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Comment by philliphaydon | Hacker News Reader

I used to love the mac keyboard. Of any non Apple laptop it was superior... until I tried out a ThinkPad just over a year ago. I honestly don’t think I could own anything other than a ThinkPad from now on for the keyboard alone.

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Thinkpad keyboards are good. But they have the messed up arrow keys, but unlike apple where the keys are too big, they mixed them with pagup/pgdn

Keyboards are something you never notice unless they arebad. There's nothing amazung about the ThinkPad keyboard but there's nothing super special about it.

I'm typing this on a ThinkPad USB keyboard connected to a Dell computer. Any types are because Lynx doesn't always scroll over when typing in a textbox.

Unfortunately ThinkPad trackpads aren’t nearly as good as MacBook trackpads.

MacBook Pro 2013 user here, and the trackpad is a huge reason I'd continue to stay with Apple.

I don't know why other manufacturers can't seem to get it right.

I switched from Apple to Lenovo and am quite satisfied... expect for the trackpad. It really is a competitive advantage Apple has.

Because it’s surprisingly hard to calibrate and requires a lot of algorithms that handle a ton of edge cases. You have to have serious R&D to get it right.

I believe Apple actually holds patents on their trackpad algorithms, forcing everyone else to use worse driver implementations.

REAL Thinkpad users will only ever use the little red stick and disable the trackpad (just joking). But it‘s worth a try, takes a couple days to get used to first.

Not joking; I'd like to have a button/key to disable the touchpad that some gaming laptops have.

Real Thinkpad user here, yep using that little red stick since 2006, when I got my first one.

Really feels a bit weird on other laptops, although on those that have two finger gestures it is bearable, or I just end up plugging an external mouse.

Thinkpad user here, on Linux, with disabled trackpad. Vim and i3 make it almost useless

Positive side-effect of a disabled trackpad, everyone trying to show you something on your Thinkpad by taking command will quickly stop it once they have no control over the mouse.

They'd also probably stop when they saw you were running i3 and couldn't figure out how to pull up a web browser.

you mean the nipple?

As always, there's a relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/243/

I believe Bill Harding is working on improving Linux trackpad drivers (or trying to find people who can)

https://bill.harding.blog/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-prog...

I would have agreed with you many years ago, and even tho now there are still a lot of laptops that have bad trackpads... I honestly have 0 issues switching between a MacBook trackpad, and the one on my ThinkPad.

Granted I'm still scared to run Linux on a laptop as I don't believe I will get the same battery life out of it as I do with Windows. So I've never tested the trackpad under Linux. On Windows it's great.

> Granted I'm still scared to run Linux on a laptop as I don't believe I will get the same battery life out of it as I do with Windows.

Using tlp, setting all settings in Powertop and undervolting with intel-undervolt will get you some seriously crazy battery life. Battery life on my X250 is better under Linux than it is in Windows with these changes.

I get 5 hours battery life on my dual Xeon laptop under Linux.

I will say, I miss 2016-era power controls for Linux. Being able to set a max MHz allowed me to truly control my power and battery usage. Any idea why Linux changed that functionality in future power governers?

The difference between ThinkPad’s (or any other respectable brand of laptop) touchpad and the MacBook touchpad is nearly equivalent. Whereas the difference between the MacBook keyboard and - honestly - most other respectable brand of laptop’s keyboard is quite significant.

Given most people on here will spend a significant amount of more time typing than they do using the touchpad (whether that be writing reports / scrum tickets or just programming) it should be a no brainier that keyboard ergonomics are far more important than the quality of the touchpad. And that’s without taking into account my first point that MacBooks aren’t even that much better than the competition in terms of the touchpad.

From a personal perspective, I’ve used a lot of engineering laptops over the years and honestly the latest generations of MacBook Pro’s are amongst the worst I’ve used. Which is a great shame because I do honestly like some of the value that OSX adds. However OSX isn’t enough to tip the balance when Linux is actually pretty damn good on the desktop these days.

Thinkpad users don't use trackpads. The second biggest draw besides the keyboard might be the Trackpoint. It's glorious! It's nothing like the same little nipple you might have tried on HP or Dell laptops of past. The Thinkpad Trackpoint is far superior.

you should try the old ThinkPad keyboards, like the X201. So nice.

For the MacBook, if they had a version with a physical escape key, I'd be fine. Just make it a little shorter. It will be okay. I promise.

I remapped capslock to esc and never looked back. In fact, I’ve gotten so used to it that I remap “normal” keyboards too. I use esc way more often than I’d ever use capslock, so having it at the pinky is perfect.

Even though I have a 2017 MBP 13" with the Escape key, I still use Ctrl-[ to change modes in Vim. I'm not a fan of the Touch Bar, but it probably wouldn't interfere with my Vim workflow.

Do you find changing modes with ctrl-[ superior to changing modes with caps lock key that has been remapped to Escape?

I do, but not because there's anything wrong with that remapping. It's that I already have Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl/Command, as in UNIX or Sun workstation keyboard style. So, when I press `Ctrl-[` only my right pinky leaves the home row, and it's hardly much of a move, since the `[` key is above and to the right of `;`.

Holy Crap! Thank you, I never use capslock and now I never will! Still vote to add a physical key in the top left.... please....

I remapped that way, and had to go back.

I work on a lot of different computers in a week, and some of them aren't mine, so it's more useful for me to stick to the default map instead of getting things wrong on half of the machines.

This thread reminds me of using Dvorak back in 1999. Sure it may be better, it may even be faster.. but what happens in 20 years when I’m the only sucker using that layout? Take my own keyboard everywhere?

I remap capslock to "Super" (the logo key), which makes it much easier to invoke keyboard shortcuts like Super-L (lock screen), Super-left/right/up/down (left-maximize, right-maximize, full-maximize, restore), and Super-F (fullscreen).

Yup, some years ago I used vim a lot on macOS and did the same. This was sooo much more practical than the escape key in the upper left.

> I use esc way more often than I’d ever use capslock, so having it at the pinky is perfect.

I think every 2 years I have a proper use case for it ;)

I still have a T420 for the keyboard and have no plans of leaving it.

Yeah the keyboard is nice, but the full-click trackpad is a rackety piece of crap.

Have to use a mouse on mine as the trackpad click switch has so much travel that I’ve accidentally moved the pointer off the thing I wanted to click on by the time it reaches the bottom. Tried using tap to click and fiddling with the settings, but on Linux it’s temperamental.

The track-pad is small enough for me not to be a problem typing (it is small, compared to Macs especially), and have never used the nipple for anything serious, and have a mouse. But the keyboard.. simply the best.

Hmmmm I appear to have deleted my comment by mistake.

Unsure which was the first I ever tried, ~20 years ago I used my uncle's ThinkPad but I don't recall the model.

I tried someone elses ThinkPad and was like "Wow this is nice to type on" so while in Taiwan I went to the Lenovo store and looked at the laptops. Ended up buying a ThinkPad X1 Extreme and I love it. Best laptop I've owned.

The Lenovo Legion series tho, the keyboard isn't as good as the ThinkPad.

I’m part of a really strange minority, I guess, but I absolutely love the butterfly keyboard. Though I’m not happy about the looming reliability problems

I love the keyboard also and really hope they can fix the reliability issues but retain the feel. The old one feels really mushy to me now.

I also really like the butterfly keyboard but Apple has to invest in improving its reliability.

I run a 2017 MBP with the second butterfly iteration and stories online have me worried that any day will be the last day of my keyboard.

So far it works very well and when I went back to my 2012 MBP to find some old files, I noticed I vastly prefer the new keyboard.

TouchBar however is the most useless thing ever. I absolutely never ever use it unless I need a FN key. I mostly forget its there...

You can now set Fn keys to always show. Now, as in since one or two MacOS versions ago. More so, you can actually set Fn to show _only_ for certain apps. For instance, when I remote desktop to a Windows machine, I usually use Visual Studio, and Fn keys are a must. Therefore, I set it up to always show Fn keys when Remote Desktop has focus.

I am honestly surprised how much people complain without actually digging a bit. This is not aimed at you OP, don't take it personally. :)

Edit: granted, Apple doesn't do much to let us know about such improvements. Maybe it's in some release notes, but I found out about this feature while playing with the settings.

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