[quinndupont]

In no way am I trying to incite Mac vs. PC, but after years of Apple laptops I grew bored with their aluminum fascism and decided (last year) to buy a top-of-the-line Thinkpad.

A couple of months later, taking a huge economic hit, I sold the Thinkpad and returned to Apple. I simply could not handle the trackpad (and I gave up on the weird Thinkpad nubbin back in the early 2000s). I quite literally felt like I had a degenerative neuromuscular disease when I used the trackpad, and since "mousing" is almost certainly the primary way I interact with a computer, the laptop itself begun to give me a strong, strange aversion to use.

I'm told Microsoft is working on improving trackpads in general, but they should really have every single engineer working on this issue. Forget about new features, let's get the simple stuff right.

[aftbit]

I think a big part of this is just personal preference. I've never used a Mac until a few weeks ago (for work), and I'm dying to return to my X220 or W530 trackpad. The giant glass pad is sticky and hard to use, and the scrolling gestures feel wrong to me.

I've solved it by carrying a small external mouse in my laptop bag, and by using my MBP with a mechanical switch keyboard and a Logitech mouse 90% of the day.

[quinndupont]

I said the same thing at the start too, and after months of use I never managed to re-train myself (although, maybe those habits run deep!)

[lucisferre]

I've used Windows machine and every type of mouse from logitech trackballs (loved those for FPS games and Warcraft too bad they don't make good ones anymore), include the ones you could clip to the side of a laptop, to nubbins, and of course trackpads of every sort for about two decades.

I also lean more to using the keyboard vs. the mouse. As I spent more and more time developing software I become more adept at not using a mouse to the point where I could pretty much avoid touching it for most of the day. In Windows, this really was much better than using the mouse most of the time.

When I first got a Mac I found myself using the trackpad again for the first time in a long time. It was a huge improvement, the responsiveness of the trackpad and utility of many multi-touch gestures were quite surprising. Because it was so close to the keyboard I could easily use the gestures in place of keyboard commands, without slowing down. When it came time to get an external keyboard I actually bought a trackpad, not a mouse to go with it. It is honestly that good, at that's what I've found.

[DigitalJack]

The trackpad should never feel sticky. Something is wrong if it does. My MacBook Pro trackpad feels as smooth as my phone (2009)

[archagon]

I think trackpads on new Macbooks tend to be a little sticky until they smooth out over a week or two.

[bobbles]

Brand new iPhones have this same sensation

[jarin]

This might sound kind of dumb, but just rub it on your face. I'm pretty sure the "smoothing out" is just getting a nice thin coating of oil on it, like seasoning a cast iron pan.

[ajcarpy2005]

This is the kind of insight that sets HN comments apart. Simple but possibly Useful.

[yen223]

A sticky trackpad could be a sign of ... let's just say hygiene issues.

[overgard]

I don't know that apple gets this right either. (I have a macbook). The actual tracking feels fantastic and precise, and it has a nice texture, but I /hate/ how they refuse to put real buttons below it. Things like "right mouse drag" which I use all the time become a nightmare, and the whole "no buttons" thing just seems like it's putting aesthetics over functionality.

[RandallBrown]

I love the lack of buttons. It makes it much much easier to click on things since I don't have to precisely hit a button. I don't think I've ever used a right click drag for anything, but it seems easy enough to do on my macbook pro. Just click with two fingers and drag.

[overgard]

There's no reason you couldn't do both. I really hate the trackpad click thing though for a specific reason: the pressure required changes based on where you are on the trackpad. It takes much more force to click at the top than at the bottom, so I end up using my thumb to click on the bottom anyway, at which point... I'd rather just have a proper button.

[MichaelGG]

The reason is aesthetics. No buttons makes it look sleek, which is all the OEMs are going for. Same reason has driven the other changes in recent ThinkPads. It's purely about looks, with making it functional coming far behind. (One example of many: New ThinkPads have no way to determine if they are charging/plugged in, except by carefully looking for a few seconds after a state transition. If the plug is loose or another problem happens while you think it's charging, they give you no notification. This is purely a twisted sense of aesthetics, trying to make it feel less IBM. And on more than one occasion, this has caused me serious issues as I discovered too late that my system was out of power.)

[wingerlang]

Have you tried "touch to click"? And also, "double-tap-and-hold-to-drag"?

[PhasmaFelis]

IIRC, there's a setting in OS X to make it act like a traditional one- or two-button touchpad, i.e. it only recognizes clicks if your finger is in the appropriate place.

[ars]

It's not an either/or situation. You can have physical buttons, and still let you tap for a click.

[RandallBrown]

I'm not talking about tap to click. I'm talking about the whole trackpad being a button.

[MereInterest]

I have a chromebook designed like this, and it removes any precision in clicking. I push down, and my finger slips as the trackpad depresses.

[dysfunction]

Usually I don't find myself clicking on my Macbook trackpad anyway. I usually just tap, plenty of precision that way, plus OSX tends to have larger click targets than Windows and lots of gestures (especially with BetterTouchTool) that make precision less important.

My only issue is click-and-drag, but that was at least somewhat alleviated when I learned to hold the click with my index finger and do the drag by moving my middle finger (which is similar to what I'd do with a trackpad with dedicated mouse buttons anyway) instead of just using my index finger.

[userbinator]

I had the same experience with a relatively recent (2013?) Macbook, trying to help someone with one. I agree the tracking is quite nice, but clicking it requires far more force than I'm used to, meaning that trying to hold it down and drag is even worse - the friction is too high. The tactile response when it goes down and back up is also a bit weird; it's too dull and heavy-feeling when it goes down, there's almost no travel, and it comes back up with little sensation. It feels more like a "thud" than a "click", almost like the entire case of the machine is yielding slightly.

After working the trackpad a few more times and my fingers getting rather tired I tried to use keyboard shortcuts instead, but remembered that OS X doesn't have the Alt+ key combinations that Windows has, and tabbing through controls is disabled by default.

(My usual laptop is a Thinkpad X60, where I use the trackpoint and its buttons, and keyboard shortcuts whenever possible. On my desktop, I use a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical v1.1A, which I think is one of the best mouses ever made.)

[dysfunction]

For click and drag, don't use your index finger to both keep the button depressed AND move the pointer. On a regular trackpad you'd click the left button with index finger and move the pointer by moving middle finger over the trackpad; you can do the same thing here by clicking in with index finger and then moving middle finger.

Other than click and drag I never use the physical click, tap to click is where it's at. OSX registers tapping much, much better than any trackpad I've tried with Windows.

[seanmcdirmid]

You can turn on tap to click, but I find that while it works very well for OS X, I get too many false clicks in Windows while typing so have to disable it there.

[mitchty]

What do you use right click drag for on OS X?

I have double tap set to right click and never really have issues. Then again I normally run a browser/terminal/emacs as my main apps so I don't really need/use right click at all that often.

[krrrh]

To me two-finger tap is a natural action for "right click" or context.

Three-finger drag (which isn't on by default) is one of the best things about using a Mac imo. I honestly don't know how people live without on any platform. It's a huge improvement over double-tap-lock-and-drag or whatever the old way is.

[archagon]

Are you talking about Windows? Because I'm pretty sure OSX doesn't have any right mouse drag controls.

[exidy]

Xcode.

[archagon]

Oh, neat. I didn't even realize that Control-drag was the same as a RMB drag. That should make my life a little easier.

[frogpelt]

I don't see how right-click and drag could possibly be natural or easy on anything but a mouse.

Apple introduced multi touch to solve problems just like that.

[overgard]

It works perfectly fine if you have two mouse buttons below the trackpad (which every laptop I've ever had before my macbook has had).

[MereInterest]

With every tech company trying to imitate all of Apple's poor decisions, it is getting hard to find a laptop that has physical buttons. They have all been switching over to having just the trackpad.

[mitchty]

How is it a poor decision? OS X generally has been designed to not need right clicking. And where it does, aka Xcode you can just do control click in most places.

I don't really see how this is a poor decision on apples part. For windows sure, right clicking abounds, though I'd argue that right there is the crux of the problem in general. The over reliance on right clicking in user interfaces I think isn't too far off from "magic track pad pawing motions like triple swipe etc...". But that last bits mostly my opinion on the matter.

[MereInterest]

My fundamental complaint is that Apple, as a company, prefers form over function. Avoiding right mouse clicks in the name of simplicity. Designing thin laptops instead of durable laptops. Restricting installation on iOS to just the App Store.

[AshFurrow]

For right-click-and-drag (something I do a lot in Xcode), hold down the control key – that simulates a right-click.

[copperx]

Try dragging 3 fingers instead.

[cowabunga]

Ex Mac user and now ThinkPad user here.

The MBP pad makes my fingers sore after a couple of hours as the surface is slightly abrasive. The Apple wireless mouse thing nips my fingers when I press it giving me sore fingers plus it weighs and ton and the gestures make my wrist hurt. The ThinkPad nipple mouse works pretty well as it's in the home row but my hands ache after a couple of hours. The trackpad on the ThinkPad X201 I use is tiny and useless so I turned it off.

Solutions for me:

1. I bought a Logitech M185 wireless mouse for £8. I am happier than I've ever been with this. It's orders of magnitude better than any other mouse I've used.

2. I use Windows and the keyboard where possible. It's really easy to drive windows from the keyboard entirely unlike OSX which requires this dude's hands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkyZGZRnQb4 ... plus the editing system is inconsistent and wonky in some OSX apps.

Yes forget about the new features. Buy a wireless mouse and use the thinkpad's wonderful keyboard more.

That worked for me and yes I did feel like I had a degenerative neuromuscular disease as well!

[Moru]

I would never buy a mouse without a back button. It's a wonder they still make those.

[cowabunga]

I have back/forward keys on my keyboard and tend to use them instead of the mouse.

[tripzilch]

> Logitech M185 wireless mouse for £8

Anyone got any tips for a great non-wireless USB mouse in this price-range?

I dislike when wireless mice (or keyboards) tend to run out of battery when it's really inconvenient, as I hardly ever have spare batteries lying around (not much other devices use them).

[cowabunga]

I had the same problem with the Apple mouse. The two AA batteries lasted about a month at best.

I've had the M185 for 9 months now and it's still got the original single AA battery in it! I threw a single AA in my bag in a ziplock in case of emergencies.

I wouldn't go back to wires after that mouse.

[ibrahima]

Incidentally, as a lifelong PC user every time I have to use a Mac touchpad (which is quite often since a lot of my colleagues have them) I want to throw the light and shiny piece of junk out the window. I don't understand how you people use those things. As a recent Thinkpad convert I've actually switched exclusively to the Trackpoint too, but the touchpad is perfectly fine to me, I just prefer not moving my hands off the keyboard.

[rayiner]

There is this trade-off between making it fast to do big mouse movements and making fine mouse movements possible. Typical high-friction PC touchpads are awful for fine movements. Trackpoints are good for fine movements, but they don't have enough travel to also make it easy to throw the cursor to the other side of the screen quickly. In my experience with both, the high-sensitivity, low-friction glass touchpad on the mac enables as much fine control as the trackpoint while also allowing sweeping large mouse movements.

[PhasmaFelis]

High-friction pads do indeed make fine movements difficult--with a very gentle push, your fingertip doesn't move at all, until it overcomes static friction and jumps several pixels.

I found a trick to get around that a while back: When small movements are needed, don't slide your finger but roll it. No friction involved, that way.

[yclept]

The Thinkpad nipple mouse on my x220 is glorious to use

[ams6110]

I agree, I much prefer this style of pointer to a trackpad because I don't need to move my hands.

[serf]

I love it, too. I hate that Lenovo no longer makes a ThinkPad with only that style pointer any longer. I always felt the trackpad was a big waste of space since I never use them.

[listic]

I like the following logic: you could always disable it, and only switch on for the time someone else is using your laptop, so win-win.

But getting rid of 7-row keyboard and clicky mouse buttons, so that a huge trackpad would fit? Not worth it.

[ibrahima]

Eh, as a T440s owner (granted, my first Thinkpad) I was a bit apprehensive about the lack of buttons but I actually exclusively use the Trackpoint now. The clickpad does click down like a button which is a little weird at first but you quickly get used to where the "buttons" are and then it just feels like normal. I use the middle click scroll a lot too. At least in Linux you can adjust the precise locations of the buttons yourself, I think in Windows you also get some options for configuring the button locations if the defaults don't feel right. Right now I feel like this is the best input system I've had on a laptop.

[BostonEnginerd]

I've tried the new big button T440s and really don't like the amount of force the big touchpad takes to click.

[nerderloo]

You'll be disappointed in X240. The buttons for trackpoint are removed in X240. Instead, they made the trackpad clickable. It's a miserable experience. It is simply impossible to use trackpoint with trackpad enabled because you inevitably slide finger over trackpad to register a click. That moves the cursor. Disabling trackpad made trackpoint somewhat usable but clicking the whole trackpad is much harder than just a button.

[tacoman]

It is, however I find that sometimes I get a sore and after a couple hours of use and I have to switch to a mouse.

[klibertp]

> In no way am I trying to incite Mac vs. PC

Oh, but you're doing it anyway. Whatever, sounds like fun! ;)

> I quite literally felt like I had a degenerative neuromuscular disease when I used the trackpad

[EDIT: I should mention that I'm using almost exclusively keyboard for interacting with my computers, so I may be missing some obvious things.]

I'm using mac book pro and some hp notebook (both a year and a half old at this point) and I don't feel any difference in how the touchpads in them work. Aside from the mac's one being overloaded with functions which shouldn't be there (for me ofc).

What exactly was a difference that make you feel like that? Maybe it was something that could be easily remedied by switching some options?

[quinndupont]

I tried ALL of the internal Lenovo-supplied utilities, and even "upgraded" to a generic driver provided by Synaptics (maker of the trackpad hardware). Moving the mouse cursor around the screen was usually not a problem, but scrolling and click-and-drag (to say, move a file using the GUI) would only actually work about 70% of the time. Instead of scrolling it would stutter and zing about, and instead of click and drag it would pick up the file and drop it some other place. It's actually a bit hard to describe, since it actually made me genuinely wonder if there was something wrong with my hand/brain. Tiny little errors for such a critical thing really do cause havoc.

[skunkvomit]

I found that Windows configuration (Synaptics and Lenovo) utilities were all lacking in configurability. I have primarily switched to Linux (openSUSE) which has far better support for common two-finger scrolling and right-clicking as well as more configurable for the sensitivity, palm detection, etc.

I couldn't believe how much better my Thinkpad Edge touchpad worked under Linux, and the trackpoint nub was able to be sped up and adjusted so its my preferred means of movement when typing. So I think there's something to be said for both hardware and software (and drivers) which affect the final user experience; unfortunately there seems to be less concern or attention towards that aspect with PCs than Macs.

[pyk]

There have been some really really awful Lenovo Thinkpad trackpads in the last 2-3 years -- one specific one that I have used that you see a TON of complaints about was the X230 trackpad (google it, it's a mess). One of the worst I have ever used, with no amount of adjustment that can fix it -- Lenovo really dropped the ball when cutting costs. The worst part was that the X220/T420 and plenty of other older models had perfect trackpads.

[MichaelGG]

The ThinkPad click pad is an abomination. After nearly a year after regretfully "upgrading" from the IBM style to the new style... I still can't click with accuracy. Right, left - I have to make several attempts. And many times, the pointer moves during the process. I actually have to lug around an external mouse with my "top of the line" laptop. The keyboard isn't anything great, either.

Few companies have earned as much emotional hated as Lenovo has for making such junk.

Hardware hackers take note. I'd pay hundreds of dollars to replace the layout with one from an older series like the X201 or so. Just put back the triple buttons and the nice full sized keyboard and take my money.

[nerderloo]

I started using X240 a week ago. I am usually not a complainer. I concurrently used X220 and Macbook fine. But I could not like the click pad on X240. I think the trackpad/trackpoint on X240 is simply a failed experiment. As someone who is fine with trackpoint or trackpad on Macbooks, I can't see how anyone can like this click pad thing.

[rsynnott]

> I grew bored with their aluminum fascism

Oh, THAT'S what happened to the titanium Powerbook; another victim of Metal Eugenics.

[lucb1e]

My father has a Thinkpad and the touchpad is horrible. Really seriously horrible. I dislike my Asus full-touch (no buttons) touchpad but I've learned to work with it -- I've learned to work with any touchpad, except a Thinkpad's.

So I get where you're coming from, but to write off all non-Apple laptops all at the same time?

[randyrand]

Two finger scroll on thinkpads has generally sucked. Nowdays it has gotten better, but I still use this much better 3rd party implementation:

https://code.google.com/p/two-finger-scroll/

Solved all my problems.

[damon_c]

I occasionally have to use an HP laptop and I concur. It is really a completely different experience.

I need to use two hands to accomplish something like moving the cursor to a folder icon and right clicking on it. On a Mac this can be done with a single finger and without even engaging the brain.

This model of HP laptop is used by everyone at this one company. They don't even know how awful it is. It's really like that 1984 Mac commercial.

[na85]

> quite literally felt like I had a degenerative neuromuscular disease when I used the trackpad

Was it jittery? I had this problem with an older thinkpad when plugged into AC, but the problem went away when unplugged, so I assume it was just a case of bad isolation from the 60Hz AC signal.

[coldtea]

>In no way am I trying to incite Mac vs. PC, but after years of Apple laptops I grew bored with their aluminum fascism

So, they like killed millions of people, or invaded other countries to make them use aluminum laptops?

[quinndupont]

If we must, METAPHORICALLY, yes. <the literal Internet strikes again>

[coldtea]

Nope, not even metaphorically.

In fact, even the other thing that's directed at them ("it's just because of marketing") is not true either.

While they had good ads, their marketing spending was historically miniscule (especially compared to companies such as Samsung and Microsoft) and of course they began from near zero budget (actually near banruptcy) circa 1997 and grew with products that made people want to buy them and the press write about them, not ads.

[Encosia]

It really depends on the hardware you choose. I switched from a MacBook Air to a Samsung ATIV Book Plus (what a name...) and can't say that I've noticed a difference between the trackpads.

[msh]

For personal use I am apple all the way but I must admit that the HP probook I have at work actually is a quite nice machine. Drivers seem reasonable and the hardware is good too.

[spion]

How do you manage to type on Apple laptop keyboards though? For a serious typist, Thinkpad's keyboard feel is just beyond any comparison - especially on the older models.

[cowabunga]

I had a serious Mac typing problem. I had a T61 and got seduced by a 2011 MBP. Liked it for about 3 months and then realised I couldn't type properly on it and that it was knackering my productivity. Also as I'm in the UK, the keyboard map is totally unlike other UK keyboard which makes it difficult to move to and from other machines and use remote desktop software.

Back on an X201 and life is good.

My wife still uses the 2011 MBP and hates it for typing on as well but she doesn't like black laptops, so her funeral!

[return0]

> In no way am I trying to incite Mac vs. PC

It should by now be obvious that this is impossible. If you dont want to start a flamewar, never mention the words mac and pc in the same sentence.