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Comment by GolDDranks | Hacker News Reader

"But for 90% of web browsing, lifting my hand to the mouse is unnecessary friction"

By this point, I realized that the OP uses a normal mouse. The MacBook trackpad is so good that I feel weird using a mouse these days. Also, the travel between the keyboard and trackpad is much smaller.

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I agree but barely ever use my MacBook not docked to my external monitor and keyboard. So for me I just stick to the Magic Trackpad in such cases.

I really love the trackpad on the MacBook; it's been the best experience by a long shot coming from other laptops. The problem is, most of the time the MacBook is docked and I prefer to use my external keyboard and display. And Vimium is just very fun to use, especially if you're using Vim/Neovim/Helix.

For that reason, my default docked setup uses a Magic Trackpad 2 alongside my keyboard so I can have the best of both worlds. I know it’s excessive, though, and not for everyone.

This is the way, though. I do exactly the same thing. I was a trackball user for many years on Windows (due to wrist & arm pain from mouse use), but the Magic Trackpad works way better with macOS than trackballs (primarily because the Kensington software is garbage).

I also use the magic trackpad. I even tried the renowned logitech mx master 4 but returned it the next day, heavy and straining for the wrist. And all of the extra buttons and actions on that mouse don't make much sense when the trackpad has gestures.

I know I am weird, but I detest using a MacBook trackpad. However, recently having used Asahi on one, I've found that it is the Apple software that makes it so. I find it really difficult to drag and drop (I would rather open Terminal and standard Unix tools than try anymore) and gestures are way too greedy IMO. Under Linux it is bearable for me (though I still have preferred others slightly for a better texture than the glassy feel).

I wonder if the author is like me in that respect? Not sure I would spend time like this, but I also spent months building my Linux environment from a tty in 2009-2010 (landed on XMonad, finally on River this year after 5 months in GNOME purgatory to force myself to move to Wayland). Last macOS machine I set up, I turned off a bunch of stuff in Settings and was instantly bored because I just didn't want to deal with the window manager at all. It is now my video chat machine because of Dell's "wise" decision to use IPU7 hardware…but I really don't like using it for much else (Asahi reboots are tedious).

> difficult to drag and drop

Old trick is to enable three finger drag. Does linux have that?

I don't think so? But I've never had issues on Linux to need to bother with alternatives (as a terminal dweller, drag and drop is very rare there).

Macbook trackpad is weird. On the other hand, it's excellent for most desktop tasks. But I just can't play almost any mouse-requiring game with it.

It's not for gaming, but I think it's just generally not a good interface for it.

Maybe that might be because acceleration curves are tweaked for most common use of browsing.

Not everyone uses a laptop as their desktop too.

Especially with all gestures enabled and used

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