The nipple thing is a stopgap solution. Most lenovo users I know have a wireless mouse that they use almost exclusively. Neither the trackpad nor the nipple thing is acceptable to them, appaently. I have a Samsung linux laptop. Same thing. The trackpad is a piece of shit so I use a logitech mouse with it. With all of my macs in the last 15 years, I never felt the need to connect any external keyboard or mouse to them. It's that good.
I actually connected an Apple Magic trackpad 2 to my Samsung laptop just to see if that makes a difference. It's great. Software support in Linux for that is fine. Silky smooth, responsive, gestures, everything. It's the trackpads in laptops that are terrible, not the software support for them. Almost universally every non Apple laptop out there has terrible trackpads. The reason I own that magic 2 trackpad is that I actually prefer using that over a mouse with my imac.
Parent said input, not click. It is annoying, and bothersome for the mouse to move, even without a click.
They're still massive, and the whole "Force Touch" thing is very nice. Both being able to click anywhere on the trackpad, including the top where the hinge would usually be, and the "press harder to do something" functionality is more useful than I thought it would be.
I find that I can keep my hand on the home row and just reach over my thumb for trackpad use 90% of the time on the MacBook, whereas with the xps and razor blade the top 10-20% of the trackpad feels unusable (and they're pretty small)
For the palm rejection, I almost never have erroneous inputs, and I think that's true for most people. And it's not that I don't physically mistouch; I realized how important and active the filtering is one time when I was doing something weird with my laptop that disabled palm rejection (maybe using my MacBook as a Bluetooth input for another computer?) and it was basically unusable from all the erroneous inputs.
I can't speak to other laptop brands so maybe it's better for those. My 2016 Lenovo's trackpad wasn't something I ever used regularly either. I had a mouse for that computer as well because the trackpad never felt good.
I was under the impression that multi-touch has been standard for years. I've had it on Dell and Lenovo in the past few years, and I think my Asus a decade ago. And aren't gestures a software thing?
1) The acceleration. The faster you move your finger, the farther you can fling out the cursor. For comparison, my ThinkPad's trackpad simulates a trackball i.e. it doesn't have acceleration, only inertia.
2) 3-finger drag-and-dropping. As far I know, the MacBook is the only laptop that supports this. Also you can simulate a left mouse button press-and-hold by resting 3 fingers on the trackpad.
3) The feeling. The glass surface make it feel like you're sliding your fingers on butter.
2) Probably configurable in software, but unnecessary. Double-tap-hold (where the second tap you don't lift your finger) means holding down the click from the first tap, so drag-and-drop works just fine with a single finger.
3) I tried a co-worker's Mac a few years ago out of curiosity after hearing so much about the touchpads, but something about the sensation bothers my skin so much I don't want to touch it for more than a few seconds. It's a similar revulsion I get to touching felt.
I learned about this today. Looking forward to turning it on on my ThinkPad. The default behavior on Windows 10 with the Synaptics drivers for my ThinkPad X1 Carbon gen 3 (2015) is not to have any acceleration, only inertia.
My personal opinion is that 3-finger drag-and-drop > double-tap-and-hold for 2 reasons:
- there is no delay
- you don't risk running out of space when dragging things. You can leave 2 fingers on the trackpad and keep dragging with your 3rd finger.
1) I don't know what software stack you're using (I'm on Debian Linux) but acceleration is a supported setting on both the TrackPoint and the TrackPad. Personally I find acceleration vital to them being usable. On Windows there's QL mouse accel filter to customize the curve to an advanced level. On macOS there's an older software called ControllerMate that let you set a custom acceleration curve. I don't know if it works on modern systems though.
2) I don't know what 3-finger DND is because I use 1 finger to DND. Mind explaining a bit more? I've got 3 fingers bound to Mission Control which might be a default and I find quite handy.
About the 3-finger drag-and-drop - it used to be on by default. Now you have to enable it manually since 3-finger swipes are bound to Mission Control and Expose. Once you enable it, Mission Control and Expose will be bound to 4-finger swipes. To enable it:
- Go to Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options...
- tick the box 'Enable dragging'
- select 'three finger drag'
Demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LFzxpT8mFk&t=129s
You don't need to worry about running out of space when dragging with 3 fingers - once you start dragging with 3 fingers, you can leave 2 fingers on the trackpad and keep dragging with your 3rd finger.
That's something you can get with aftermarket parts for a thinkpad as well. Personally, I installed a glass touchpad in my T470 and it's incredible.
When they put a trackpad on their wireless keyboards, then I'll believe they get it.
Can't put a wireless keyboard AND a trackpad on your lap, so literally every Apple wireless keyboard ever is useless to me.
The trackpad is an afterthought for Apple.
https://purposemade.org/projects/the-tre-apple-bluetooth-mag...
All the ones I've seen are stupid expensive, though.