[PhDuck]

Honest question: Have you ever used a MacBook trackpad long term?

From my experience with Dell XPS/Precision, Lenovo Thinkpads, IBM Thinkpads, and finally MacBooks, the MacBooks are far ahead. The Thinkpads trackpad are way too small, and Dell's are now days large enough but too imprecise. Both the Dell ones will sometimes trigger a click when typing on the keyboard since the trackpad is too sensitive.

[jeroenhd]

I've tried them every time someone with a Macbook came over and told me I have to try the touchpad because it's the best thing since sliced bread. It's definitely a big touchpad, but that's about all I can say about it. It's definitely not worth the extra spend on Apple hardware and neither is it worth dealing with macOS. It's not a bad touchpad at all, it's just unremarkable in the higher end laptop space.

I'll agree that they used to be exceptionally good before the Windows 10 precision drivers became widespread, though. Those made a huge difference in the PC world, for Windows and Linux support, and it took the industry many years to get to that level.

Going by the current state of my touchpad, I use about 60% of the area of my current touchpad so honestly I'm fine with the size on my Thinkpad P1 gen3. The HP Probook I had before that (which, to be fair, is eight years old now) definitely had a touchpad that was too small.

Apple also seems to be the only company that produces a decent external touchpad, which is irritating. I feel like I'm more productive with a touchpad but finding an affordable touchpad with decent reviews is nearly impossible, except for Apple's magic trackpad. The best alternatives seem to be Chinese clones from Aliexpress but I don't feel like writing my own drivers to get those to work well with Linux.