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Comment by dewey | Hacker News Reader

As much as I have problems with Apple's software lately, the touchpad is one of these things that Apple just does better on their laptops by default compared to all other brands.

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They can still have problems with false touches while typing on the trackpad especially on modern 15-16" MBPs which have jumbo trackpads.

Is there a point to those giant touchpads? How do people tell where left and right click are without looking down? Personally I think the death of real mouse buttons is the worst laptop UX change in the last 20 years, even beating out chiclet keyboards.

> How do people tell where left and right click are without looking down?

Commonly on large touchpads, left click is a one-finger tap, while right click is a two-finger tap, either of them taking place anywhere on the surface.

My impression is that dedicated click regions are going out of fashion.

That seems awful. The more force you have to use with your pointing finger the less accurate your position is. I can't imagine trying to aim and shoot with the same finger.

As with many things, this is something that feels weird for the first few days but is a complete non-issue once you got used to it. Just like typing on a keyboard without buttons when the first smartphones came out.

I can't imagine getting used to the force of a click feeling different depending on where my finger is. Clicking straight down in the middle vs clicking your finger sideways when it's near the far edge, etc. When I bought my last laptop I just gave up and 3D-printed buttons to put on the bottom of the pad.

Well in MacBooks there isn't actually any downward travel, it's just a solid block, there's only haptic feedback to indicate a click has been registered.

I don't see how that's relevant. No matter what the necessary force to actuate the click, it's a larger strain the further off perpendicular your finger is. That means it's different every time depending on where you're clicking.

I just tried several dozen clicks and not one of them moved the cursor at all through the press down/release cycle. Perhaps Apple is running algorithms to correct for this but it is a complete non-issue. You should try it and see how it feels!

Eaiser dragging and gestures I guess. But I think a lot of it is aesthetics. Apple keeps the same aspect ratio pad and then increases the size so it always fills the space between the keyboard and the edge of the laptop. So as screen size increases so does the trackpad. It does look better than when they didn't do this for example the old 17" MBP which IIRC had the same trackpad as the 13" at the time.

Large touchpads are much more comfortable and efficient to use, in my opinion. I think they have grew about 3x in size since I got my first laptop.

I disable tap-to-click on my devices because every manufacturer seems to have this problem.

For me that's no inconvenience - I click from the bottom of the touchpad, so I'd be performing an actual click anyway. I guess some people tap near the top?

Apple trackpads fail at handling very quick swipes (when I want to quickly scroll through a list), something all other touchpads handle just fine.

Granted, I configured the trackpad so it handles taps like clicks. Quick swipes quite often get misidentified as taps instead.

Fuck me for daring to violate the One Apple Way(tm) I guess?

I have tap to click as well, and no issues with quick swipes. As long as the swipe is an actual swipe, and not a tap (i.e. you actually swipe whilst touching the pad) it should be fine. I imagine you're only briefly touching the pad rather than swiping on it - either that, or your trackpad has a defect.

I'm definitely swiping; no clue if the trackpad is defective since I otherwise don't use Macs.

That's the crux with Apple, for me at least. Hardware is excellent and I love it, but the software is so bad that it makes it really hard to justify purchasing the hardware. At least on the computers I can chose what OS I run, no such luck on other devices from them.

Anyone who's ever used Linux or Windows on their Mac knows that a lot of what makes the trackpads great is software.

On these other OSs, the Mac trackpad is not much better than any other.

Don't get me wrong, the trackpad hardware is far better IMO but the experience of using it is really only great on macOS.

I've never used Windows on a Apple laptop before, but the experience of using Apple touchpad with Linux/Gnome (with a little bit of tweaking) is definitely a better experience than using Linux/Gnome on for example a Surface Pro 8 touchpad. The size matter, but also the material and hardware implementation. There is a clear difference in just the hardware, not just software.

> with a little bit of tweaking

> better experience than using Linux/Gnome on for example a Surface Pro 8 touchpad

Sure, when you compare the absolute best with one of the worst, there will be a clear difference. Still, note that you made the point yourself about tweaking - which is done in software.

> There is a clear difference in just the hardware, not just software.

I agree. In fact, I said so. :)

Out of curiosity: What Linux or Windows software is not available to you on MacOS? Or do you mean the desktop environment is not any good?

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