[tentacleuno]

> I think the reason is that "a good trackpad" as well as "a good keyboard" is not something that can be measured.

While I agree that these metrics can be subjective at times, I believe there are some fairly well-established features that dictate whether something is, objectively, a good product. In the case of a trackpad, gestures such as pinch to zoom are arguably an essential (for me at least), as well as stepless scrolling, configurable pointer acceleration configuration, and a reasonable size.

In the case of a keyboard, sure -- that's a whole other kettle of fish. I quite like the one on my Dell XPS, but I'm sure some others wouldn't.

However, I think you've downplayed how much a keyboard matters here: for me, it makes or breaks a laptop (or a USB keyboard, of course). When the laptop is on, I'm spending a good 70% of my time using the keyboard. Therefore, I would argue it is one of the most important things to get right.

I've come across good keyboards, bad ones, and ones that are just OK -- as an example, the more sponge-like ones on Logitech media keyboards do not make a good experience. In my experience, you have to try a keyboard to know whether you like it, but you can filter out plain terrible ones from other online reviewers' experiences.

[vladvasiliu]

> In the case of a trackpad, gestures such as pinch to zoom are arguably an essential (for me at least), as well as stepless scrolling, configurable pointer acceleration configuration, and a reasonable size.

I'm typing this on my work windows laptop, which can tick all these boxes!

But the experience is still terrible. While the acceleration and such are fine enough for my use, I still get the feeling there's some lag between my finger movement and the pointer on the screen. There are things which I loved on my 11 yo mac which still don't exist on windows, like "drag hold" which only holds for a little while. On windows, it either doesn't hold at all, or holds forever. But this is purely a software issue.

Funnily enough, Linux with X11 on this very same laptop runs circles around windows, and has none of these issues.

I've never had any issue with palm detection on either OS, but I'm not sure if it's because it works well, or because of the size and position of the touchpad.

However, despite the poor performance on Windows, I still find it usable for random "office" use, and never felt the need to cart around a mouse when I'm not at my desk.

[al_borland]

>I still get the feeling there's some lag between my finger movement and the pointer on the screen.

This is a big one. Something I found really impressive, even on the first iPhone in 2007, was that it felt like my finger was moving the display itself, rather than performing a gesture to elicit an action. I feel the same way about the macOS trackpad, it feels almost connected to what is on screen. Other systems usually have that gesture/response feeling, which doesn't feel good natural to use.

[megous]

Yeah, no. Just tried on rando iPhone SE 1st gen I have here for some tests, and it lags on scrolling just like any other phone from similar era. You just slide back and forth slowly and observe the content of the screen pretty clearly not following the changes in direction immediately, and you can observe about 1-2cm distance between your finger and text.

It's impossible to be in sync anyway, unless you avoid VSYNC, and then you'll have tearing ans at best halve the delay. There are limits to these things that not even "Apple" can violate.

And first iPhone sure was not faster than SE.

Maybe with some 120+Hz refresh rate, and some SW tricks, you can get close to what you're talking about. First iPhone did not have that.

[vladvasiliu]

Sample size of 1 and whatnot, but this has absolutely never been my experience on my iphone 7, which I've kept up to date and stopped using less than a year ago. Scrolling in Mail, for example, was the contents following my finger. Hell, I complain about Android phones, even newer ones, which lag while scrolling the settings app, but even there I've never noticed that big of a distance between the finger and the text.

Never handled an SE, though, but I doubt it's worse.

[megous]

https://nanoreview.net/en/phone/apple-iphone-7

> Response time 35.5 ms

So at 60 fps, that's 2 frames delay + some. (and this is just display response time and doesn't include the content rendering, double buffering, and the input lag)

Here's the input lag for phones from similar era as the SE 1st gen: https://blog.gamebench.net/touch-latency-benchmarks-iphone-x... (88ms)

Another set of numbers: https://danluu.com/input-lag/

You can move your finger quite far in 80ms.