yes, but also the damn trackpad. I feel like i'm getting carpal tunnel just trying to avoid swiping the damn thing with my palm it's so freaking huge. Been 3+ years still feels like it's designed specifically to get in the way of my work.
Agreed, I much prefer the 2X smaller trackpad of the last generation.
At max sensitivity in MacOS you could move so much faster and with less strain on the wrist.
It’s too bad they never adjusted MacOS to compensate for the new massive trackpad, max sensitivity should be higher. It’s like the right hand never told the left what it was doing. But not surprising, considering Apple’s entire organization is built around secrecy and people NOT collaborating.
Unfortunately not, the sensitivity increases don't work like they used to. You can also marginally increase the sensitivity in terminal directly, but again, not enough to compensate for the 2X bigger trackpad.
I think more people need to stop using their laptop keyboard at their main desk. While I agree that Apple’s ergonomics are especially poor, laptop keyboards and trackpads are fundamentally crippled from the get go due to size constraints.
If you’re working from the same desk every day, buy a real keyboard and external trackpad/mouse for the sake of your own wrists. Save the built in keyboard for when you actually need the mobility.
I use a dedicated ergo keyboard (Ergodox EZ) 99.9% of the time, and my wrists thank me. But I also have the dedicated space for that.
Odd, I rest my palm on mine all the time without issue. I believe it has palm detection and is smart enough to ignore the larger surface area of your hand.
I hear you. I have the same thoughts. Touchpads on most laptops have sufficed for my use. People swear by the touchpad on Macbooks, but to me it never really was that big of an improvement. My bias could be due to the fact that I don't use the touchpad exclusively and always attach a mouse when I can.
The X1 isn’t low end. Low end trackpads on windows laptops are still abysmal in most cases.
Anecdotally, there’s a store near me which arranges laptops by price. I often start at the high end and try the keyboard and mouse, working my way to the low end. Somewhere in the middle it changes over from “this is fine” to “it feels like nails on a chalk board”.
Gesture support is also incredible on macOS. It's the little things -- if I start the motion to "show desktop" by spreading my fingers apart on the touchpad, windows will seamlessly start the motion with my fingers. If I decide to abort the gesture with my fingers, windows on the screen match my motion exactly. I can also customize gestures like expose, mission control, desktop switching, etc. to my liking by assigning different gestures to different commands -- I've never used a Windows laptop or any kind of linux environment with that kind of customization, though I'm sure with sufficient work you could get linux to do something like that.
Personally I find gesture support annoying and its functions are better done with keyboard shortcuts - if you want to show the desktop pressing windows-D is much quicker and easier. The first thing I do on a new laptop is find the touchpad settings and turn everything off.
I find it ironic that Apple used to push the one button mice narrative as 2 buttons were overwhelming, yet now you are supposed to contort your fingers into doing a million different gestures on a touch pad.
Bought a mid-tier HP Pavilion recently and cannot _stand_ the touchpad on it. I carry around a USB mouse for that laptop. I largely prefer the mac touchpad because it allows you to click everywhere on the surface, not just the bottom.
HP until recently didn't use precision touch drivers.
When looking for a new laptop it should be the first thing you check in the reviews - if it doesn't have precision touch drivers it goes in the do not buy list.
Maybe I just have big hands or a weird typing posture, but my wrists usually sit either side of the trackpad. Even if they didn't, my trackpad doesn't register my palms as a touch (pretty sure this is a standard feature in most modern laptops).
I haven't used a physical mouse for work in about 5 years, and every time the trackpad gets larger, I'm even less inclined to get a mouse.
I also find it gets in the way with doing everything with a keyboard in my editor and then suddenly my cursor focus is changed by my palm touching the touchpad.
At the same time having the extra spacer on the laptop as a wrist rest is pretty good, imo ergonomically better than a standard external keyboard (opinion informed by countless physio visits to sort out RSI). Also the built in trackpad is substantially better than moving hand position to an external mouse.
You can see the point though, right? I’m personally ok with the trackpad, but compare it with the “nipple” from the old IBM laptops. You could scan across the entire screen with the barest movement of your finger. The minimalism in that design was impressive,
The trackpoint/nipple was awful. It's fetishized now because of anti-apple counterculture but it's a truly horrid pointing device that was only ever popular because early trackpads were that much worse.
A touch screen serves a different role than a trackpad. They could replace the trackpad by a touch screen, like asus’s screenpad, but that comes at the expense of battery life.
Non-Apple laptop user: "It's that ridiculous concept of only being able to enter a right click in a specific area of a track pad. Also, can only scroll by swiping on certain parts of the track pad as well"
2005 called, they want their jokes about PCs back.
Dedicated touchpad areas for right clicking and scrolling haven't been a thing since Windows introduced precision drivers and gestures. IIRC even most linux DEe have the same features.
And yet, the person I replied to in 2021 is still complaining about the size of a right-click area of the track pad. It may be an old joke style (so is saying a year in the past is calling), but it is still valid.
Yeah, of course, you can still find shitty laptops with these issues if you look in the discount bin at Wallmart but for a fair comparison, most new laptops in the MacBook price range (1000+ Euros) don't have touchpads with segmented zones anymore like the ones you're describing.
There you have it. If it doesn't exist on the hardware "I'm" using now, then it's not a problem that should be discussed. I'm Chuck Norris, and I round house kick to the head any laptop that doesn't meet my certifications.
That is unfortunate, and probably a sign of a feature that nobody at Apple (and few external users) bother with. Everyone I know uses two-finger right click and a very small subset of friends use ctrl+click.
