141–150 of 170 posts
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The Magic Mouse supports a three-finger click, which is interpreted as a middle click.
Uhh, no it doesn't. At least not without third party software.
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How is this different from any other pointing device? The only one I know where you didn't have to move your hand was the Touchstream LP ( http://www.fingerworks.com/ST_product.html ), but then typing was difficult at best.
IBM Trackpoint http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/healthycomputing/trkpnt.html Best pointing device ever. You can keep your hand in home position for typing and manipulate the cursor. It doesn't actually move, but is force sensitive and is delicately calibrated to move in an intuitive manner.
EDIT -- I'm not certain you can find a keyboard with a Trackpoint that isn't part of a Thinkpad anymore. There used to be a couple of licensed versions in addition to the IBM-branded ones.
Back in the days, I always preferred the Trackpoints the IBM ThinkPads used and I never quite liked the trackpads. I'm even going as far as to say that I'm quite the trackpad hater - they never felt precise to me and required way too frantic finger movement to be really comfortable for me. But when I moved to Apple hardware, I basically was stuck with the trackpads, but this time around, it was different. The bigger…
It's ironic you say the Apple trackpads allow you to move your fingers less. My biggest complaint about Apple laptops has always been the excessive mouse movement required, at least vs. the trackpoints I love.
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I fail to see the advantage (swipe, swipe, swipe, press) has over (move, press). Not to mention that trackpads are fairly sensitive to sweaty fingers. Do people really rely on multitouch gestures that much? Frankly, I don't get it. Trackpads are vastly inferior to mice. I bring a mouse with my macbook whenever I can.
Using two fingers to scroll has become so natural to me that if I use a non-Apple trackpad I'm momentarily bewildered why it doesn't work.
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Two reasons. First, external multitouch trackpads have been basically unobtainable until now. Apple bought the one company that used to make them and incorporated their technology into Apple products years ago. The only other model I've seen was an obscure Japanese import that only supported Windows. If you like trackpads, the Magic Trackpad is the first time in years you can buy one for your desktop. Second, Apple m…
I agree; every PC trackpad (even standalone, expensive ones) were, at best, tolerable. Once there are some display models out in the wild, I'll have to check it out. Thank you for the informative reply.
I can't get my head around how Apple manages to come out with products that are cool enough they could come from a startup with some very motivated founders working day and night. Almost all other companies with >100 employees are turning out mostly crappy products that no one gets excited about. When's the last time you talked about a Xerox printer or HP laptop? In my mind this is why a company like Nokia can't make…
Because people will buy their products on faith, where a startup would just be ignored. Belkin could release this exact same thing and it would be mocked.
Please Apple, gain the cut, copy, and paste (and other gestures) on the trackpad that you bought from FingerWorks. Freaking genius.
However, I think there's probably a limit on how many gestures you can keep in your head, it's a lot easier remembering keyboard shortcuts than gestures. I can probably only keep track of five different gestures per app, but I'm sure I can probably recall at least 20 different keyboard combos when I use a tool like emacs.
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>Apple makes the best trackpads in the industry by a huge margin. Do you have any research to back that up? I don't doubt that Apple trackpads are of high quality, probably even the best. That said, the placebo effect can be very powerful when attempting to gauge how easy it is to interact with a computer.
This track pad probably runs on the same tech as the iPhone (multi touch capacitive glass interface), so this comparison is probably relevant: http://mobiler.co.za/smartphones/3308.html If average PC track pads are as good as the average non-iPhone touch sensitive screens (yes, a fuzzy comparison, but probably the right ball park), then you'd expect the Apple ones to be better.
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Because people will buy their products on faith, where a startup would just be ignored. Belkin could release this exact same thing and it would be mocked.
Belkin could release this exact same thing and it would break after two weeks.