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Comment by post_break | Hacker News Reader

Trackpads on devices that aren’t macs are the work of the devil. Why are they so touchy or non responsive? Why are they so small? Why are they not centered?

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It's bizarre. What's also bizarre is that, apparently, it's the new thing to hate modern MacBooks not having physical buttons. I have absolutely _zero_ problems with that, never "accidentally" clicked anything in my life, it's perfectly balanced for just the right amount of pressure.

As for the other things, I've been wondering, too!

> Why are they so small?

Probably because they're afraid people accidentally touch them? I think if Apple dares to make them this big, that's probably an irrational fear.

>Why are they not centered?

After a _long_ time thinking of it, I got an idea: Maybe they're centered on the space bar to be between your hands when typing? That, however, would also mean that they acknowledge that you're usually holding your hands off-center to reach around the number pad. Has anyone used a laptop number pad in the past 20 years? I agree that they should go in favor of a more sensible overall layout.

Most people are satisfied with their current setup, things like off centre trackpads are of little concern to the public

People aren't just bad at life they are bad at understanding their own relationship with things and predicting what will satisfy them.

People will be subtley dissatisfied with things without examination of why or attempting to alleviate this dissatisfaction.

It is meaningless to posit people are satisfied with the state of things as if this said anything about the value of the current state of things or how people would react to an improvement.

People could have been said to be as satisfied with pocket pcs back around win ce.

After being exposed to a touch screen interface that wasn't completely garbage they overwhelming preferred them and voted with their wallets.

Last month I bought the latest MacBook Pro 15'', and although I'm really happy with my purchase, I've definitely experienced a lot of accidental clicks. Sometimes I'll rest my hands and they accidentally land on the huge trackpad or touchbar. Other times I try dragging stuff around but I screw up and end up dropping things in the wrong place. Admittedly, as I've used the laptop more the problems have become less frequent.

They made the new trackpad so big that the gap between it and the spacebar shrunk to something like 3 mm. I used to rest my thumbs on that gap and I can't any more. Took a fair bit of time getting used to it.

Same with not being able to rest your fingers on the touch bar.

I have absolutely _zero_ problems with that, never "accidentally" clicked anything in my life, it's perfectly balanced for just the right amount of pressure.

Dragging requires more effort since you have to both move the finger horizontally while maintaining downward pressure, which increases the friction significantly. If the button was separate, you can hold it with one finger while just touching the touchpad and controlling movement with the other.

Not true. You can hold down one finger in place as the "click" and then drag with the other finger just as if there were buttons.

Not sure if this exists on modern MacOS, but you used to be able to move three fingers along the glass without clicking to drag. I think you had to enable the gesture.

You can still do this in macOS [1]. It's one of the first things I change on any new MacBook, along with remapping Caps Lock to Control.

I'm not sure why Apple doesn't present this as a main option instead of burying it in the settings.

In my opinion, it's a significant usability & productivity improvement. Three finger drag makes selecting text a breeze, along with quickly moving applications across monitors.

Having to maintain pressure while awkwardly moving your finger across the touchpad, while simultaneously appeasing the force touch gods, seems rather uncivilized.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204609

My issue is less about accidental clicks and more about accuracy: I have not yet figured out how to depress the pad without moving the cursor. Even one-in-ten outright misses is enough to make computer use absolutely infuriating.

Yup, it makes a mouse mandatory for anything requiring precise action. I had my personal woes with Sketchup

I use the numberpad all the time as a Mechanical engineer. ffs, there are other fields than clacky clack let's make another bullshit frontend library artists.

> Has anyone used a laptop number pad in the past 20 years?

Accountants use them all the time, along with a lot of other people whose job requires entering a lot of numerical data.

Just get a Microsoft Precision touchpad, and you’ll be in multitouch heaven

Is that the same technology as what's used in the Surface? I was really disappointed by the Surface touchpad. Sticky texture, small, too close to the edge, scrolling is discrete and clicky... It felt like a synaptics touchpad from ten years ago.

Agreed, the XPS 15/precision 5510 touchpad is the best touchpad there is in my opinion. Just the right texture, gestures are perfect every time, perfect resistance on the physical click. Heavenly.

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