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Comment by sumedh | Hacker News Reader

Do the Windows based laptops have a similar touchpad like the Mac which just works, last time I checked they did not.

They do, when they introduced the precision touch-pad. However ironically it created a lot of problems in software that responded poorly to the high precision events. Chrome being one of the most obvious offenders, took months for them to finally fix it (hence edge scrolling so much nicer then chrome on its release).

These days it just works though.

At the same price point in the professional space, of course. Lenovo X series and System76 have solid touchpads- and have for years.

“Solid” does not mean comparable. I have both high end dell and Lenovo laptops for work, and my Mac at home. My girlfriends MacBook Pro is far nicer to use despite being slower. Even for Windows.

As long as PC laptops continue to use that terrible Synaptics touchpad system, they will always be inferior. Anybody I've seen who claims any PC touchpad matches a Mac doesn't know what they are talking about. And I say this as a user of both but mostly PC.

I had a 2016 macbook and an HP Spectre 360. The touchpads were comparable. On the other hand, the macOS part of the macbook was pretty terrible.

I'm kind of the opposite. I have a ThinkPad X390 Yoga and a MacBook. The ThinkPad touchpad is perfectly usable, but not great like the MacBook. The dealbreaker is that the Linux part of the ThinkPad is a complete pain (Intel WiFi headaches - went as far as submitting a kernel bug), while the MacBook just works.

Macs, with their amazing touchpads, are (at least for the moment and the last ten years or so) general purpose computers that can run pretty much every widely available open source operating system. This is a false dichotomy.

From GP:

> use a closed source operating system

That's not "Windows".

> that can run pretty much every widely available open source operating system.

That's just not true, though. Here's a git repo listing what works and doesn't work in Linux for all of the macbook pro models since 13,1 (released in 2016): https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

You'll notice that power management (suspend/resume) doesn't work for any model, wifi only works for a few select models, and support for audio is pretty spotty. If you buy Mac hardware, you're pretty much locked into MacOS if you want to have a reasonably acceptable experience.

BSD support is much, much, much worse--it basically doesn't work at all for any relatively recent model.

> BSD support is much, much, much worse--it basically doesn't work at all for any relatively recent model

Well, would probably work fine with an external keyboard/mouse :D

NVMe should crash right now like it did on Linux before 5.4, but the Linux patch for that https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/66341331ba0d2de4ff4... is absolutely tiny, I could probably replicate these quirks in FreeBSD in a few minutes.

The SPI keyboard and touchpad thing though is just.. WHY?? Everyone went with HID over I2C, Apple went with a completely new protocol over SPI. So annoying. I wouldn't want to work on supporting that crap.

> power management (suspend/resume) doesn't work for any model

um, that page says that you have to disable a power saving state on NVMe and it would work on any model with Intel GPU.

Can you explain why this is such an important feature? How often are you writing code where you're not at your desk with a real keyboard and mouse?

100% of the time for me. I prefer the trackpad over the mouse.

100% of the time for me, I wouldn't wipe my butt with a trackpad, let alone use one for work.

It's always fun for me to meet people who do things the complete opposite I do them. It's oddly satisfying, like, I'm glad someone is my polar opposite on an issue or activity.

Tabs or spaces ?

That made me smile....thanks @jmnicolas :)

It depends. For lists, I do spaces. Allows for more levels than a tab would. But for everything else, tabs.

I've also grown to loathe that first-line tab beginning the second paragraph. It makes left-aligned text look wonky.

I loathe centered text too.

I'm not a rounded rectangle person.

I think the colored block UI that's all over Android, sites like HN, etc. looks tacky. We went from semi-transparent glass UI to flat colored blocks, and somehow interfaces got slower and more processor intensive. Now, that's a horse of a different color.

It’s like we all have an evil doppelgänger out there’re of us who is religiously fervent about trackpads

Honestly, I think of any number of issues in the world that we have to navigate, and I am truly grateful that so few of them require a trackpad.

Trackpads are really un-ergonomic when they're attached to the laptop. Both your wrist and neck are bent because the trackpad and screen are attached that way.

Consider getting a separate USB trackpad and putting it in a "mouse like" position so your wrist is straight and you can raise the laptop to just under eye level.

I position my MacBook where I'd place my standalone trackpad. I could probably get a Magic Trackpad from work. But that would mean I need to carry another accessory with me.

So I'll have a proper monitor and a standalone keyboard in front of me. And the MacBook screen on the side is being used to display secondary information (chat windows and logs I don't need to actively look at).

Having the fingerprint sensor and the TouchBar lock button within reach are also nice (yes, I actually like the touchbar)

All the time.

But more to the point: Apple has proven it _can_ be that good, so I want a control that _is_ that good. Why would I ever go backwards?

Because like they just pointed out, you can only use this magical touchpad on a Mac running MacOS.

It's not like Apple benevolently gave this touchpad to the world, for our betterment and happiness, but for the singular, exclusive purpose of luring you into their ecosystem. But you don't benefit when they profit, you were the prize.

You should demand they give it away for free, because you should not give a shit about their profit because they (it) do not give a shit about your life or freedom or the economy of the social strata you live in. It's an alien machine that will eat you or it will fight you but it won't know the difference.

For me it's this, it's been proven I can get an OS that is open and free, doesn't mean I have to support and buy into some terrible multinational corporation whose goals I do not agree with, and that I get to have control over my own OS in a sense that is utterly freeing compared to MacOS or Windows. So why would I ever go backwards?

...what?

I pay Apple for hardware and software. I get good value in exchange. I don't particularly care beyond that.

You're trying to change this into an argument about freedom and open source. It's not. I want a trackpad that feels premium, the same reason I buy a nice car. I do not care how it's done and I do not care about the price.

tl;dr If the Linux ecosystem could provide it, good - I'd consider it. Put up or shut up.

MacBook’s touchpad is so good that I was not using the mouse anymore just a few weeks after having my first Mac. It happened naturally and at some point I just stopped connecting the mouse.

The Mac's trackpad is so good that you dont really need a mouse when writing code. I use the trackpad more at my office desk.

I use a dedicated keyboard, but I put the MacBook on side and use the trackpad as my mouse. It's smooth to use, has great gesture support for switching between applications.

And the most important feature for me. I can work a full day on it without any RSI related symptons. No other mouse can do that for me.

I use a normal mouse on my gaming rig, though. Because trackpads are awful for gaming.

> has great gesture support for switching between applications.

There are keyboard shortcuts for those, which are even nicer imo. Reduces the amount of times you need to take your hands off the keyboard.

I used those before I got a MacBook. But then I found the hand gestures to be more intuitive.

Surface line all do and any professional level laptop from the past few years should too.

The term to look for is “Windows precision trackpad”.

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