Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

I've got one of those button-less trackpads on my work Mac laptop. I can't fucking stand it. The clicking just kinda gradually stops working about halfway up, like the bottom half is clickable and then it slowly fades to a non-clickable surface as you move up. So you have to keep track of where your finger is to know if you can click.

Click-and-drag when you realise you've run out of trackpad space to keep dragging is a mind-bending experience.

What's fucking wrong with buttons?

View on HN

The trackpads on Apple laptops prior to the new force touch models are physically clickable only at the bottom because the top edge is basically fixed in place (as the hinge for the whole thing). I don't see how this is any worse than separate buttons - you'd still have the same physically clickable area then (the bottom bit) but you'd have less space to drag the cursor around.

Seriously though, turn on tap-to-click. Never worry about physically clicking it again.

> What's fucking wrong with buttons?

A multi-touch surface such as the MagicMouse or Trackpad on a recent Apple laptop is so ridiculously more customisable than a mere one or two or even three physical buttons + regular trackpad.

Taps, with 1-4 fingers. Swipes in 4 directions with 1-4 fingers. Swipe from the sides. Pinch/Spread with 2 fingers. Pinch/Spread with thumb and several fingers. Rotate.

Seriously, this is just what's available out of the box with OS X, before you look at third-party software to track even more gestures on touch (trackpad/mouse) surfaces.

Edit: clarified that pre-force-touch trackpads are top-hinged.

The new trackpads don't click at all, they "click" is an actuator underneath striking up at your finger when you press down.

> I don't see how this is any worse than separate buttons - you'd still have the same physically clickable area then (the bottom bit) but you'd have less space to drag the cursor around.

Sure, but with physical buttons I know if I'm on a physical button. With this thing, sometimes clicking just doesn't work because I'm too far up and I have to move my finger down to where it's magically clickable again.

> Seriously, this is just what's available out of the box with OS X

I dunno, I don't use any of that stuff. I do 90% of my work from the Terminal. I drag windows, scroll, and select text (ugh) and that's about it. For my use case, this thing is no improvement over buttons and often a detriment.

> I drag windows, scroll, and select text

All of which is easier because of multitouch.

Two-finger drag to scroll. Three-finger drag to do anything that's normally click+drag.

Doesn't matter where your fingers are on the trackpad, or which direction you need to move, and you can briefly lift your fingers and resume a 3-finger drag.

Unfortunately Apple makes it near impossible to get a middle mouse button effect.

It's absolutely essential to copy-and-paste or to open new tabs. And X has had it right for thirty years. Still Apple can't manage to get a middle button click working.

Otherwise the Magic Trackpad is excellent.

Again, the benefits of multi-touch (as opposed to reliance on physical buttons) provides an option. Software like BetterTouchTool (or similar, I've not looked for alternatives for a while) can detect a tap in the middle section of a Magic Mouse (and likely a Trackpad too) and map it to whatever you want.

How are you even using the thing? If you had a trackpad with buttons at the bottom, you'd keep your thumb on the bottom and click with it, while using your index finger to point. Just do the same thing! Are you trying to click with your index finger?!

The new Apple Trackpad allows clicking on the entire surface.

And it's not really clicking so much as pressing until you receive haptic feedback which feels like the surface "clicked".

- the new 'force touch' trackpads do not move, clicks are the same all over

- you can do click and drag with 2 fingers, don't have to slide the clicking finger

Reply on news.ycombinator.com