Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> you can get feedback whenever the mouse moves onto a clickable thing on the screen - a window, an icon, things on the Taskbar - and you can also get feedback when you're performing tasks like sizing a window or moving a scroll bar.

MacBook trackpads already use haptic feedback to simulate the tactile feel of clicking.

So in theory you could easily replicate the "iFeel Mouse" effects with the hardware in trackpads today.

Does macOS expose API's for any of this? Or has anyone figured out a way to hack it with code? Or is it all hidden away deep in inaccessible firmware?

I would be exceptionally curious to know what it feels like, if whenever I moved my cursor across the tab bar of my browser, I felt a tiny bump between each tab. Or if I felt a little indentation when I slid into a text box.

It's easy to imagine it would become very distracting very quickly if it were overdone, but I can't help but wonder if it could be done in a subtle way that actually felt natural and helpful?

Apple's force touch trackpads are still wild to me. The fake button they used on the iPhone 7 and 8 wasn't particularly convincing to me, they kinda just feel like the bottom of the phone is vibrating. But the trackpads are so uncanny I almost didn't believe it wasn't moving until I tried clicking while the machine was powered off and it didn't do anything.

Also the fact that you can click in, and then do a further harder click that feels like a harder bump "in" than the first one, and when you start releasing pressure the click intensities reverse "out" as you'd expect. I usually use my laptop docked at a monitor with a full keyboard and mouse, but when I am undocked I find myself frequently playing with the trackpad click cause it's still so novel to me.

It's always fun to tell more casual MacBook users that the trackpad doesn't actually click cause they usually have no idea.

I'll still never understand why Samsung dropped the same tech. Take a galaxy S8 and push in where the physical home button used to be and it clicks in an incredibly realistic manner. Long since dropped it though. Terrible shame, since it was by far the best way to turn the phone on.

There is an API available for haptic feedback through the touchpad, but I can only recall it being used when the pad is "pressed" (i.e. when you are dragging) - many graphics or design tools use it to create a "notch" when items align.

PowerPoint has this for example - dragging something around to move it will give a haptic click when aligned with center or another object.

It would be interesting to see if this API can be used when the user isn't dragging something to move it.

Edit - this seems to be the API - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nshapticfee...

Yes, there is an API for this in macOS, and I use it in two of my apps (multitouch.app and charmstone.app). The haptic feedback is really subtle though and it doesn't give the full power of the feedback that is in the trackpad, which limits the usefulness of it. You can make it buzz for longer durations to make it more apparent, but then it starts to get annoying. I think there is a private framework that can give you stronger haptic feedback, if I remember right (I avoid private frameworks).

There must be an API because I've seen (felt?) it used recently. I can't remember what app it was, one I just have tried one time. It had a knob like control and as you dragged around it made the trackpad click like a real knob might as you turn it. I didn't find this very compelling, would rather a slider.

I wonder how much battery power the thumping consumes. It is very convincing, to be sure. For the most part I'd prefer real switches, but haptic feedback when moving the cursor across UI elements can be pretty cool. Can't say I've encountered it in any applications I use, though.

There are two major failures with the MacBooks' trackpads:

1. They're too big. You can't put your hands on home row without frequent spurious UI interactions. Most often this is a click being erroneously interpreted as a right-click, because the pad detects that your non-clicking hand is still in contact with the pad. But frequently when I'm typing, the cursor jumps to some other part of the page or edit box. There's just no reason for such a large horizontal area; you essentially never use the whole width of this giant pad for horizontal scrolling or side-to-side movement.

2. The giant trackpad can't be used with the Pencil. This is just baffling. Its surface area is plenty big enough to be useful as a drawing tablet, but the Pencil doesn't work on it. Why? I'd buy a Pencil today if it did. At least then there'd be a payoff for the dumb size of the pad.

None. Because my iFeel, anyway, is a basic wired USB mouse. It doesn't have batteries at all.

OK but that was about the trackpad on MacBook Pros...

Oh I see!

That was not apparent to me. I thought you asked, then changed subject to the trackpad...

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