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Comment by tentacleuno | Hacker News Reader

> I could possibly be convinced otherwise if the trackpad is particularly good.

Genuine question: what about Macbook trackpads? We have a MBP 2013, and it runs leaps and bounds over my Windows laptop which came out in the same year. I'm not sure if other laptops have caught up with Apple yet, but Macbook trackpads are commonly referred to as the best in the business.

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I've heard they're good, but Macbooks tick almost none of the boxes in the list, so I am not very interested in them.

I will say that Macbooks are more rugged than they appear, and the battery life on the M1 models is best-in-class. That said, they're not very open or Linux-compatible (yet, at least). I bought an M1 Air and love it, but it's very use-case dependent, I think.

Apple leapt ahead of other laptops again with their trackpad that uses haptics instead of an actually button. It takes consistent pressure across the whole trackpad instead of being more difficult to press as you get closer to the hinge. It feels ridiculously convincing that you're actually pushing a button and even has a cool feature where you have a second action by pushing harder. And it really does feel like you've pushed a button deeper.

Yeah, the haptic stuff is mad! I was amazed when I learned about it, I thought it was a real button with some sort of touch sensor.

You can literally change the feedback from the "click" (and the push-down strength) in Settings. Even in 2015 that felt decades ahead of its time.

If anything I still prefer that trackpad over a real button.

I’ve tried a lot of Windows laptops, and there’s still nothing on the Win/Linux side, even in Dell and MS laptops, that compares with the precision and natural feeling of a Mac trackpad.

They are basically an iPhone digitizer in landscape mode, so yeah, they are very much OK. Trackpoint is still preferable for when editing text.

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