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Comment by jxdxbx | Hacker News Reader

Apple has been perfecting its trackpad software since 1994, and it’s been getting better ever since. By contrast Apple keyboards have gotten worse since 1995 when it discontinued the Apple Extended Keyboard II. We don’t talk about Apple’s mice.

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Yep.

The TouchPads from Apple are good. Their keyboards are bad. There are two important I/O devices in a laptop, the keyboard and the display. The keyboards from ThinkPads are near perfect and don’t fall apart. Lenovo decided to remove the 7th row to acquire more space for the TouchPad. Which is a design mistake because TouchPads don’t get better by becoming just bigger.

I never use the TouchPad in my ThinkPad. I mean it is there and works nice. Libinput improved a lot. But there is a TrackPoint in the keyboard. Never leave the home row. That is where HJKL is :)

wait, _THAT_ was the reason they removed the 7th row?? those m... But jokes aside, I read it saving them money in manufacturing cost was the reason. Would have loved to be a fly on the wall around David Hill when he pushed for the t25 to get a 7row, my feeling is that it is what made him leave lenovo

It's not just the software. I have Ubuntu on a 2017 MBP and the touch pad experience is so much better than linux on anything else.

I've connected an Apple Magic Trackpad (external bluetooth trackpad that sits on your desk) to an ubuntu machine and it's wonderful. There are still some software things to solve to get the acceleration perfect and things like scrolling working, but having trackpad hardware that isn't trash goes a really long way.

I tried doing this with a Thinkpad but the BT connection would cut out periodically and I gave up. Did you have to do anything special to get it working?

Nope, it "just worked." I ended up vastly preferring a mouse, though, so I didn't stick with it long term.

Well, that’s core Apple, isn’t it: „People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware“.

A handful of stupid mice and trashcan Macs don’t negate the fact that for a significant number of solutions, Apple nailed vertical integration of software and hardware, and the math plays out wonderfully in terms of User Experience; for these devices, 1 plus 1 equals 11.

I just got one of these with a Quadra 650 I bought. It's good but it's bugging the hell out of me that the bumps are on the d and k keys vs. the more modern f and j.

Eh, the multitouch magic mouse is pretty intuitive when you get used to it. Depending on what you do, it could be an excellent daily driver, but it does tend to have some limitations that can make it a non-starter...

I can’t right click on them. I guess you have to raise up your fingers from the left side? I just found that to be a dealbreaker. I’ve had to use them for work and I turn them into one-button mice with scrolling. The scrolling is excellent, I like low-profile mice, and I don’t mind the charger port location. But I need to right click!

Yes, you have to consciously lift the finger(s) from the left side and only touch the right side when right clicking. Not hard to get used to, but there's definitely some friction if you're coming from a normal mouse.

I wonder if that's the old magic mouse. I don't think I do that with the newer one but I remember something like that with the original.

No, that's both versions of the Magic Mouse. I have the most current version (in my hand right now), and if you want to right-click, you definitely need to lift your finger from the left side.

Oh wow you're right. I didn't even notice I do it. Now it's going to bother me.

That’s so weird. I love my Magic Mouse for everything except gaming, and I right-click all day long without even thinking about it.

I wonder what we do differently?

Magic mouse only has only one button, like all Apple mice. It relies on touch detection to fake multiple button support.

This basically makes their mice unusable for certain things like gaming. I had to use their mouse for a while and I opted to bind right click to a keyboard button because what do you know, most games bind aim and shoot to right and left click.

Apple has never prioritized gaming on their devices.

There was once a time when Halo was a first party release pitched at MacWorld.

Ctrl+click. I find it more intuitive than right clicking personally.

I like the multitouch aspect, but I hate how tiny and flat it is for ergonomic reasons. It's also not comfortable to raise your fingers up and pull them back to draw on the surface of a mouse.

It's a surprisingly okay daily driver mouse if you actually don't use the mouse that much, like if you're writing code or staring at code most of the time. I daily drove it for 3 years despite the terrible ergonomics, because I consider macOS almost unusable without the gestures (horizontal scroll, zoom, mission control, swiping between fullscreen apps). A few weeks ago I snapped and got the Magic Trackpad instead, which is a bit pricey (that's why I delayed the purchase), but IMO lovely to use.

The first-gen butterfly keyboards were pretty atrocious (although still kind of usable). I actually like the chiclet-key keyboards that Apple sells nowadays.

Yeah I don’t actually want Apple to put Alps switches into a Macbook.

I’d buy one if they did though.

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