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Comment by whalesalad | Hacker News Reader

One thing that has always killed me in regards to non-Apple laptops is the touchpad. Everyone does it wrong. By this I mean that they're small and not very sensitive, the attempts to integrate scrolling are janky. Anyone care to comment on the current status of that?

A lot of people dislike Apple but the subtle things like this are what keep me here. It's so simple to scroll and click and right click with just light and simple taps.

Is it primarily a software issue? OSS hasn't caught up?

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I tried running other operating systems on my Apple laptop with the large touch-pad and none of the other laptops I tested were able to reduce the sensitivity or do typing detection properly to prevent random mouse clicks while I type. With the large touch-pad, part of my palm rests on the touch-pad while typing. Without good detection the laptop becomes almost useless.

It's such a minor thing, but it is the major reason I went back to OS X over Linux. It was also the item that really made me appreciate how much detail Apple puts into their interfaces.

I was also wondering about that -- why are touchpads on most laptops so small? But I don't agree that OSS hasn't caught up, scrolling by sliding along the edges of the touchpad (my personal favourite) has been available in GNOME for years.

But then the keyboard on Mac laptops is a hell to work with. The | character is not even represented on the keyboard, and requires the combination alt-shift-L.

Edit: this is on a non-US keyboard, belgian or french azerty layout.

This is absolutely not true - I know because I'm looking at one right now. I would say Mac laptop keyboards are the best that exist. Thinkpads are the only thing that come close, and they only come close.

I think your character must have come across wrong, or you're referring to non-US MacBooks? | is shift-\ just like everywhere else. alt-shift-l gives me a Ò.

(This was typed on a MacBook Pro)

It must be on Azerty keyboard then. Each time I have to work on a mac I need to ask how to type the pipe character.

Yes the AZERTY Apple keyboard is full of suck (then again, so's the base one — at least the french layout, AltGr + 6 for a pipe? How about no?)

You must be on a non-US English keyboard; on the US English keyboard, | is between Return and Delete, with \. alt-shift-L produces Ò for me.

This is just plain wrong.

http://images.apple.com/macbookair/images/design_multitouch....

The | character is under the delete key above return.

Completely agree, I had a MBP and a MBA with German (qwertz) keyboard and Apple's layout sucks big time.

I've experienced very good as well as bad touchpads on normal laptops. I believe it's the hardware, actually. My ALDI Medion Akoya netbook was simply excellent (I believe it's a rebrand of the MSI Wind), my current ASUS EeePC 1215b E450 touchpad leaves a bit to desire compared to that one (even though it is bigger).

On the other hand, when I have to use a friend's Apple touchpad, I usually find them awkward to use. But given that Apple's got such a good name I'm certain it would just be a matter of getting used to its "feel" if I had to use it more.

Maybe you got the same experience in reverse, that even the good touchpads feel strange to you because you're used to Apple touchpads.

Why are you not being down voted? The OP didn't ask for you opinion of non-Apple products versus Apple products.

Panasonic's Let's Note line of laptops (sold as "business rugged" Toughbooks in the U.S.) has what I'd call a great trackpad, preferable to anything I've ever used, including the Apple trackpads (except for the things you can't do with it because you're running Windows).

Two-finger scrolling on both axes works well here on my Thinkpad T520, which is at least a massive improvement over edge scroll IMO, especially with limited space. Unfortunately the touchpad is quite small.

Nott sure what you mean, could it be that you are just too accustomed to the apple touchpad? I can scroll and move the pointer just fine on mine.

You wouldn't know until you've used the touchpad on an Macbook.

Give it a try for 1 week. Guarantee you won't be able to go back.

Had to use one for months, went running to the better sensitiveness of my eeepc from Asus (model 1000, when they had quality parts) and the think pads clitmouse (i use touchpad there only for scrolling, all the area is a scroll wheel)

i think you are mostly comparing apple drivers to windows drivers.

The question is clearly about Linux. Where there's no such thing as bad scrolling implementation

Tried to switch to Apple hardware, actually. Got a lot of hate towards them. Sensitivity is good, but precision is awful. Mouse has strange dynamic, leading to irrepeatable behaviour.

I'm genuinely surprised that Apple turned me away by having lots of small details done WRONG.

Been using a MacBook Pro for over a year; this will be the first and last Mac I intend to use for either work or personal activities. I miss the Thinkpad TrackPoint every time I'm forced to use the trackpad on the Mac (or any other laptop, for that matter).

Whenever I'm using the MBP trackpad, I feel that it's meant for people who don't stay near home row because the wrist motion of displacing my wrist/hand is incredibly wasteful. In the case of my Thinkpad, though, I can much more easily transition from clicking around to typing something up.

If a cat is born and kept in a dark room during it's infancy, it will grow up to be blind... it's a metaphor, but you don't know what you don't know. So try it out, understand how it works and then you can make a proper appraisal. I guarantee you will think every other means of scrolling is inferior...

For example, I can scroll (smoothly) in every direction, that means diagonally and in circles, whichever way my two fingers want to go on the trackpad. I can accidentally rest a few fingers on the trackpad and, click down with my thumb and move one of the fingers and I will successfully select and drag my selection, try that anywhere else, Linux does not support this even on the Mac trackpads, although they are making inroads...

I have successfully installed Ubuntu 11.10 on a MacBook pro and it works great, you can triple boot Mac, Windows and Linux, so at this point the trackpad issue is a software problem for Linux to solve.

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