/features https://magicutilities.net/magic-trackpad/features

blub 8y ago

It's very good, but a mouse (e.g the Apple mouse) still has better ergonomics, especially for larger movements and longer use.

seba_dos1 8y ago

I'm using Magic Trackpad 2 right now (I strongly prefer touchpads to mice and needed something quiet). It's just a typical touchpad, but it moves parts of movement handling from the driver into the firmware, so it's a bit harder for the software to screw it up. It feels like a larger version of the Synaptics touchpad in my laptop, but with a haptic feedback engine instead of physical clicking. Having said that, driver support is notoriously bad for most touchpads out there. My laptop touchpad feels pretty bad with libinput, for instance. With synaptics driver it's very Magic Trackpad like - and it's a Lenovo laptop from 2013. The same touchpad feels practically unusable on Windows.