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Ask HN: Why is the touchpad on MacBooks still ahead of other manufacturers?

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21–30 of 58 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is the touchpad on MacBooks still ahead of other manufacturers?

#21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isnt it JUST surface though? ALL the other track pads ive tried are abyssmal. A physical click is now a deal breaker for me on a trackpad.

Dell XPS 15 (2020) (and probably the 13 & 17) is basically just as good in my opinion. But other than that, yea most laptops are far behind.

That is actually what I bought (OP) and i could not disagree more

Re: Ask HN: Why is the touchpad on MacBooks still ahead of other manufacturers?

#22

Is not "light years ahead" of __all__ manufacturers, just the cheap ones. Surface laptop trackpads are on par with Apple ones.

Also, I bet most of the Apple touchpad magic actually lies in the software. For instance the touchpad on an MBP doesn't feel all that great anymore under Linux (not a dig against Linux, it's just that writing universal touchpad drivers doesn't appear to be a simple and straightforward task).

The issue is Linux (and Windows for that matter) applications have extremely bad graphical feedback.

I haven't seen anything actually competing with the macOS/Safari way of touchpad response. The 3-finger expose command just slides all the windows a bit out of the way so you can switch fluently.

On Safari, scrolling is natural, fluent and non-jarring even on long documents. Just slide a bit to the right with 2 fingers and you get a 'peek' of the previous page in your browser history. If you release the trackpad before completing the gesture the current page slides back gently like a real bit of paper. Pinch to zoom now works on other browsers, but still not as fluent as in Safari.

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to coordinate the data collected by the trackpad, the OS response and graphics stack. If one of those components do not cooperate the 'magic' feeling is lost. I presume that is the issue with big, siloed companies or OSS projects.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the touchpad on MacBooks still ahead of other manufacturers?

#25
In my opinion the problem is not always the touchpad(hardware) there are a lot of great ones. The problem relies on the driver integration with the os especially the interface. The animation and precision is so smooth in macos that at least makes Me think this hardware is far betteter then others.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the touchpad on MacBooks still ahead of other manufacturers?

#26

I keep my trackpad disabled 99% of the time, on my laptop , so....

So… Why bother replying then?

Point being, If most people cared about their touchpads then more vendors would invest in it. I doubt most people keep their trackpads explicitly disabled like me. But most people definitely do not care much about them (as in pay extra for it) , to incentivise making them better.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the touchpad on MacBooks still ahead of other manufacturers?

#27

Is not "light years ahead" of __all__ manufacturers, just the cheap ones. Surface laptop trackpads are on par with Apple ones.

I have to strongly disagree here. I own a Surface Book 3 and an M1 MacBook Air. There is no comparison. The Surface track pad is better than most Windows laptops, but not on par with a MacBook.

Re: Ask HN: Why is the touchpad on MacBooks still ahead of other manufacturers?

#30
post #15

Correct me if I am wrong. I think all current Windows Laptop are trackpad with physical clicks. Apple's Trackpad has been using Force Touch ( haptic engine ) since 2015. But I remember correctly my MacBook Air trackpad before Force Touch were excellent too. It is one of those things where people " thinks " they are doing comparison when they are not. You often see enthusiast and nerds doing so called spec comparison.…

Idk, I don’t hate the fake force touch click of Apple’s new trackpads but if you gave me a choice, I’d take the old kind any day.

So I don’t think that’s it. They’re good despite the fake click, certainly not because of it.

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