Please Shrink the Trackpad | Hacker News Reader

Please Shrink the Trackpad

mjtsai.com

34 pointsksec82 comments

I must admit - after having been a loyal Apple trackpad user for the past 10 or so years, I've never really had an issue with miss clicks or unexpected behaviour.

With the recent WFH trend - I did convince myself to buy an actual mouse about 6 months ago (MX Master 3 for those curious) and I must say, despite never having a problem with the trackpad I now find it to be far superior to the trackpad. In fact using the trackpad now for a prolonged period makes my hands/wrists hurt somewhat which I'm sure I never struggled with in the past.

I can tell you however that the touchbar is a daily source of annoyance when it comes to miss clicked items - despite having a 2019 Macbook for the last year or so now I still manage to press random keys on the touchbar on an almost daily basis - so happy to hear that the new MBPs do not have the touchbar.

I've always thought the trackpads on the "large" Mac portables looked huge. Looking at Apple's product website, if you scroll down far enough[1], you can see the trackpad on the 16" extends as far left as the middle of the 'S' key, and as far right as the middle of the semicolon. On the 2020 13" M1 Air I'm typing this on, the trackpad only goes as far as the left edge of the "C" key (sorry, non-EN-US-UK keyboard users), and as far right as the right edge of the "," key. I'd like a better side-by-side of the 14" vs 16", but it looks like my employer is going 16"-only so my next machine will have this huger-than-ever trackpad. I don't have stray input issues (yet), but would prefer the trackpad stay the same size or even shrink slightly.

1. What's with Apple's fetish for photos taken only at the perfect geometric extreme angle? Virtually all of their photos refuse to show the laptop except from perfectly perpendicular to the front edge of the case. It's hard to see ANYTHING useful. I ran into this problem where I bought the 'wrong' thunderbolt adapter, because the product pages DON'T SHOW THE CONNECTOR ON THE DEVICE YOU'RE BUYING, just the top-down photo of a white box.

> Virtually all of their photos refuse to show the laptop except from perfectly perpendicular to the front edge...

The tech spec pages (e.g. https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/specs/) show side shots and have done so essentially forever. The splash pages (https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/) have multiple shots -- these days that includes animating/rotating as you scroll, and the "gallery" (https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/14-inch-space...) (admittedly somewhat buried since I think it's only accessible once you're in the buying phase) also has side shots: https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4982/as-images.apple...

For a(n easier?) comparison, the size of trackpad on MacBook Pro 16" (2021) is larger than iPhone 13 Pro Max (iPhone is few millimetre taller) and slightly smaller than Kindle Paperwhite (2019) or a Nintendo Switch non-OLED sans JoyCon. It's huge enough that they could almost fit the display of an old iPad mini on it.

I'm always perplexed when I hear that people suffer accidental clicks and poor palm rejection on a MacBook Pro trackpad. I've never had such an incident, but I can see how it's possible.

Some opinions on trackpads: - Tap to click should _always_ be turned off; it's bad and it should feel bad - More apps should take advantage of multi-level clicking

Personally, I love Apple trackpads so much that I use one (Magic Trackpad 2) when my laptop is docked to my monitor. Mice just don't do it for me anymore on macOS. They just feel clunky.

Edit: Also, Apple should promote the "three finger drag" Accessibility setting to the Trackpad settings. It's far superior to all other drag-via-the-touchpad options, IMO.

Just a data point, but tap-to-click is the first thing I enable on a new Mac. So, no. It doesn't feel bad and it shouldn't feel bad either. It's efficient, and on the newer trackpads, with tap over click, you're opting for tactility over haptics.

BetterTouchTool supercharges tap with more advanced interactions, making it even more relevant.

On top of that, I enable locking drag, which makes moving things around much easier and faster.

And no, this latest incarnation of the trackpad is just perfect. Do not shrink it. Thank you.

Not sure I understand the hate on tap to click? A single tap has always felt more responsive than a forced click, especially when clicking on a larger trackpad that has to have a large percentage of the pad actuated.

I think the use of multiple fingers is a better solution than an arbitrary click length. Two finger tap for extra options has been a game changer for me.

Because simply putting my finger onto the trackpad may trigger a click when I only intended to move the cursor or even just rest my finger. Leads to unintentionally following links or dragging things around.

Is there a reason why you have to rest your finger on the trackpad? For myself I view the trackpad as the one place you'd want to avoid resting any appendages on, unless you need to interact with it.

For example, I haven't heard of similar arguments for a phone's touch screen, probably because you don't rest your thumbs on the screen itself.

Maybe resting it there was the wrong way to put it. It's more like I think I'm going to want to move the cursor in the next few seconds, so I put my finger down there.

Sure, I could train myself to not do that if I really needed to, but the thing is that I don't need to since I can turn off tap to click.

I'm not sure why phones are different here though. This isn't something I've been conscious of. Maybe it's because the thumb's natural position when holding a phone is to actually hover above the screen? Or maybe touches just register differently enough on a phone that it's not a problem?

At least on my Macs, if I rest my finger on the trackpad, without moving, thinking of where to move the cursor next... It doesn't register as a click. It acts exactly as expected: if I lift my finger, it still won't register as a click, and if I start gliding on the trackpad, it will register as mouse movements.

But it's not just putting a finger on the trackpad, that doesn't trigger a click. It's a really quick tap. But I'm not out to convince anyone so do your thing :)

> Not sure I understand the hate on tap to click?

Sometimes I start to move the mouse cursor, and then change my mind, after I put my finger down, but before I move it.

This room-for-indecision is totally fine if I'm using push-to-click, but tap-to-click doesn't let me just hang out with my finger touching the mouse cursor.

As a result, if you're using tap-to-click, you are forced to think about what you're doing before you do it. You can't think while in the process of doing it. This means that your finger becomes less of an extension of your brain. You have to keep more private, and inside. You are less embodied.

> This room-for-indecision is totally fine if I'm using push-to-click, but tap-to-click doesn't let me just hang out with my finger touching the mouse cursor.

This works as expected on my Macs with tap to click turned on. see my other comment in this thread.

Anecdotal but I feel the same.

I initially had some palm-rejection issues with the very first "oversized" MacBook Pro trackpad (2016?), but I think that must have been resolved by an update. I can't recall having problems with accidental clicks in years, and I too have a Magic Trackpad for my docked laptop.

Having used non-Apple laptops with trackpads, I have always been surprised at how universally awful they've been. Maybe things have improved now, but one of the greatest crimes I noticed was trackpads where certain regions behaved completely differently. I think on some of them, the right side of the trackpad—completely unidentifiable by touch—would trigger scrolling instead of moving the cursor. I struggle to understand who could have thought this would be a good idea, but apparently somebody must find it useful.

I've never known about the the three-finger drag setting but I'll give it a shot. I disagree a bit with tap-to-click, which apparently I've had enabled without issue but I don't believe I actually ever use it.

I hated trackpads until I tried the Apple trackpad. Especially the new ones that use haptics yet still require some force to trigger a click. I won't say I've had zero problems with the trackpad, but I no longer miss trackpoint nubs.

I still haven't found any non-Apple trackpads that perform as well. Even the "precision touchpad" compatible trackpads on Windows machines gave me an annoying number of issues with registering correctly.

> Edit: Also, Apple should promote the "three finger drag" Accessibility setting to the Trackpad settings. It's far superior to all other drag-via-the-touchpad options, IMO.

The three finger drag is what I configure first, and it’s one thing I sorely miss on a new Windows laptop. Windows 10 gestures seem so primitive in comparison. I agree that this should be enabled by default on macOS.

Well, I use Magic Trackpad on my desktop, and prefer it except for drawing diagrams (somehow a mouse feels nicer for that).

But I _hate_ clicking and love tap to click on the trackpad because it is much less error-prone from a precision standpoint (applying pressure invariably moves the cursor, which does not happen for me on a mouse).

I do agree on the three-finger drag aspect, though. That is the only way I drag windows around (again, would be harder to do if I pressed to click).

> "...three-finger drag aspect, though. That is the only way I drag windows..."

i drag via single-finger force-click on the title bar. it's even easier (to me) than 3-finger drag (requires slightly less finger coordination). i use this all the time to drag windows to different spaces via the ctrl-<number> keyboard shortcut, which you can do with the other hand.

Drag modifier key like cmd used to work pretty well too, but there was risks if accidental drags

yah, i use cmd-drag sometimes too, usually for smaller adjustments, using my pinky on cmd. it's not quite as reliable (for me), as i lose the drag occasionally, having to go back and pick it up again.

Multi-level clicking… is that what they used to call force touch? If so, it’s interesting you say that, because I think it should be consigned to the fires of hell. My failure rate (at clicking with the correct force) is around 20-40%. My less tech-savvy relatives always seem to find their Apple trackpads confusing and unintuitive, they never understand why they have to click several times to get it to do what they want, and they are usually very pleased to discover this complication can be disabled. I also hate tap-to-click, but relatives mostly seem to like it and mostly understand it.

I often unintentionally clicked it because of the way I held my hands dangling over it. I'm not sure if that was just how I preferred to hold my hands, or I was subconsciously scared of resting the heels of my hands directly on it while typing. But yeah, tap to click was also a mistake akin to waving around a loaded gun.

> Tap to click should _always_ be turned off

It’s off by default, so someone at Apple seems to agree :)

It’s the first thing I usually turn on. The next being “dragging (without drag lock)” which has been hiding in Accessibility for a while now.

I have large hands, so my palms don't rest on the trackpad when typing, they brush it. So the palm rejection doesn't work very well for me. I have tap to click disabled as well.

I love tap to click!

I should be able to have tap to click, and no accidental clicks. The best of both worlds, just like I used to, when the trackpad was a reasonable size.

> Tap to click should _always_ be turned off; it's bad and it should feel bad

I love tap to click and it works great on my 2012 MacBook Pro trackpad.

However, on my brand new, expensive Dell Precision laptop from work, it's crap.

14 years after the introduction of the glass trackpads on the first unibody MacBook, I still haven't experienced a Windows or Linux laptop that comes close. Is it all due to patents?

Huh, the touchpad on my Precision 7540 is absolutely my favorite touchapd I've used in _years_.

Three (!) real, hardware buttons that I can feel _without_ activating. Sensitive area a bit larger than I can cover moving fingers without moving my wrist. Even barely-configured libinput drivers in Linux (I think I might have turned up the sensitivity a bit) haven't had any palm detection errors, moves-interperted-as-taps, taps-interpreted-as-moves, or any of the other behaviors that drive me nuts with big Apple-style clickpads.

I have fine motor control that is, at least, not worse than average.

I nonetheless have to turn off all the fancy "3d click" stuff on Mac trackpads, or else my click-drag-drop operations go from ~100% success to more like 40% success.

Took me a while to figure out WTF was wrong, the first time I got a Mac with that "feature". So please, no, no-one rely on this when writing software.

Tip-tap is great bettertouchtool gesture for switching tabs

I agree - trackpad is way too big on the 2016+ models and misclicks happen now that didn't happen with the 2013 class of MBPs.

I am not simply turning off tap to click - a large trackpad makes clicking even harder.

I've found that using even a basic BT mouse is so much more productive than the built-in or external trackpad (need to disable trackpad when mouse is connected unless you use an external keyboard as well).

This sounds like someone who has never actually used a recent Apple trackpad and who is making things up.

It's simply false that a large trackpad makes clicking harder. There's no physical hinge anymore.

It's not a function of the trackpad, but the ergonomics of having to click which I am not finding comfortable.

I have a MBP 2019 15", MBP 2020 16", and MBA M1. I'd love to see the M1 trackpad on a 16" device.

Not to mention that the clicking firmness is programmable: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352

> a large trackpad makes clicking even harder

How?

I think you have been fooled by how clicking on a MacBook trackpad works these days... It's definitely not getting harder to click the larger it is, BECAUSE NO PHYSICAL CLICK IS HAPPENING.

I'm baffled by reports of misclicks and whatnot from Mac laptops. I assumed, before clicking, that the complaint was about PC hardware, because I've YET to use a Windows laptop that doesn't suffer from this.

Alternate opinion: Trackpads are the annoying thing you deal with when an external mouse isn’t viable.

Correct in most respects, except the multi-touch gestures on Mac (and presumably newer versions of Windows) are really good. It's so convenient and smooth to be able to just swipe three fingers up to see all open windows, or left and right to switch between virtual desktops.

But for anything precise, yeah, please just use a mouse.

The trackpad is pretty precise, I don't see the need for anything more precise that shouldn't be handled via smarter software anyway.

I've never seen love for the lenovo trackpad before.

I have a 2021 YOGA and I find the trackpad sluggish and disconnected from my intent. Like, I'll two-finger scroll and there is a noticeable pause, then it scrolls much farther than intended, and when I scroll back, it scrolls too little. I find it very frustrating.

ThinkPad trackpads are a smidge on the sensitive side, but that works well for how small they are. Plus they usually have three physical buttons. I normally use the TrackPoint, however.

If it doesn't say ThinkPad, it's garbage tier.

Ah. Mine has no buttons. It's the C940 81q9:

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Yoga-C940-14-Touch-i7-1065G7-1...

Sucks that a ~$1000 laptop is a "garbage tier" in 2021.

It does suck that Lenovo doesn't put the care and thought into their other laptops that they do into ThinkPads, but this is where we are. And to be honest, the non-Apple laptop market is such a wasteland of planned-obsolescent junk that you really have to be persnickety about features and build quality, and know which vendors and product lines deliver on those, to not get something garbage tier.

Perhaps this is why the Framework is so enticing. Those guys seem to genuinely give a shit.

Lenovo Yoga models aren't the same in construction than Thinkpads, but I have tried some non-Thinkpad Lenovo laptops and their touchpad software is a total garbage. If you know what brand is, I would totally try to look for an OEM Synaptic or Elan driver and install it.

I personally had only Windows laptops and had no problem with the trackpads, even with the tap-to-click option activated, which I really love. Tap-to-click make me drag and drop a lot faster than any other way.

One problem in Windows laptops are usually the customized software that come with the trackpad, and some are so bad that would make me refund the PC (like the Asus ones), and other problem is that most people doesn't know that touchpad palm rejection can be adjusted, in conjunction to other settings (like areas where you don't want the touchpad to work or make clicks), to make it more comfortable, when you are using a OEM driver.

The Macbook touchpads are really great both in hardware and in software, I don't know how they aren't already implemented touch/click areas in addition to what already have.

I would very happily go back to ThinkPads with only a TrackPoint[0] and no space wasted on a touchpad, but I realise I'm in a tiny minority.

0: https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200

Why not use a keyboard only interface?

That is what I do the overwhelming majority of the time. But some things work better with the pointing and the clicking. After that I would like my fingers back on the home row, and with a TrackPoint they already are.

One of the reasons I've thought about getting an apple laptop is because I have finally come to realize how great a large, and well designed, trackpad can be. I'm over the minipad of the Thinkpads of old.

I have been a supporter of smaller trackpads for a long time. I have turned down the work macbook at the past few jobs, and the track pad has been at the top of my gripes.

I think this is largely down to how I use my laptop. I always disable all gestures, and replace them with keyboard commands. I also found I would make the sensitivity really high, so I wouldn't have to reach so far to move my mouse around. I think my preferences for keyboard based interactions and traditional mice make we want a smaller trackpad.

I've never had an issue with palm rejection, and overall, I love the Macbook trackpad.

The only issue I've had is that during the years I used a mid-2012 MBP, I developed a habit of resting the tips of my fingers just below the spacebar. For years there was just enough space there to make that possible. Now there isn't, and I still get the occasional issue when my fingers go back to that spot out of habit.

Ha, I did not realize that I do the same thing on my mid-2013 MBA11. I left the MacBook ecosystem in 2016 so I guess I don't have to worry about this.

I have been complaining about the larger trackpad since MacBook Pro 2016. False positive input may not be much, something like 10 times over a year of usage, but it is still infinitely more than MacBook Pro 2015 when it had zero problems.

My guess of the problem isn't with the width of the Trackpad, but with how close the trackpad and the keyboard are [1] ( image from another comment on HN ), where pressing space bar could have accidentally move the cursor.

Keyboard and Trackpad on MacBook Pro 2012-15 is still the best. Even when compared to the new M1 MacBook Pro. ( I play around with the keyboard for half an hour, still dont like the lack of Key Travel )

[1] https://i.imgur.com/1sagLm0.jpg

The trackpad is probably the number 1 reason to get an apple laptop.

The click is virtual, but feels completely real - the feel cannot be compared to the virtual iphone 8 button, which felt very fake.

The click can also be accentuated from anywhere on the trackpad with the same force, something you cannot do on trackpads with physical buttons.

When dragging you can use one finger to click and hold down the mousekey while using a different finger to move the cursor - this makes it possible to drag and drop much further than the size of the already ample trackpad.

On top of this comes scrolling, which is in a class of it's own, and only matched by iphones and ipads.

I say, make it bigger and have it accept input from apple pencil!

Another advantage of my trusty Thinkpad X62 [0]: no trackpad.

[0] https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/

I love the MBP trackpad except it is way too big: the 2012 size was perfect. I have tap-to-click enabled. At least once a day I have a palm or finger grazing the tackpad resulting in the cursor jumping to another line mid-word, or Cmd-click doesn't work because now it's Cmd-tap+already_held. I've had to learn to twist my wrists outward slightly to keep to base of my thumbs off it, which helps but does not eliminate the problem.

@dang, maybe this should point to the source:

http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2021/10/31/honey_please_shrink...

Which has been separately submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055748

There's no need to shrink it. It can be done in software, ignore touches/dragging in the periphery.

Actually what could be done is to give tactile feedback when you cross into that ignored region so it feels like your finger just went over an edge. Then the area on the outside of those edges can be configurable tap areas: more buttons! The logical conclusion is to make it a display too so you can see the buttons.

I've been using it with tap-to-click for years now and never had an issue with random clicks.

Same.

A larger trackpad also means a greater distance from the edge of the case to the keyboard, meaning more of your wrists have to be elevated to type. I find typing on the 14" to better for this, despite no palm rejection issues with the 16".

I'll repeat this as many times as I like until I'm satisfied but Apple should have made the trade off of trackpad area for the touch bar and not the function keys.

I have this issue all the time. I do have to say the red dot thing in the middle of a think pad is brilliant. I love that. If only apple would add a red dot mouse

After owning several thinkpads... I think the trackpoint is better than a trackpad, but trackpoint drift is so common on so many models that I hesitate to call it brilliant.

Use a different tip on it, I set acceleration off on mine and use the fastest speed.

I think it's seen as way too much of a "corporate laptop" thing for Apple to ever add it.

If I could make the entire bottom of my laptop into a trackpad, I would in an instant. I absolutely love Apple's giant trackpads.

Never had a problem. The large and responsive trackpad also is good enough to play video games which would be unheard of on a non Mac trackpad

no don't shrink it

the macbook trackpad is phenomenal, three finger drag (hidden in the accesibility menu) is a must have

I switched to linux since the macos is so crappy and invasive now, and the only thing I miss is the awesome mac trackpad with the gestures (I always set it at maximum sensivity as well)

2021 mbp has definitely worse palm rejection than previous gen (in my xp)

I would shrink them out of existence - I hate the damn things :)

No complaints over here.

bring back the trackball from the macintosh portable, please

I'm not a touch typist. I learned to type by having a computer in front of me and hitting the keys as I learned where they are. Having said that, I am actively trying to find a way to trigger the issue that this person has and I just can't do it. Can someone explain to me how they are accidentally hitting the track pad? I rest my palms on the laptop (16") and they are nowhere near it. Also, even when I deliberately rest them on the trackpad in order to emulate this issue, I still can't do it.

Maybe I have big hands? https://i.imgur.com/1sagLm0.jpg

I am on a 16" 2019 Macbook pro. I'm also 6'4" (1.9m) with relatively sized hands. You can see in that photo that just one hand covers enough of the trackpad, imagine 2. I usually angle my palms so that I'm only resting on the outer sides of them, but I move during typing and sometimes my whole palm rests and then I'm putting pressure on the trackpad. I usually type with an external keyboard and I have a pad at the base of the keyboard that I rest my palms on so I'm used to resting my entire palms while typing. Switching to the laptop I have to retrain myself not to do that and I use my laptop keyboard so infrequently that it doesn't stick

> Also, even when I deliberately rest them on the trackpad in order to emulate this issue, I still can't do it.

I'm not sure but it seems to happen the most for me in vscode. I'm coding and suddenly vscode is starting a debug session. It's happened too many times.

I also want to note that I have turned off "tap to click" in my settings.

The (very small) trackpad on my XPS 13 is vastly superior to the ridiculously huge one on my work Macbook Pro. It's so odd to me how much praise Apple gets for these monstrosities.

Superior how, precisely?

Just get rid of the trackpad entirely. The only feature of trackpads that people care about is palm contact rejection.

Plug in a mouse when you can, make the screen a touchscreen for when you can't plug in a mouse.

I've always wondered what company was wielding patents as a weapon to force all laptops to have trackpads.

When I use my iPad with the keyboard + trackpad, it's often a reminder that I don't want /both/ a keyboard and touchscreen.

I used to have a Surface and the one thing I would use the touchscreen for while sitting at a desk was to scroll with a thumb on the lower corner of the screen (with my arm resting on the desk).

It's nice to be able to change position and have your arm extended along the side of the computer sometimes instead of bunched up next to you to scroll on the trackpad.

Beyond that, yeah if I'm at a desk with a keyboard and trackpad, I'd rather use the trackpad than hold my arms up in the air on the touchscreen.

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