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dbevv

17 karma · joined April 18, 2022

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dbevv··on Ask HN: MacBooks seems to be the only viable option these days
I dislike using touchpads very much. I go to great lengths to control everything with the keyboard, and fall back to a traditional mouse when I have to (I tried trackballs but I couldn't adapt). Whenever I'm forced to use a touchpad because I'm on the go or I don't have room to bring a mouse with me, I groan.

That said, the implementation of the touchpad in a Macbook vs a regular touchpad in even a high end laptop is night and day. The software and hardware work together to make sure the touch surface is centered, and your fingers glide through it, there are no accidental presses, and esentially never misinput. The haptic feedback is so good that you can't really tell that you're not pressing a button. In comparison, the touchpad in what I consider the best Windows laptop, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, is a steaming pile of shit, and fails every measure.

I don't know how much of it is Apple's attention to detail versus their ability to do vertical integration -- Lenovo likely has very little control over how Synaptics implements their drivers -- but I would pay a hefty premium for an experience like a Macbook.