[zqfm]

I don't want to sound snarky or overly skeptical, but I've seen a lot of people say that the trackpad under macOS is a lot nicer than that under linux, but I don't see what they mean. I have a ~6yo linux laptop as my primary machine and I pretty regularly help my mother-in-law with her ~1yo macbook pro and, other than the mac's trackpad being quite a bit larger, feel no difference between them. I grew up using macs, so I get that they often have that extra bit of quality that's not always easy to put into words, but I just don't feel that with the trackpad. Just curious what the difference is for you?

[falafel]

There isn't much difference nowadays. I think it's just a matter of preference as long as the trackpad is made of glass, which aren't hard to find on PC's anymore.

I even prefer my PC trackpad on Linux vs my Mac trackpad on macOS because on Linux there are many more settings I can configure to get it working exactly to my liking.

Personally, I don't like the cursor acceleration profile in macOS by default. You can change certain values through the terminal, but the Synaptics and libinput options on Linux are way more in depth and packaged in a nice GUI (at least in KDE Plasma).

[gknoy]

I haven't used very many laptops, but I am one of the people that will say the mac trackpad is better. I can only give anecdotes, but I have thought about what feels different.

2012: Sony Vaio, running linux: Trackpad was infuriating, so I used an external keyboard + mouse. I'm not sure what it was - the sensitivity of the trackpad was very high so it was hard to point at things, combined with separate buttons.

2015: Macbook pro. The trackpad was so good, and gestures so well done and supported, that I _won't use a mouse_ anymore on my work machine. (Five years later, still feel the same.) Clicking was as easy as tapping on the trackpad, and scrolling with two fingers (as well as two-finger click as right-click) works flawlessly.

2015: My wife has a windows laptop, and its trackpad is infuriating. While in theory it can be clicked anywhere, I always have to _Very Deliberately_ click (significantly harder than on my macbook's trackpad) before it can reliably register.

2018: Using a newer (2016) macbook, with touchbar and a larger trackpad. This has a larger trackpad, but it somehow doesn't register incidental thumb-bumps on the trackpad as clicks (an issue that my older mac sometimes would do).

2020: I moved to a 2020 macbook pro, my wife has a new windows laptop, and we have a Chromebook. I've used them all -- and still notice a strong preference for the mac's trackpad.

Windows trackpad handling has improved a TON since her old laptop, and it no longer feels like I need to press super hard to get clicks to register, but it still feels more finicky about recognizing clicks than the mac does, while still being harder to get the pointer where I want it to be. It also seems to react to accidental touches on the trackpad that the mac would ignore while typing. The chromebook's trackpad seems better than I expected for a $300 machine, and is better than her old laptop's trackpad, but it still doesn't seem quite as responsive as the mac's.

I'm not sure how much of this is hardware versus drivers. Windows laptops seem to be Very Good, in fact, these days. I still prefer the mac's trackpad behavior better, though.

[unphased]

In a word, precision.

PC laptops are catching up lately for sure though. Almost there. (I havent even tried some of the latest stuff, I heard Razer has really good "Precision" trackpads?)

[jamil7]

Theres a level of precision and responsiveness that I wasn't able to replicate. I even installed Arch on a macbook pro once and attempted to replicate it but it never felt right no matter how much I fiddled with parameters. This was years ago however and I know theres been some more work done in this area and someone with better linux skills might be able to do a better job than me.