Comments on: When beauty can become a beast; Don’t take away all of my buttons

By: Stephen Shankland

Stephen Shankland — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:11:00 +0000

Coming in from the Windows side of things relatively recently, I can say the buttonless trackpad is my single favorite Mac feature. Apple isn’t just designing for its installed base (I hope), and for this semi-switcher (expander is probably more accurate) I had no muscle memory issues. I like tap to click, double-tap to drag, two-tap to right-click, and the various multitouch swipes.

Part of the reason I like these controls is that they feel more ergonomically happy to me–holding my thumb down for drag operations gets a bit tiring. Personally, I find the touch on the actual button-press part of the Trackpad too firm, and this ergo complaint is one reason why.

By: Derek

Derek — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:37:13 +0000

Just use it for a few days and you will get used to it. This is coming from a person who never owned a Mac until the new aluminium MacBooks came out. You’ll eventually love the trackpad. I use tap-to-click instead of actually pressing down the button. I only press down the button for dragging things. That’s also a bit awkward at first, but it will become natural. Just use it.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 06:07:41 +0000

I like the new trackpad, I adjusted quickly but I wasn’t in the habit of resting my thumb on it. Clicking is louder but now I’m used to it and the button on my old MacBook Pro feels flimsy in comparison.

But what no-one above has mentioned is that the trackpad is now made out of glass. It’s really smooth, it feels much nicer than the old one.

By: Blair McBride

Blair McBride — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:01:38 +0000

I bought my first Macbook only a couple of months ago. I love the trackpad – in all my other previous laptops, I’d enabled various gestures and tap-to-click, so it felt like a natural progression. In fact, the hardest part to get used to was the size of the trackpad – after using such small trackpads for so long, I kept resting my hand on it without realizing, then wondering why it wasn’t working properly.

Nowdays, physical buttons feel unnatural to me – like I have to go to that extra effort to reach down to get to it. Kind of odd, given I also use a MX Revolution mouse, which has a ton of buttons and 2 wheels.

By: Toe

Toe — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:55:51 +0000

Am I the only one who hates trackpads in general?

Also, why does Apple have such a hard-on for tiny keyboards? That kb could be twice the size that it is. All just prepping us for the day when they take it away & replace it with a clickwheel, I guess…

By: Ulrich Petri

Ulrich Petri — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:22:12 +0000

I have to say that the no-button trackpad is the best mouse replacement I have ever used. The 2,3 and 4 finger gestures are simply awesome. I would even go so far as wanting to replace the mouse on my desktop machine with one if they were available as an separate accessories.

As for the resting finger – I’ve never had that problem, probably because I’m a militant tap-to-click user so I’ve never gotten used to rest my finger on the button.

By: Ian Thomas (thelem)

Ian Thomas (thelem) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:39:55 +0000

I’ve had a new (unibody) MacBook for about 6 months and its the first time I’ve had a notebook. From day one I’ve loved the track pad, and using a colleague’s HP laptop I was reminded why – a track pad a quarter of the size, with buttons in the wrong place that didn’t even pick up all my inputs. When the batteries in my wireless mouse ran out it took me about 3 months to replace them, because a mouse wasn’t that much better than the trackpad (my MacBook mostly stays on my desk).

I hadn’t noticed about the resting your thumb thing, but now you mentioned it I notice that I rest my thumb in the cut out bit intended to allow you to open the lid.

By: g

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:22:04 +0000

Dont buy the air! The mouse button on those eventually get dust or other “build up” underneath them which makes clicking them a nuisance as the button “sticks” a bit.

The buttonless macs are way better an Apple will prolly bring back these features in software at some point ;)

By: Dave Miller

Dave Miller — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:02:13 +0000

The accidental pinch thing nails me in Firefox all the time. Just remember “Command-0″ which sets it back to the default font size.

By: Sean Burke

Sean Burke — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:36:36 +0000

I actually find myself attempting to do the gestures on my normal laptop after using my macbook since I purchased it. The only thing that annoys me is the same that Michele stated above where you run out of room (somehow) on the touch pad to move applications around and I am even on the smaller mac book instead of the pro.