[legitster]

Can I ask what the fascination with the Apple trackpad is? My other daily driver is a Thinkpad and I actually vastly prefer using the smaller one on it. You're not flinging your wrist across the zipcode and the clicks are more tactile.

[dsego]

It was the first good trackpad that supported gestures that are now common, things like two finger swipe to scroll (inertial scrolling was huge), pinching, two-finger for right click. I still see people using windows laptops with a mouse plugged in because in general windows laptops have touchpads that suck, and it was way more common a decade ago. Innovation in the windows laptop space was adding unusable gimmicks like a scroll stripe or right-click by tapping in a corner. And then apple introduced a haptic trackpad so you can do a tactile click anywhere, none of that bullshit tap to click where you have to keep your hand lifted so you don't accidentally tap on something. And windows laptops are still lagging behind, at least they got rid of buttons and have hinged touchpads, now we wait for them to catch up and add haptics.

[consteval]

To be fair, I use a mouse on a MacBook. Because even the best trackpad is still more cumbersome, painful, and inaccurate than a mouse.

[benwaffle]

some windows laptops have a haptic touchpad from sensel, which is reportedly good

[rqtwteye]

Maybe I should try a Thinkpad but otherwise the Macbook trackpad is the only one that really works for me and doesn't feel awkward. The gestures are right and the feel is right. I agree about size. It could be smaller.

[dsego]

Thinkpads are okay now, still mostly hinged and no haptics, maybe they have it on the most expensive carbons.

[tannhaeuser]

While still anecdotal, I'll give you two data points:

The trackpad on my Thinkpad E495 is hanging and has lost the ability to register clicks, and had been like that after only two years of use. I think the reason is that the whole construction with lots of space is collecting dust. You can use the physical buttons above the pad, and some people like this retro design even, but IMO it's just reducing space and adds a border and height distance for your finger to travel, so arguably outdated and objectively worse.

The Elan trackpad on my Thinkpad x13 gen 2 has been defective from the start and registers palm contact where there is none, with the effect that the touchpad stops responding like every 30s; this is a known defect.

[makeitdouble]

The trackpad works extremely great with macos. The acceleration curve, smoothness of scrolling, multi-gesture support that closely matches the UI paradigms, click anywhere and it perfectly registers, etc. It truely is to me the primary pointing device for mac and I immediately bought the external trackpad when trying external keyboards.

But none of that properly transfers to windows, and most of its hardware tweaks become irrelevant. I also didn't mind the Surface laptop trackpads, but vastly prefer a mouse with extra buttons for windows machines TBH (there are a ton of great mice too, so all things considered it's fine that way)

[philistine]

... I'm sorry but I think you're missing the forest for the trees. You might prefer a smaller trackpad, but then why? Just increase the sensitivity to reduce your finger movements.

Anyway, Apple's trackpad is good because it perfectly captures intent, whatever the situation and the number of fingers. It's flawless. You got half your palm on the side of the trackpad while writing? Nope, not picked up. You quickly flick with half your palm on there? Boom, got it. Five finger gesture? No prob fam.

[legitster]

...unless that intent is to right click something. In which case I have to move across the vast expanse of trackpad to find the secret magic area on where it lives.

I'm not familiar with all of the trackpad gestures, but that's part of my big frustration with macOS in general - discoverability absolutely sucks. Half of the stuff I need to do is hidden behind a set of arcane keystrokes that I am apparently supposed to memorize.

[alabastervlog]

> ...unless that intent is to right click something. In which case I have to move across the vast expanse of trackpad to find the secret magic area on where it lives.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't disbelieve you, I just don't even know what you're trying to do. It must be a feature I've never attempted to use.

I just click with two fingers, anywhere. Boom, right click. Didn't even know there was another way.

[legitster]

Bottom right corner there's a hidden area for right clicking.

I never use the two finger click. I am particularly uncoordinated always end up moving the cursor and miss the target. Maybe it's just not for me.

[moltopoco]

Everybody has different trackpad habits and they can be hard to put into words. For example, trackpads used to have buttons at the bottom, and you'd naturally use your fingers for pointing, and the thumb for clicking. Now the buttons are gone, and new users click with their index fingers, which can be tiring and inaccurate on some trackpads (especially older/cheaper mechanical ones).

Right-clicking also has a history. Because Mac trackpads only had one button (unlike PC touchpads), the way to right-click was to point with either your index or middle finger (high precision), then put down the other of these two fingers on the trackpad while doing the thumb-click. It will not move the cursor, so there is no loss of precision. At least that's what I did for a long time. (Although I don't lose precision if I hold down two fingers and press with one of them either.)

And it gets more confusing when Apple changes the defaults. They've flip-flopped between touch-to-click and press-to-click at least once. I'm not sure if using the bottom right corner was ever the default for right-clicks? And then they also removed the video clips that taught you some gestures in the system settings. And I think the whole "deep press" gesture is an anti-feature that only confuses people, the dictionary lookup used to be a three-finger tap and that was fine. But the Magic Trackpad 2 needed a headline feature, sigh.

[dsego]

I think people give up too easily when they have to unlearn old habits. I've been using the macbook trackpads for over a decade now and it's more comfortable than a mouse. Just the fact that I can zoom in and freely scroll left and right makes all the difference compared to a mouse, so even when I use an external mouse with the laptop on a stand I reach for the trackpad for the gestures. It's like an extension of my mind at this point. And one technique that is not immediately clear is that to drag things you can click with one finger and drag with another, eg click on the icon with the index finger and then move it with the middle finger, easier than pushing the index finger around while keeping it depressed.

[aikinai]

You can also enable tapping (for left and right clicks). If you’re not pushing the trackpad maybe you’ll have less issues with the cursor moving while you do it?

[bdangubic]

Settings -> Trackpad :)

[legitster]

How was I supposed to know to look in settings for features I don't know exist?

[dullcrisp]

It's usually worth checking.

[bdangubic]

I don’t mean this in a bad way but would not expect this kind of answer from HN’er…

[bitsailor]

Settings -> Trackpad and it's all right there.

[philistine]

Exactly. They’re complaining about the defaults, yet you’re on Hacker News where most people on here probably have the most cursed settings you can think of.

[schmorptron]

does clicking with two fingers not right click like it does on win + (common) linux?