[chongli]

It isn't just that. The scrolling in macOS is 2D (you can scroll a small rectangle inside a large one in any direction) and has position, velocity, acceleration, and a bounce effect on the boundaries of the content area. Additionally, you can pinch to zoom (in and out) and the zooming is smooth and continuous centred on the cursor location.

There are also various 3-finger swipe gestures, and force touch lets you click on things with different levels of force to do different things.

The only Linux application I've seen that uses smooth scrolling with acceleration is Firefox, and that isn't nearly as smooth as macOS scrolling (which is available in every application).

[duskwuff]

Two-axis scrolling isn't unique to macOS. The way that scrolling has traditionally been implemented on Linux (as mouse buttons 4 and 5) makes it difficult to implement any kind of continuous scrolling, but once you have one axis working, a second one isn't much harder.

The velocity and bounce effects on scrolling are implemented at the application layer. They don't depend on any unique features of the trackpad hardware or driver stack.

Zoom and swipe gestures are nice to have, but I don't think they're critical in the same kind of way that pointing and acceleration are.

Force Touch is more of a gimmick than anything. It's a relatively recent feature, and was only added to the Macbook Air in 2018; very few applications do anything interesting with it. Personally, I leave it turned off.

[chongli]

The velocity and bounce effects on scrolling are implemented at the application layer. They don't depend on any unique features of the trackpad hardware or driver stack.

I didn’t say they did. Oh macOS they’re not implemented by the application though, they’re implemented by the UI APIs and thus available to all applications for free. This is not the case on Linux.

[cycloptic]

It is the case on Linux. Both GTK and Qt have this built in for a while now:

https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/GtkScrolledWindow.ht...

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qscroller.html

Why it's not working on your applications is a different question.

[Infernal]

The Force Touch trackpad was introduced in 2015. My 2015 MacBook Pro has one. I rarely use the “harder press” feature, but I love the adjustable click pressure (lightest setting for me), and how the same pressure anywhere on the trackpad works (as opposed to hinged models). I’m ruined for any other laptop just due to the excellent trackpad.

[ulisesrmzroche]

It’s used for drawing and illustration. Art is not a gimmick,

ArtIsts are one of apples most important cohorts. People here so condescending but why pretend like people don’t care about art or gaming?

Folks care far more about using their computer to make art than hating on Swift or Electron