| So I like Mac hardware and to this day for reasons I cannot fathom, I still consider the Macbook trackpad to be the only usable incarnation of this technology I've ever seen. This goes beyond hardware too as it seems like integration into the OS is a key factor. Touch pads still feel kludgy on Windows and Linux (to me at least). Even on Mac hardware. But there are certain UX fails by Apple I cannot comprehend and this is one of them. I remember when this changed. It was years ago now. Apple decided the previous way of doing things was unnatural and just reversed it. If you want it the "unnatural" way you could use a setting. But the inability to split how the trackpad worked and how a scroll wheel worked is nothing short of pigheadedness ("no, it's the users who are wrong" to paraphrase Principal Skkinner). Sadly this isn't an isolated example. The earlier iPads had an orientation lock physical switch on them. I love this feature. And then Apple decided this was "inconsistent" with the iPhone (which had no such switch) and removed it. I mean the switch was obviously still there but now it did something completely useless. I think it muted the iPad instead? If you wanted this you could just hold down the volume down button. Then they briefly added back the option of getting the old behaviour but that only lasted briefly before that option and ultimately the switch were entirely gone. I used the orientation lock all the time and I'm still dark about it. Another: a Bluetooth keyboard or trackpad connected to the laptop by USB will automatically pair. Great feature. Compare this to the Bose headphones I have, which are a total nightmare as soon as you pair to more than one device to the point where I've installed homebrew packages and scripts to disconnect Bluetooth when I close the lid of my Macbook (who decided it was a good default to pair to a Macbook with the lid closed vs one with its lid open? I mean does anyone even use pairing to a closed Macbook?). The problem? There's a popup I need to dismiss saying "This trakcpad is now wirelessly connected to your computer". Great. I don't care. I don't ever want to see this message again. Is there an option for that? No! I find full screen mode for apps great. I often have it set up so my IDE is one screen and I can swipe left and right between my main desktop and my IDE. The problem? If your mouse gets near the top of the screen a menu bar appears, often obscuring the top of your IDE so you have to walk this fine line between getting high enough on the screen but not too high. I have a 32" 4K monitor. I'm fine with the menu being visible all the time to avoid this. Really. Why don't I have that option? Years ago Chrome actually worked like that. Then it mysteriously disappeared. When I worked at Google I asked about this and was told something like it was considered a "bug" and it violated Apple's UI guidelines or something similar. So now we have the dumb version. Yet another: if you have multiple monitors, one of them is the "main" display. It has the dock. If you hit the bottom of the screen on a different monitor the dock will move. You can't turn this "feature" off. The best you can do is put the dock somewhere else. I don't want the dock somewhere else. What's really troubling about the last two is they really ignore the basic tenets of HCI in that the corners and edges of the screen are the easiest places to hit. Microsoft famously ignored this years ago when on Windows 9x the Start button was offset by a couple of pixels from the corner for no good reasons. No doubt some designer's opinionated sense of aesthetics. So, rant aside, thanks for making this utility. I know there have been other solutions to this as well. Part of me still hopes Apple sees reason and reverses their dumb decisions here. |