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Apple's touchpads are nothing special, at least these days where you can easily get a high quality touchpad on pretty much anything but the cheapest laptops ava

Apple's touchpads are nothing special, at least these days where you can easily get a high quality touchpad on pretty much anything but the cheapest laptops available. It's actually how macOS handles touchpads that makes them feel special. However, apparently Pinebook's one is actually pretty problematic and needs some firmware updates to work better.

dplgk 7y ago
Do you have an example? My mother in law just got a big fancy windows laptop and the track pad is small and same old clunkiness.
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  I've been an exclusive user of touchpads on some Lenovo and Dell laptops over past 10 years and I also have Apple Magic Trackpad 2 and access to a Macbook, so I have a comparison. The only difference in the actual hardware that I noticed (aside of the surface texture, which is up to personal taste, and of course size, which you can easily check before even buying) is that the ones from the first half of the decade required some jitter-filtering in software, while newer ones did not. Also, Apple touchpad does an unusually big share of input filtering on the device itself, while most other ones leave it to the software (which is fine, unless your software does it poorly of course). Generally Windows drivers for touchpads used to be shit for a very long time; this only started to change a few years ago. On GNU/Linux it depends on the configuration, but there's a ridiculous amount of ways to screw it up, so some people don't even realize that it can be better (although it seems to be getting better with recent driver stacks).
geerlingguy 7y ago
I've tried the pads on the past few years' Dell XPS laptops, and the one on the MS Surface Book, and I can say they are definitely not as nice (physical touch-wise, ignoring the integration with the software at all) as Apple's. Whatever process Apple uses to finish the glass touchpad surface must be hard to replicate, because I haven't found anything comparable. Some are bearable, but not as much of a joy to use (compared to other input devices).
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  I have Apple Magic Trackpad 2 and Dell XPS 9380 touchpads next to each other right now, they're very similar, with the Dell one being slightly smoother. I liked the surface on my old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro a bit more than both of them though, although that one was slightly less responsive for the very light moves because it required a bit of jitter filtering - Yoga 900 improved on that, but the surface was IMO worse there. Those differences are very minor though compared to how touchpads used to work and feel like on Windows 10 years ago. When it comes to how well they work, they're all essentially equivalent. The only reason to get the Apple one is if you care about its quiet haptic feedback (the Dell XPS one clicks very loudly) - and on Linux you can actually make it even more quiet than what macOS allows you to configure ;]
fnord77 7y ago
the subtle attention to detail apple applies to their trackpad makes it almost magical. I don't even notice the apple trackpad when I'm using it. Others, I do notice.

dplgk 7y ago

Do you have an example? My mother in law just got a big fancy windows laptop and the track pad is small and same old clunkiness.

seba_dos1 7y ago
I've been an exclusive user of touchpads on some Lenovo and Dell laptops over past 10 years and I also have Apple Magic Trackpad 2 and access to a Macbook, so I have a comparison. The only difference in the actual hardware that I noticed (aside of the surface texture, which is up to personal taste, and of course size, which you can easily check before even buying) is that the ones from the first half of the decade required some jitter-filtering in software, while newer ones did not. Also, Apple touchpad does an unusually big share of input filtering on the device itself, while most other ones leave it to the software (which is fine, unless your software does it poorly of course). Generally Windows drivers for touchpads used to be shit for a very long time; this only started to change a few years ago. On GNU/Linux it depends on the configuration, but there's a ridiculous amount of ways to screw it up, so some people don't even realize that it can be better (although it seems to be getting better with recent driver stacks).

geerlingguy 7y ago

I've tried the pads on the past few years' Dell XPS laptops, and the one on the MS Surface Book, and I can say they are definitely not as nice (physical touch-wise, ignoring the integration with the software at all) as Apple's. Whatever process Apple uses to finish the glass touchpad surface must be hard to replicate, because I haven't found anything comparable. Some are bearable, but not as much of a joy to use (compared to other input devices).

seba_dos1 7y ago
I have Apple Magic Trackpad 2 and Dell XPS 9380 touchpads next to each other right now, they're very similar, with the Dell one being slightly smoother. I liked the surface on my old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro a bit more than both of them though, although that one was slightly less responsive for the very light moves because it required a bit of jitter filtering - Yoga 900 improved on that, but the surface was IMO worse there. Those differences are very minor though compared to how touchpads used to work and feel like on Windows 10 years ago. When it comes to how well they work, they're all essentially equivalent. The only reason to get the Apple one is if you care about its quiet haptic feedback (the Dell XPS one clicks very loudly) - and on Linux you can actually make it even more quiet than what macOS allows you to configure ;]

fnord77 7y ago

the subtle attention to detail apple applies to their trackpad makes it almost magical. I don't even notice the apple trackpad when I'm using it. Others, I do notice.