
How the iPad's New Trackpad Works - wallflower
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/18/21185188/ipad-trackpad-how-to-support-mouse-cursor
======
simonh
I'm going to have to try one of these keyboards in an Apple Store, when they
can open again. It just doesn't seem possible the folding mechanism and
attach/detach system work that well. This and the new Airs just seem too good
to be true. I'm not saying I'm a doubter, as such. Clearly apple have dropped
some very important balls in the last few years, but wow. This stuff looks
good.

~~~
0x202020
It seems to me that cooling is the ball that has been dropped on the new MBA.
I haven’t seen one opened up yet but the heatsink design from last time
(2018/2019) didn’t use a heat pipe over the CPU, it just kinda forced air to
be drawn over it.

From this video: [https://youtu.be/hB1aP2OnUJA](https://youtu.be/hB1aP2OnUJA)
we can see it quickly gets to 100c and stays there despite ramping the fan up.
So while a quad core that can turbo up to 3.5/3.8ghz sounds awesome, for heavy
sustained performance it looks like it’s definitely going to be clocking down
to 1.5ghz or so.

This isn’t a surprise to me but I think some people just see 3.5/3.8 quad core
and think this is going to be right on the heels of the MBP 13

~~~
unlinked_dll
Apple has always been more content with letting CPUs throttle themselves
rather than cooling them properly or using processors that can't be
effectively cooler in their physical design.

That said compared to other notebooks, MacBooks in similar tiers tend to
benchmark quite well regardless of the thermal throttling.

~~~
unvs
I bought the MBP 16” and when I work with an external monitor it’s like having
a hair dryer on. I wish I could just go back to a desktop machine again.

~~~
teruakohatu
The concensus seems to be this is a GPU related driver or OS bug.

Trying changing resolutions or scaling or refresh rate. 2K moniter are
supposedly worse than others.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265235)

It is a joke that a high end machine has such a glaring issue. Then again,
Apple got away from selling terrible terrible keyboards that were not easily
replaceable for years.

~~~
unvs
Interesting! Thanks for the link. Not one of my coworkers is getting the 16
after hearing how noisy it is, and they ALL were planning on upgrading. Let’s
hope a future software update might improve it.

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esotericsean
I own just about one of every single Apple products, I'm completely invested
in the ecosystem. Except for one thing, the iPad. I've never once had the need
for one or even the want for one. I use my MacBook Pro or my iPhone, not sure
why I need a bigger iPhone, so to speak.

But this... this might convince me to actually get my first iPad.

~~~
mrunkel
The iPad isn't really for people who read hacker news. Except maybe on the
toilet. :)

But for my mother, who has never touched, nor wanted to touch a computer, it
has opened whole new worlds for her. She now loves that iPad and uses it for
email, facebook, web browsing etc.

There are a whole lot more people out there like my mother than those who read
hacker news.

If you've never felt the need for an iPad, you probably don't need one.

~~~
jclardy
I’m on hacker news and replying to this on an iPad. My mac and windows desktop
both have their place, but the iPad really does slot in as a “third” device
between a full fledged desktop OS and my phone.

I use it to take notes during meetings, to keep daily work logs, for replying
to emails, checking up on slack, reading PDFs and ebooks, task management, web
browsing and watching video as a third monitor to my two display desktop
setup.

Yes it is extremely limited in a lot of ways, but having an instant on device
that is one tap and less than a MS away from all those tasks really does
change the way you work. And being able to pick it up and walk around with it
comfortably means you can do those tasks anywhere. And if you are like me and
work remote from places like coffee shops - it basically takes up barely any
more room in your laptop bag.

~~~
mrunkel
I must not have been clear. I wasn't saying that the iPad can't be used by
hacker news readers. I was saying that we're not the target audience. I have
an iPad that I use a lot myself.

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systemvoltage
iPad OS (and iOS) has 1 major flaw and no one seems to be talking about it:

\- The animations/effects etc take way too long. It is fatiguing to work on it
because every action takes at least 2+ seconds with a dozen animations, each
one lasting 100ms-300ms!

Try the following task yourself: Copy a piece of text from safari and create a
new note in the Notes app, and paste it in there. While you're doing this,
time it. Seriously, do it. And then do it 10 times. See how tired you get.

We need a completely new operating system with absolutely zero animations. You
know what happens when you launch vim from CLI? It starts up. No animations.
CLI is a pain to work with at times, but this aspect is _so_ critical to
putting a smile on the users face. Everything would instantly become insanely
fast.

I understand the value of animations - they're there to provide context, where
something slides in and slides out from. This is fine for iPhone. But not for
a workstation. I also understand that I can disable motion in accessibility
settings but it still doesn't disable all of them. Also, that's not the
default so that's a moot point.

This is such a low hanging fruit to speed up things, but alas, we have UX/UI
designers that insist on "sleek" and "sexy" UX/UI without delving into the
fundamentals of what makes a product or software pleasant to use. While you're
at it, you'd also improve the UX - battery life because you're not churning
transparency effects and motion blur through the GPU pipes. Yes, battery life
is "UX" IMO.

~~~
taspeotis
There is a “Reduce Motion” setting in iOS that speeds some things up a little
bit.

~~~
systemvoltage
I knew this would come up, thus I already addressed it in my comment above.
That's not the default. And it still doesn't feel good - because animations
are at the core of the UX/UI of Apple software. IMO the software needs to be
designed from ground up with strict understanding of productivity and less
marketing/design/aesthetics/animation. "Reduce motion" seems like an after
thought hidden deep in the accessibility settings.

~~~
threeseed
Why should it be the default ?

Animations help less experienced users understand what is going on and the
relationships between objects. Plus they just make the experience more
interesting and fun. An important aspect if you're newer and have to spend
time climbing the learning curve.

And Apple gave expert users, who aren't their core audience, a two click way
to switch it all off. So not sure what more you want from them.

~~~
jooize
Agree. I'm annoyed that Apple does not enable us to disable animations
entirely (right?), but would not argue for it as a default.

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mkchoi212
Pretty cool! The feeling I keep getting is that Apple is slowly “ruining” a
good design. What was familiar, easy to use, and required no explanation, is
trying to become something it isn’t; a laptop. IPadOS still has a long ways to
go to but if Apple decides to keep going down this path - which I feel like
they will - cursor support seems like a right step towards achieving that
goal.

~~~
cjohansson
iOS and macOS lost the good design years ago, nowadays you need to find an
expert to learn how to do certain actions, there is no manual and a lot of
actions are completely unintuitive. My family uses latest iPadOS an no one
knows how to split screen, we learned it twice but it’s so hard you forget
about it

~~~
jungturk
I agree that its difficult to discover most features beyond the basics, though
Apple does provide a digital user guide and the on-board Tips app to help you
acquaint.

Those two resources are themselves not that easy to discover, however.

[https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados](https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados)

(hit table of contents -> basics)

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kbumsik
> ...but it can change shape based on what it’s pointing at.

I tried this and it feels great! But I am wondering if this will work well
with a non-native GUI stack such as Flutter or QML.

~~~
DagAgren
This is the reason why cross-platform UI toolkits are just never going to be a
good idea. They will always provide a worse experience than just using and
designing for the native UI toolkit.

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darkerside
I anticipate hating this. I don't see how a morphing cursor can ever be
learned in a way that is efficient over the long term. Still, we've stagnated
for too long in our touchscreen UI design. I'm glad to see Apple trying
something new.

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musicale
This kind of reminds me of how controller-based GUIs work in some console
games. Basically you move focus around with the directional buttons or the
analog stick.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Or the BlackBerry, which brought out an actual cursor on webpages but only
moved the focus everywhere else. That little thumb track-pad completely
changes the experience of using a phone, and I'm super bummed that the only
modern smartphone that had it (the 2014 BlackBerry Classic) never caught on.

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shp0ngle
This brings memories for me, as I used to own an Eee Transformer, which was a
2011 Android tablet with Honeycomb, and keyboard and trackpad...

It was surprisingly useful, but... it was still 2011 Android. The best thing
was still to put an SSH client on it and actually do all the work somewhere
else remotely.

~~~
josteink
Had one of those devices. Kept it alive for several years by maintaining a
custom Cyanogenmod fork for it.

It was a great device, save for the severely compromised Nvidia-SOC which made
HD-playback only work _sometimes_. Such a let-down!

Had someone made a device like this with the specs of the Nexus 7, I would
have bought it and replaced my Transformer in a heartbeat.

But nobody did, so now I’m back on my Thinkpad, and it’s actually really nice
to run a OS of your choice, which you loaded on a machine you own, which isn’t
actively fighting you.

~~~
shp0ngle
I looked it up and it seems the Transformer line is still alive, they just put
Windows 10 on it

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sys_64738
Wow. This looks really cooler than I imagined. I assumed that it would be a
simple mouse cursor but this feels more like a full screen Mac laptop
experience.

Craig clearly is the successor to Scott.

------
rock_artist
You can feel the new workflow if you have developer account or enroll to Apple
beta. Tried it on my 10.2" 2019 iPad.

The good: This really makes more complex productivity possible on the iPad
getting it closer to a desktop machine.

The bad: I've already saw bugs which are new to 13.4 (didn't have them on
13.3.1).

It still requires developers to use newer API to support trackpad. For
example, Firefox now has no right click support while Safari includes of
course.

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BubRoss
It seems like this is not actually about the trackpad but about the software
of of how it is handled. I thought there was new hardware, but it seems like
it is making better use of the multi touch trackpads that have been on their
laptops for a long time.

------
mkchoi212
Also, no one seems to be focusing on the fact that the iPad is floating with
this new case? Are there any links/videos that describes how the mechanism
works?? Super curious to see how rigid/flexible/stable the mechanism is.

~~~
gumby
I had that thought too but apart from the Ti Powerbook my laptop hinges have
survived for years. In fact around the house there's only one with a hinge
that feels noticeably looser and it's about 10 years old. The hinge on the
keyboard appears to be about the same size. So maybe it's OK.

Also I assume the iPad itself is coupled magnetically to the case/stand.

~~~
mkchoi212
Yeah the reliability of these hinges is something that is still open for
questions... Would hate to see a keyboard case costing about $300 to fail
after a year or so :(

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chadlavi
The cursor isn't always present, just when you need it...

How does this work with a physical mouse? Does the cursor reappear in the same
spot on the screen, or what? Would someone using a physical mouse constantly
be forced to reposition it?

~~~
developer2
It remembers where you left the cursor. It's still a normal cursor, they just
make it invisible when not in active use.

~~~
chadlavi
Thanks!

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Grustaf
This article is very confusing, the video is clearly an ad by Apple, but it
only seems to appear in this article, and the article itself is not marked as
an ad. What is actually going on?

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macspoofing
... or just do a regular mouse cursor. Also, trackpads aren't great. If you
need precision a proper mouse (+keyboard) is hard to beat.

~~~
oakesm9
It supports both of those via bluetooth

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speedgoose
> It’s unlike any mouse cursor you’ve used before.

Ok sounds cool.

> The pointer will only appear when you need it.

Like a windows pc with a touch screen or any Android device.

> The pointer is a little circular dot.

Why not, it doesn't seem very precise but it's probably because UIs on iOs are
not and shouldn't designed to be used with a precise pointer.

> It can change shape based on what it’s pointing at.

As they say, nothing new there.

> It supports some navigation gestures.

Like on a 20 years old Mac indeed.

I'm a bit disappointed.

~~~
threeseed
> I'm a bit disappointed.

Sure. Because you didn't actually get the point.

The cursor actually transforms into the touch area. No OS today does this and
it's definitely novel.

~~~
underwater
I wonder what happens when I move my cursor over a large tappable area. The OS
must have to maintain internal state that represents the real x, y position.
Otherwise the cursor wouldn't move across the screen in a consistent way. But
while moving across the tap target I don't get any visual feedback about where
my cursor actually is? I'm curious to see how they solve this.

~~~
TheCoreh
They're using a subtle perspective/highlight effect similar to tvOS. It's
kinda interesting, wanted to try it in person to see how effective it is at
conveying the underlying position.

~~~
jclardy
I’m using it right now - it feels quite natural, and you can turn off the
“snapping” effect if you want - the control will still highlight underneath,
but you also still see the cursor.

With the effect on the cursor “snaps” to button targets, and when it does the
effect has a pulling effect, so if you apply a little motion it will move out
of the control, but you see the effect visually.

It serves the purpose of knowing that you can click on something, plus also
makes clicking things faster because of the snapping to targets. It’s kind of
like auto-aim but for your trackpad.

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anjc
Could Apple go back to being forward looking with their tablet/laptop/computer
line please? If this keyboard/trackpad is a good idea now, then it would have
been a good idea 10 years ago. If it was a good idea 10 years ago then they
simply lacked the foresight to push it. It has also been a point of critique
for as long, and I'm sure that I am not the only person who had to stop
pretending that iPads were usable for (my) work and switched to PC for
portable productivity (Surface Pro).

At this rate I wont be surprised to see revolutionary full access to the
filesystem, and flexible window management, in 2030.

