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Comment by throwmeaway222 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if anyone else agrees, but for some reason no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad. And now with that PLUS the heatless apple silicon - I don't think I could go to another OS and the x86 hardware world. I would just feel like I'm in clunky-land. Now don't get me wrong, I like a lot about Linux desktops, but Mac gets a lot of things right. I don't want to take anything away from people migrating from Mac, but the PC didn't kill Desktop Linux, Mac did.

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> no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad

There are newer trackpad for Windows, and the Surface line had pretty good trackpad as well (not Magic Trackpad levels, but perhaps 80% there ?

The more surprising part to me when I gave up on the Magic Trackpad moving to windows is I was over it in a week. I only ever used trackpads for a decade, but mouse's just work that much better on Windows/Linux, especially getting the extra buttons actual physical click helped a lot. The paradigms are just different enough that the Trackpad makes less sense than on macos.

I think so far some of the surface devices and some of the Razer (yes, the one making computer mices, keyboards and such) had been the closest.

It helps that windows has excellent desktop management/hot keys out of the box, which is a majority of what the Mac trackpad does for me (aside from clicking on things).

I did a lot of research regarding the trackpad situation on modern Linux and there are several reasons the macOS experience feels better for most people.

The most important one is indeed SOFTWARE/DRIVER implementation. Using a hackintosh, the feeling is not the same as a MacBook, but close (depending on which Hardware is used). Furthermore there is ONE UI framework (AppKit?!) which makes implementing things like inertial scolling and rubberbanding pretty easy in one Place. On Linux you have multiple App Frameworks (GTK, QT, ...), which is significantly harder to coordinate and the backwards compatible X11 stuff. Did you know that libinput has only one permanent maintainer (Peter Hutterer)?

Of course the amount of Hardware to support is significantly lower on apples side, which makes optimization easier.

Still, all in all I think the Linux touchpad experience is very close to macOS on my Lenovo T480s with a glass touchpad from a yoga 7 in Arch / GNOME. The only thing that really is not as good and what bothers me From time to time is Palm detection.

I use Fedora+Gnome on a 2021 MBP and the hardware+firmware+driver+software combination is perfect as far as I'm concerned.

How does the Palm-Detection work? To test this, you can do the following: Place your palm where the X-es are, then try to scroll with two fingers or move your mouse. I don't like that the mouse does not react anymore if the palm is placed there - it should just be ignored.

  ┌─────────────────────────┐
  │XXX                      │
  │XX                       │
  │X                        │
  │                         │
  │                         │
  │                         │
  │                         │
  │                         │
  └─────────────────────────┘

I performed your test and mouse movement and two-finger scrolling still works if my palm is there. Even 3-finger window switching gestures. My palm is effectively ignored.

So this would mean that either my configuration is bad or it might be a hardware limitation. So if you don't mind I would love to see your

  gsettings list-recursively | grep 'peripherals\.touchpad'

Here is mine (before you ask, disable-while-typing=false does not fix my problem) :

  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad accel-profile 'default'
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad click-method 'fingers'
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing true
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad edge-scrolling-enabled false
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad left-handed 'mouse'
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad middle-click-emulation false
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad natural-scroll true
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad send-events 'enabled'
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad speed -0.044999999999999998
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-and-drag true
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-and-drag-lock false
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-button-map 'default'
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true
  org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad two-finger-scrolling-enabled true

    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad accel-profile 'default'
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad click-method 'fingers'
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad disable-while-typing false
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad edge-scrolling-enabled false
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad left-handed 'mouse'
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad middle-click-emulation false
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad natural-scroll true
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad send-events 'enabled'
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad speed 0.0
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-and-drag true
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-and-drag-lock false
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-button-map 'default'
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click false
    org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad two-finger-scrolling-enabled true

I have a feeling the magic here is happening in apple firmware, rather than driver or software.

> I have a feeling the magic here is happening in apple firmware, rather than driver or software.

Either the

  disable-while-typing false

(which is the only difference besides speed) or as you said the firmware / hardware. Thank you very much.

OK, now move your palm over half, and then over 3 quarters of the trackpad. Two fingers to scroll still works.

My Dell Precision laptop running Win11 handles this perfectly. Wish I had tried this sooner :P

I do agree that Apple Silicon is way, way more energy efficient and comparable to some top desktop x86 chips, but.. From reading different reviews and tests apparently it's normal for the CPU/SoC to reach a temperature of up 100C at full load, with the case being around 45-50C. Do you mean "heatless" as in specifically the outside case temperature - so those x86 laptops heat up the case way more than that?

As the owner of an M4 Pro and an Intel Ultra 7 laptop, the M4 pro is uncomfortably cold most of the time. The ultra 7 is uncomfortably hot.

The Mac sucks in the winter. The PC sucks in the summer.

The PC is however entirely unusable due to that without plugging an external mouse and keyboard in which is the problem.

My M4 Max under full load for audio transcode required manual fan curve changes to get the temperature down from 110º C (yes, it really got that hot) to 95º C (much better).

It doesn't even get that hot with LLMs running with max fans, where the SoC is about 80º C.

Aside from those use cases, the M4 Max runs 43º C or less even in summer conditions.

I actually hooked up my magic trackpad to Linux at some point because I got so frustrated with the crappy touchpad on my Samsung laptop. I also have a logitech wireless mouse for it. Anything is better than that crappy touchpad.

The point is that Apple's magic trackpad actually works great on Linux too. Smooth, responsive. accurate, multi touch and gestures, and all the rest. Just works. More or less exactly like it does on a mac. Too bad the blueooth stack on Linux is a bit unstable. Lots of issues with stuff randomly not connecting. Which of course isn't great with a trackpad.

The issue is that trackpads from other manufacturers just seem to be universally really, really bad in comparison to Apple's hardware. Particularly anything produced by Synaptics that I've had the displeasure of using is just mediocre shit in comparison. And they seem to dominate the market. It seems like they just gave up even trying to pretend to compete. If you see somebody using a wireless mouse, 9 out of 10 times they aren't using a mac. I work in a lot of co-working spaces. Lots of macs. Almost exclusively being used without a mouse. Just not a thing. The trackpad that comes with it is fine. If you see somebody using a mouse, it's usually with a windows/linux laptop.

That Samsung laptop was something I used in between two macs. My old intel mac died weeks before the M1 was supposed to come out. I used it for about half a year. I still have it and it runs Manjaro. From a software point of view, I can do anything I need to do on it that I would normally use a mac for and I'm actually completely fine with using it for work.

But the reason I went back to the mac is the hardware. Intel/AMD laptops are so completely miserably dreadful these days. Apple makes great hardware. Great screens, keyboard, trackpads, CPUs, etc. You always end up compromising on at least a few of these. It will have a great CPU but a shit screen. Or it will be overheating all the time and have a loud fan. Or weigh 10 kilos. Or have a lot of blinking leds and a fugly formfactor. It's always something.

I have considered putting Linux on my mac a few times. I'm pretty sure I could kind of make that work but the thing is that mac OS works well enough and I have no technical need to switch. And I can't really justify spending a lot of time trying to get things like GPUs. sound, touchId sensors, etc. to work. And I would expect having issues with all of that.

But in a pinch, I can live with a decent Linux laptop. I'd probably go for something a bit more premium if I had to go there these days. But Arch/Manjaro are great and do everything I need and I vastly prefer that over Windows.

> Intel/AMD laptops are so completely miserably dreadful these days. Apple makes great hardware. Great screens, keyboard, trackpads, CPUs, etc.

Keyboard? Better than a Thinkpad keyboard?!

I am no fan of touchpads and I am using track points even on my external keyboard (I got a panic beginning of the year since you cannot buy non US versions from Lenovo anymore). However the touchpad on my Z13 is actually pretty decent. I got used to accept the emulation of haptic buttons.

A few years ago, I compared the trackpad on a ThinkPad T14 and a T14s and found that while on paper they are similar, the T14s has noticeably less friction with better tracking accuracy. I'll put blames on the PC vendors for playing around with their trackpad to sell higher end machines.

And even the T14s (gen 1) has a "cheap" trackpad with a plastic foil on top instead of a glass surface. The day before yesterday I did the upgrade from foil to glass on my T14s and it isn't the big leap I was hoping for. Sure, friction went down a bit but precession and gesture detection were good before already. The same upgrade on a T480s was a bigger improvement. Compared to my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) the trackpads of my ThinkPads are always worse. Overall I'm in the same situation as the author of the article (if you substitute Arch for pop!_os with Cosmic) and totally agree with him.

> no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad

I thought this too for many years, but have found the trackpad on the LG Gram to be equal or better.

Too bad the trackpad software behaves differently on MacOs than the rest of the world - when using tap-to-drag, when you release your finger, the drag doesn't get released until like a second later (and the release delay can't be turned off, it's been like this for decades). So when switching between windows and mac often, there can be a lot of annoying miss dragging.

That's an intentional feature, to avoid unintentional "drops" due to mere involuntary twitches (which are way more common on a touchpad than a physical mouse).

(Another option on some touchpads is to require a second tap for the "drop" action, and otherwise just keep the dragging active. It takes some getting used to, but then it works quite well.)

It's not a "feature" when Apple decided to do it differently than everybody else, and doesn't give you an option to do it the normal way. It's just a constant reminder that Apply wants me to adapt to it, because they decide what's the right way.

For those who keep moving between systems, there will be many more mistakes because objects will be dragged 'again' and involuntarily move where they shouldn't. It's so exhausting trying to deal with the "Apple way" of things, it's a total drag on otherwise pretty decent hardware.

> the heatless apple silicon

To this day I still dont know why people worship Apple Silicon. Before it was even named and was mostly used by iPhone as A10, A11 and A12, when I stated these CPU are Desktop grade all I got was being laughed at. But then when it was put into usage by Mac using the same chip now known as M1, M2 etc. All of a sudden they are gold.

Apple did at one point has the leadership of PPW ( Performance per Watt ), but since then competitors have catch up. Qualcomm Oryon and ARM Cortex A930, even exceeding Apple if you look at other metrics. ( We will see what A18 has to bring us ).

-> the smoothness of the Apple trackpad

Because no other PC manufacturer is willing in invest into it and pay for it. For example speakers, it wasn't until Laptop reviewers paying attention and start saying how awful all the PC Laptop speakers were when compared to a MacBook before they started to improve. While Speakers were easier as it is low cost item. Trackpad isn't. But it got much better when Microsoft decided to invest into the PC ecosystem and Surface Laptop, so other PC manufacturers can take advantage of it. It still isn't quite as good as the one on MacBook. But Surface Laptop is pretty close, or may be just different as some would argue. Similar to Keyboard where Surface has the old MacBook 2015 scissors keyboard with better Key Stability, I value that as better than every keyboard that is currently with Apple.

What the fuck are you talking about. A current high end laptop CPU is the AMD 9955HX3D, with Geekbench 6 of 3161/19080 geekbench. M4 Pro is 3812/20076.

Why do I worship apple silicon? Because it’s literally the best performing processor for a laptop on the planet. I can use it for a full day of work from the couch on battery, no performance hit, RAM maxed out, containers running, the fans never turn on, and it barely even gets warm. Or yeah, I can plug it in like a desktop and run multiple 4k high refresh rate monitors. And it’s not even that heavy or bulky.

all of that in one package was unheard of in a laptop before Apple silicon.

If you’re saying that desktop processors are still better, ok, but that’s a different story with different requirements. My MacBook is smaller than just the PSU and cooler I need for my nice desktop CPU.

+1, shame people are downvoting this.

>all of that in one package was unheard of in a laptop before Apple silicon.

My point is, it was available on iPhone. And has always been the case but people brush it off because it was an Smartphone SoC.

And I literally just stated there are ARM CPU Core offering available. You either compare the whole MacBook / Laptop, or you compare the CPU / SoC. The first being there aren't many choice compared to. The latter are there but not being used by laptop manufacturers.

And this is not the first time HN has mixed the two up. And god I missed the old Anandtech where this distinction was clear.

So we shouldn’t be impressed by Apple silicon because it also runs in phones?

And yes, there are ARM laptops ASUs just brought out a laptop running on the Snapdragon X Plus. Geekbench Single Core 2231 versus the M4 at 3678.

I mean, I’m sure it’s fine for a lot of people, but fine for a lot of people isn’t all that impressive in 2025. The other ARM chips are still a long, long way off from getting close to base M series performance and features. When you start looking at the pro, ultra, etc M chips it’s another level again.

>So we shouldn’t be impressed by Apple silicon because it also runs in phones?

My point is HN was not impressed in any shape or form, even when presented with figures, when Apple silicon was used in iPhone, but is impressed with it when it was running inside a MacBook.

And you just basically reiterated my point. People are comparing devices, not CPU. ARM has Core design IP that could rival Apple's M3 design today. i.e from CPU IP Core perspective it isn't five years ahead. It just isn't being used in the current laptop range for different kind of reasons.

So you don't understand how individual people can have an opinion contrary to what 'Hacker News' thought in the past?

I participated in those conversations back then, it was a hotly contested issue, even aside from the weird criticism of individual opinions for not conforming to some imagined collective you don't seem to agree with anyway.

You get used to the clunkiness after a while. It's a worthwhile tradeoff for actually owning your machine, IMO.

The only meaningful difference between my ThinkPad's trackpad and the one in my work Mac is that the Mac has a bigger one. I don't really get why some people seem to be under the impression that Windows laptops come with trackpads from the twenty years ago.

The CPU architecture is great and I hope Qualcomm will soon be able to replicate it in normal laptops. I don't think desktop users care about that as much, though, and macOS has just as many infuriating particularities as any desktop Linux OS. It just comes with better drivers.

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