macbook touchpad > *

[ControlD]

well if you're gaming on your laptop and getting a macbook, you're doing it wrong.

lol, fair point. I didn't buy it with gaming in mind but it is good for family Minecraft night, etc.

 

[Markbnj]

It's FOSS - somebody will volunteer to write a driver if there are enough votes for the feature/pull request.

Eh maybe. Drivers are sort of FOSS's weak point. I guess because you can't typically do them in javascript or Go.

 

[CZroe]

i've been on a hackintosh for the past 5+ years or so, and i finally ended up getting a real mac. holy shit i cannot believe what i've been missing with this touchpad, this thing is incredible. i am so much more efficient with it than i was with my old laptop. the touchpad on it (hp probook 4540s) was decent and i could still do some gesturing, but nothing nearly as precise as i can on this thing. and it just feels so natural and works so well.



if you haven't used one before you don't know what you are missing!

Is it the new kind with the Taptic Engine and 3D/Force Touch?

Until recently you had to put up with Mac touchpads that click on one side and not the other (hinge side). I HATED that.

 

[IronWing]

Tiny balls are garbage.

http://support.logitech.com/product/cordless-trackman-optical

Mine recently died though. I wish they still made this or the MS Trackball Explorer... :'(

Indeed.

Best trackball ever. If it only came with two buttons.

 

[Zee]

Has anyone used the apple trackpad2 on a windows machine?

 

[Anubis]

A real mouse with 5 buttons > touchpads of any kind.

any mouse is better then a touchpad

 

[purbeast0]

Is it the new kind with the Taptic Engine and 3D/Force Touch?

Until recently you had to put up with Mac touchpads that click on one side and not the other (hinge side). I HATED that.

no i didn't get the 2015 model, the force touch + minimal graphics card upgrade was not worth the extra $1000 or so to me. i got a mid 2014 model, although brand new.

 

[poofyhairguy]

A real mouse with 5 buttons > touchpads of any kind.

Exactly. On my Hackintosh I have every button tied to a trackpad gesture. So you get the same tricks without the imprecise trackpad actions.

 

[purbeast0]

any mouse is better then a touchpad

i would have agreed with you prior to getting a macbook, but now i dunno, as i mentioned above, i may be more efficient now than i was with a mouse. i know it sounds so minimal, but the time/effort spent moving from the kb to mouse ads up over time and with how good the touchpad works and it's added gesturing, i may be more efficient now with the touchpad. time will tell, can't say just yet.

but for instance, at work, if i want to type something in the top right areamonitor 1, then move to type something in the top right area of monitor two, i have to physically lift my hand off the keyboard, grab the mouse and move it over to where the cursor has to be, then move my hands back to the keyboard.

with the laptop, i can move my left hand oh so slightly below the keyboard, swipe real quick to move from desktop 1 to desktop 2, click, and move my fingers right back to the keyboard and type.

when having to do those kind of things over and over and over, it ads more time/effort to move the mouse than it does to move to the trackpad. but again, can't really say just yet, time will tell. but in the 6 days using it and doing development on it, i can definitely say i'm more efficient on it than i was on my hackintosh, simply due to the trackpad.

 

[Red Storm]

It's not just the trackpad though. You can have a trackpad of similar quality on a Windows machine, but it's the gestures that you can actually perform in the OS that make the difference. In my experience Windows is all about keyboard shortcut combinations, which are much less useful on a laptop compared to trackpad gestures.

 

[purbeast0]

It's not just the trackpad though. You can have a trackpad of similar quality on a Windows machine, but it's the gestures that you can actually perform in the OS that make the difference. In my experience Windows is all about keyboard shortcut combinations, which are much less useful on a laptop compared to trackpad gestures.

it's probably both. the trackpad i had on my hackintosh (running OSX that i'm running now on macbook), the swiping sideways to scroll horizontally simply didn't work. it would scroll you horizontally about 5 pixels. same with trying to swipe between desktops.

 

[CZroe]

I always wondered why so few manufacturers use all the space between the keyboard and the front edge for increased vertical touchpad area (rarely anything limiting horizontal area). It particularly annoyed me during the netbook craze when they would move buttons to the left and right of the touch area to make more vertical space and would STILL have huge horizontal bands of unused area between the keyboard and the front edge. In 2009 you'd take one look at Apple's huge touchpad area in a tiny MacBook Air and see that nothing compared in the PC world.

When Microsoft made the touch cover for the original Surface / Surface Pro I was pulling my hair out because they did it AGAIN on something that was supposed to be a MacBook/iPad competitor. WHY?! There should only be left and right touch area delimiters! The vertical touch area should run the full distance between the space bar and the front edge! We already know that nearly the entire thing can be a touch-sensitive surface. 😡

 

[purbeast0]

I always wondered why so few manufacturers use all the space between the keyboard and the front edge for increased vertical touchpad area (rarely anything limiting horizontal area). It particularly annoyed me during the netbook craze when they would move buttons to the left and right of the touch area to make more vertical space and would STILL have huge horizontal bands of unused area between the keyboard and the front edge. In 2009 you'd take one look at Apple's huge touchpad area in a tiny MacBook Air and see that nothing compared in the PC world.

When Microsoft made the touch cover for the original Surface / Surface Pro I was pulling my hair out because they did it AGAIN on something that was supposed to be a MacBook/iPad competitor. WHY?! There should only be left and right touch area delimiters! The vertical touch area should run the full distance between the space bar and the front edge! We already know that nearly the entire thing can be a touch-sensitive surface. 😡

my hackintosh used that space well, however there are buttons down below the touchpad so that takes up some of the space.

not having a "right click" button took me a little while to get used to, but now it's second nature to just use 2 fingers to get that functionality.

i do kind of miss not having a delete key and am NOT used to having to do fn+delete to get the functionality. i also kind of miss having a keypad to the left of the keyboard, but i don't know how often i used that anyways.

 

[CZroe]

my hackintosh used that space well, however there are buttons down below the touchpad so that takes up some of the space.

not having a "right click" button took me a little while to get used to, but now it's second nature to just use 2 fingers to get that functionality.

It's big enough there that it's not particularly space-constrained and doesn't need to run all the way up to the edge, but for ultraportables and netbooks and convertible tablets and such they need to use every millimeter.

 

[ultimatebob]

Am I the only person here who thinks that the Macbook trackpad sucks? The touchpad just seems too slick to me, and I can never get the swipe gestures like the two finger scroll to work reliably. If if wasn't for Command + the arrow keys, I probably would have returned this thing to Apple.

I still miss the old trackpoint from my old Thinkpad.

 

[zinfamous]

any mouse is better then a touchpad

You should try a mac magic pad. Those things are the tits. Better for everything a mouse can do outside of games.

 

[destrekor]

Am I the only person here who thinks that the Macbook trackpad sucks? The touchpad just seems too slick to me, and I can never get the swipe gestures like the two finger scroll to work reliably. If if wasn't for Command + the arrow keys, I probably would have returned this thing to Apple.

I still miss the old trackpoint from my old Thinkpad.

User Error.

Sorry man, I was anti-Apple everything for the longest while - and while I still don't hold Apple as a company in high regard, their hardware is terrific, and OS X and the integration between it and the hardware are phenomenal.

It is a slick touchpad, yes, and that may be simply a matter of preference (I've never liked any other touchpad, ever), but if you can't two-finger scroll reliably, I don't think you're doing it right.

 

[destrekor]

You should try a mac magic pad. Those things are the tits. Better for everything a mouse can do outside of games.

I've been wanting to get one. I was not a fan of the Logitech version, wasn't nearly as universal and lacked too much in terms of gesture support.

I am a big believer of keyboard combos whenever possible to save mouse work, but sometimes if it is possible with touch gestures on the input device you are already using, and you don't need to lift a hand, that's the best.

Windows Key + left or right and various combos like that where both hands on are at opposite ends of they keyboard (or on Mac, control and the arrow keys), that is absolutely slower than using finger gestures on your pointing device.

I like all input devices for their strengths.

 

[brianmanahan]

You shouldn't be using a Macbook for gaming.

it works alright for civilization