Guilty of this. I’ve never used a track pad that didn’t feel like complete ass.
I’ve never used a PC one that I liked, but Macs have superb ones. They are so good I now get trackpads for every desktop I work on too (home + work).
They’re great, now if apple could concede that right click is an important thing that’s not going away and not relegate it to a corner barely larger than my finger then they’d be perfect.
EDIT: I forgot the default way to right click on Mac is two finger click, I changed it in the settings when I first got it to be click in the bottom right. If you’ve gotten used to two finger click good on you, but point still stands for us who like the “right” way.
I’m not sure I understand your complaint – if you two-finger tap anywhere on an Apple trackpad made since around 2009, it’s interpreted as a right-click.
Reply to edit: “I forgot that I changed it to make it worse and I’m mad at Apple about it” is maybe the most Lemmy comment I’ve ever read
Not an Apple user, and curious: If you double click a movie file it does not open it but gives you the menu? How do you open it? Triple click? Or one click? If one, how do you just mark it?
Clicking once with 2 fingers on the pad is what they meant
Anything you do while touching the trackpad with one finger at a time is the same as though you were using a mouse. Tap once to select, tap and drag to move, double tap to open.
If you tap with two fingers on the pad at the same time, it reacts as if you’ve right-clicked. I usually use my index and middle finger.
Interesting, thank you!
Yeah, that’s easy to miss since Apple removed the super helpful tutorial shorts in the touchpad settings. The new menu is less clear imo.
Oh yeah, I changed it so long ago I forgot that’s the default. Changed it to bottom right corner in the settings when I first got it since I am used to windows laptops, but the area for the bottom right corner that apple designates is very small.
Sorry, the great prophet Jobs (pbuh) has decreed that one button is all you need.
I am using a Mac touchpad on a laptop right now and no matter where I do the right-click action (extremes of upper-left, upper-right, lower-left, and lower-right, center-of-quadrant again for all of those, true center, etc.) it always takes the click. One-finger clicking is equivalent to “left-click” on Windows while two-finger clicking is equivalent to “right-click”, or alternatively hitting control while one-finger clicking will do the trick. I’ve done this for years and years and it’s always worked for me before…
The default is for two finger click, I forgot that’s the default way since I changed it so long ago, but you can change it to a click in the bottom right is right click, like on a windows laptop, in the settings. it’s just the area in the bottom right that qualifies as the corner is very small.
I did a search and there are not many ways to change that, unfortunately:-(. Macs often let you do customization settings, even if you have to copy/paste a command-line to do it, but not this time. There is supposedly an app, but I wouldn’t recommend downloading strange apps from an unknown maker.
I did find out that there is an Accessibility -> Pointer Control option that will let you assign any hotkey you want rather than click, like F11 by default is left-click and F12 is right-click. I am not sure if you can do just the right but not the left. Though remember, already by default you can hold down the control key while left-clicking, and that is interpreted as a right-click action. I had used a Windows laptop in combination with a Mac OSX desktop at some point, so I hated the damn trackpad of the former, but I had already gotten used to the control-click functionality of the latter, and then when these force-trackpads came out it was a more natural move for me who was already into the zone there.
Plus as people are saying it’s noice hardware - the smooth glass feeling and all:-).
The trackpad click-with-two-fingers is not so bad - at least for me, since I rarely use it and I just add one extra finger to the click (I even use the 3-finger expose swipes sometimes, though I never even recall what the 4-finger ones do, and yet the pinch-and-zoom is nice:-)
I am sorry that it isn’t working well for you, but I hope you can find something more to your liking:-). At worst, perhaps you can put Linux onto your existing Mac hardware and therefore configure it more directly?
Thanks for the pointers! Like the meme though I keep it plugged into a mouse, keyboard etc. so don’t really use it but when I do it’s good except that one issue.
At worst, perhaps you can put Linux onto your existing Mac hardware and therefore configure it more directly?
I wish, it’s my work computer though and even though all the software I need and the software I’m developing runs on Linux, I think IT would get mad If I loaded Linux on it. Also why I probably can’t do any of the other changes you suggested
Oh I see. I use my Macs (at home + work) as daily drivers, though I rarely use the right-click action iirc - so much of working on a Mac only requires one left-click. Also I use the Terminal to log into a work Linux, so a lot of keyboard interaction too, and like alt-tab and such.
But it sounds like your UX is entirely different: if you rarely use the Mac itself, and/or then use an external mouse the vast majority of the time, and even then don’t do right-click actions constantly, then I see what you mean: you almost may not even have trackpad experience!?:-D It would then be harder to retain yourself to do differently, and the few times something doesn’t work would stick out in your mind more in that case. If you think you’ll keep needing to use a Mac setup in the future, you might try to force yourself to get used to it - like pick a slow day of the week and don’t allow yourself to use the external mouse and only use the trackpad. Like learning to type in QWERTY rather than hunt and-peck, building habits takes time but does have a pay-off:-). Even if you don’t need to do this, it could make the whole experience more pleasurable i.e. less painful for you! Ofc you know your setup far better than I, it was just a thought, in case it helps:-).
Seconding this. My company issued me a MacBook and I was really surprised by how well the touchpad worked, and how smoothly gestures work with it. For as much hate as Apple gets, a lot really Just Werks™. Windows and KDE (Wayland) (I haven’t tested other DEs) are certainly improving, but they’re still nowhere near as smooth as what MacOS has had for a pretty long time now.
The crazy thing is that I’ve hackintoshed a ThinkPad T430 and T480, both with full gesture support (but no force touch, though to be fair I don’t use that anyway). In both cases, using their touchpads on MacOS was much better than on Windows or KDE. Though some touchpads aren’t that great to begin with (like, the one on the T430 is pretty small), it’s crazy how much of a difference good software can make to how they feel to use.
“Apple” the company gets hate, b/c they deserve it, but Mac OSX is fantastic - they really put a ton of effort into it, though iOS is a piece of crap - e.g. now they are trying to extort the users to pay money to send files b/t their desktop computer vs. phone, which is just not okay imho. Mac OSX was from an older era, when Steve Jobs was running the company, and people would have legit left Macs (or not switched to it) if it had not been “solid” like it was. Since then, the new era is not to provide “products” but rather “services”.
Oddly enough, with the advent of Windows 7 (so many years ago now), it is fucking Microsoft that has been innovating their software - they are such a terrible company (as too is Apple, and Google, etc.), but they at least were pushing forward, more than Mac OSX, as the Apple corporation switched to put nearly all of their development efforts into iOS, and Music, and TV, and so on.
Apple ofc also has that hardware+software integration thing going on - monopolies really do have their advantages, as well as detractions too. You mentioned hackintoshing a Thinkpad, so I guess you are aware that often people will take a Mac and put Linux onto it as well, it’s wonderful that people have put in the efforts so that we have such possibilities:-).
The issue you described with the touchpad on the hackintosh sounds more like a particular driver issue, which gets deeper than I have any knowledge of so I’ll stop there:-). I will say tangentially that the Mac OSX has a shit-ton of cool features like font antialiasing, the Preview program is amazing, and I could go on and on but what usually gets lost on people is how Mac tended to have had things first, like everything has Bluetooth now, but Mac OSX had it long before Windoze did. I know nothing about Windows 10 or 11 though, except that they push to offer things as a service rather than product, and they show advertisements throughout:-( - those aspects alone turn me away from wanting to use it, even if the rest was somehow a better experience than Mac OSX (which I expect is NOT:-P).
Wow, a nightmare thought just struck me: if Apple enshittifies Mac OSX… the world will become a noticeably worse place, overall:-(. Fortunately someone will have it backed up and we can hack it (even if having to use older hardware), and there’s always Linux that while significantly behind - especially in drivers & UI/UX concerns - is better than it has ever been.
what usually gets lost on people is how Mac tended to have had things first, like everything has Bluetooth now, but Mac OSX had it long before Windoze did
That’s just not true - in fact, Apple is well-known for repeatedly releasing ‘new’ products/features that already existed elsewhere, but acting like they invented it. That goes all the way back to the original Macintosh.
Or, to use your example, everything I can find says MacOS added Bluetooth support in 2004, while Windows XP was patched to support Bluetooth in 2002.
MacOS is good software, but let’s not pretend Apple hasn’t built their entire empire based on pinching other people’s ideas and marketing them better.
People hate on apple coming out with features later than other companies but then they usually blow the competition out of the water in terms of ux. It’s not marketing them better, it’s implementing better.
It’s like valve helping develop proton vs making another nvidia shield or windows handheld.
I probably misremembered some stuff but also stated it too broadly - it was a lot more “mainstream” in Macs than in Windows, in part b/c you could purchase a low-end Windows machine, whereas all Macs start off at a baseline minimum that is fairly high.
Also, Apple put BSD Unix into the very core of their Macs years before Microsoft started poking their noses around the subject.
The end result was a machine that “just worked”, right out of the box, which was pretty nice.
It’s not just the software either. I really like the feel of the Apple trackpad. It’s glass instead of plastic like a lot of others. And the haptic feedback feels exactly like what a click would feel like
I’ve used a few trackpads on PC laptops that were almost as good as on a MacBook, but yeah, most of them kind of suck.
Yep exactly, a Magic Trackpad is my main input device. It’s great for design work where you often interact with canvases and might need to scroll in every direction. It’s also more comfortable to use for long time periods.
I also love the handy expose swipe features, offering more functionality that does not require still yet another button. The aesthetics are good but most important it’s just so functionally beautiful. Those are probably tied to mainly be usable on a Mac OSX though.
It’s great but I’ve had greater sensitivity in my finger tips after trying to get used to it. Then typing hurt so I had to switch to a trackball and just regular vertical mouse. I miss the gestures for virtual desktops.
Trackballs have ruined trackpad a for me.
Look at a Charybdis from bastardkb. Got a trackball built into the keyboard.
Lol the price of these fad keyboards are comical… 180€ with no switches and no keycaps?
And it looks 3D printed?
The hardware is open source, but yes, it is 3D printed.
Its definitely not for everyone but it has saved my wrists at an office job. Can recommend split ergos with risers for people with wrist problems.
I printed and assembled one myself for about $90 for all parts, so I can somewhat understand some of the the prices… But whew that’s expensive
180€ is like a day or two of work. It is a fair price in my opinion.
Except it isn’t 180€ cause it’s missing parts
Yes. But you have to understand that it is a custom keyboard. It is not meant for the mainstream. For people interested in the hobby; it’s not an issue that it comes without keycaps or switches. You get to choose what you want switches to put in it. I personally have over 400 switches and like 6 sets of keycaps. And that’s just what I’ve been collecting over the past five or so years.
This looks rad
Standard galactic alphabet?
Do you have specific keys for SimCity disasters?
Yes, meteor is for meteor showers, storm cloud for thunder storms obv, and the flux one is for not needing roads.
That particular model makes my wrist hurt almost instantly.
It’s all I know. It was my first one and I got a good deal. Now that I know I like it I’d consider getting a better model but so far I’ve had no pain with this one.
Haha I have the same ball
Seriously, they ALL fucking suck. I honestly kinda miss the old nub thingie that IBM (now Lenovo) had (has?). It took some getting used to but it was so much better than a touch pad.
The old clit mouse was my favorite!
They still have them, along with some Dell and HP laptops too I think. Honestly I like both. My laptop has that and I find myself switching between them mindlessly. Touch pad is great because of gestures. But the nub is more comfortable imo.
They still have them
The little red dot is in the ThinkPad logo, at that point they are acknowledging its central to their brand.
One of my old laptops had the little nub mouse, but it would rub my finger tips raw if I used it too much, from the grippy texture on it
I’m sure they do make trackpads that don’t have a hole in the middle.
The keyboards are garbage too. Can’t stand typing on laptop keyboards and every one I’ve tried (mostly Dells at work) has been shit for the last 15 years. I bought a $10 bluetooth keyboard for my tablet that’s a better experience and smaller than a laptop for fucks sake.
They got a lot worse after 2010 when “thin” happened. I’ve got an NEC laptop from 1998 that has an excellent keyboard.
Yea I have an old Toshiba Satellite laying around that has an awesome keyboard. It’s too old to really do anything with but I love the design of it. The annoying thing is that Bluetooth keyboard I mentioned is compact as most laptops yet it still manages to have a good tactile feedback when you type on it and it was cheap so we know it can be done. Most laptops just feel “squishy” and start missing keystrokes if you type too fast. The worst I’ve encountered was one of the ones Microsoft offered for the Surface that was just a solid rubber thing. The keys didn’t actually press at all. I can’t understand what they were thinking with that. They had another option with actual keys but it wasn’t very good either even by laptop standards.
I have. The Steam Controller (and Steam Deck) trackpads are very nice, mostly because there are two of them and they are thumb operated. The haptic feedback is really nice as well.
Aside from my linux macbook, the steam deck trackpad is one of the best trackpads I’ve ever used. The “taptic engine” (don’t know the generic term) simulated clicks and feedback on the deck’s trackpad feel so much more refined compared to the standard tactile button used in the original steam controller. Being able to adjust the click pressure level too is a nice bonus.
I just wish the Deck trackpad was better at ignoring finer movements closer to the click threshold, like a standard trackpad - likely something that could be added with a future update I guess?
I use a Logitech keyboard + trackpad and it works great.
But yeah, laptop ones I’ve tried always sucked.
I can only use it as a laptop 1% of the time and it still makes perfect sense because otherwise I would have to own a separate device for this 1% of the time.
When I was building my current computer, I considered getting a Steam Deck and pretty much just doing this. Going in and out of a dock makes a lot of sense, especially with stuff like not having to transfer files between machines.
That makes sense. Though I think it depends on what you’re doing for that 1%. For me personally I prefer a beefy desktop for work+games, and a low-power laptop/tablet for portable jobs.
That way I can upgrade the PC tower every couple years and keep using the same portable device for years and years, since it’s basically just an email/web/SSH terminal. I’ve been using the same desktop PC since 2009, just upgrading it as needed. Over 15 years it feels like fewer devices than having to keep replacing a high end laptop every 3-4 years or so.
you’re telling me there are people who DON’T have a high-refresh monitor, mechanical keyboard, and wired 13-button mouse on them at all times?
Sometimes I have to pee. And I can’t use a computer because it takes both hands. Hey-ooooooo!
Does a laptop with a built-in high refresh rate display and mechanical keyboard count…?
Only if you got that 13 button wired mouse in your laptop bag.
I personally carry my MX Master. Not as many buttons, but the adaptive free-scrolling and the side-scrollling wheel make it a productivity lifesaver.
as a dev I absolutely love the free scrolling wheel, and the ability to quickly switch between multiple devices. to top it all off, the mx master has the most reliable and consistent surface tracking I’ve ever come across on a mouse
I mean, you still can use it on the go if you need to.
how about…
…some wheels
I want to add an extra panel where the laptop gets connected to AC power as well, and powers up like Popeye eating spinach.
I literally rocked an old laptop for years like this, lol.
Pros:
- Comes with 2 screens by default
Cons:
-
Overheating
-
Some models refuse to start if a faulty battery is detected, and some models will use battery even while plugged in, and worst of all some batteries are inside the laptop case which must be pried open for access
And some models work without any battery at all, my dell XPS circa 2008. I am still amazed at that. It still runs too, I just retired it from server duty a few years ago once I got a dedicated server.
Actually, I was referring to that with the comment about access to the battery. If it still uses the battery while plugged in and won’t start from battery failure, removal of the batter is a possible solution that fixes the problem.
ergonomics. portable screens need to be at eye level, keyboards need to be nearer, pointing devices are overdue for revolution on portables.
Also the shittier hardware for more money, terrible ergonomics, and noise/heat of a laptop. I tried using a high end laptop for a couple of years. Now I’m much happier after selling it and replacing it with a PC. 8th gen Intel laptops are dirt cheap and very capable for most tasks (as a secondary device) for when the portability is absolutely required.
pointing devices are overdue for revolution on portables.
Tilt control laptops when
id like to see eye tracking with dual caneras
I feel like that would be hard to implement alongside tilt controls
Gimbal
Already possible on a Steam Deck
Haha that’s me but with my phone, as soon as I get to work I plug in my phone to a kvm that has a monitor keyboard and mouse, my phone has a desktop mode that I use on a second monitor while my main monitor is my work laptop.
This way I can switch between my personal phone and work computer, on my phone I mostly just have chats open or I vpn to my home lab to fix issues with my media server or game servers, if things get a little too wild I jump into a VM so I have all my tools. I also use this to edit photos or other projects during my lunch and breaks.
My work requires a lot of waiting for machined to reboot or go through tests so I like this setup that keeps my browsing on the guest network and non work device, and at the end of the day I just unplug one usb c and put my phone in my pocket so I don’t have to worry if I stop at a grocery store on the way home about carrying a bag with me everywhere with a laptop
Hey, that’s really nice! I always wondered what’s the actual real life use case of the external monitor desktop mode on the phone. Your workflow is a perfect example of that.
I have four laptops and two desktops… More or less.
One laptop is an antique, I might break it out to play music while I cook, but it’s kind of useless for anything else at this point. One is a tablet, complete with a digital pen. I only bust it out to sign digital documents. My main personal laptop is an 11th gen framework. The last laptop in my collection is my work laptop. Technically not mine, but I’ll throw it in anyways.
My work laptop 99% of the time is sitting on my desk, connected to a dock which is plugged into a KVM switch.
My main desktop is also plugged into the same KVM.
My laptop rarely moves. I like that about it.
My framework is almost never on any kind of dock, or connected to any external display. I mainly use it on my lap around the house
The other desktop is plugged into my TV to play video games.
I mean, I have other computers, but those are the main ones.
I mean I don’t want to talk negative about your hobbies, but you have a pc hoarding issue.
I have one for myself, but not that bad yet.
You have no idea.
Back in the early 1990s, I would go to Goodwill and pick up whatever ancient computers and related machines that people had discarded there. I amassed quite a collection. But at some point, when you’re hauling a useless VT240 terminal home and you realize it’s just going to sit in the garage, you conclude that you’re really not doing a smart thing.
I would say the person above should keep the ones they’re talking about and get rid of the “other computers” unless there’s a good reason to keep them.
Useless? That’s a necessity for using your router console port!
I have to imagine there’s an option that weighs less than a large concrete block.
I went from desktop to 100% laptop over several years; now I’m back on a desktop - using one of those Ryzen 7 mini-PCs - and a 36-key GMK Cherry MX split keyboard that, stacked, is barely larger than the computer. I’m seriously considering getting a small Thunderbolt dock and just carrying that with me between work and wherever. The only annoying bit is the computer I have isn’t powered over the USB-C port, which means also carrying a power brick, and that’s the straw that keeps me synching data between my computer and laptop.
I could move everything to a bootable USB device, but even over USB-C that’d be orders of magnitude slower than NVMe or SATA.
The laptop is only two years older than the desktop (and maybe less than that since I didn’t buy the most current model), cost nearly 3x the PC, and is utterly blown out of the water by the specs on the micro(? 12.5 x 12.5 x 4 cm) PC. Yeah, the laptop has keyboard, pointer, battery, and monitor; that impacts size and cost, but still. I could almost use my PC in a coffee shop, if it weren’t for the power brick and the need to do something about a monitor.
I have a foldable phone. Maybe by the time that display technology gets scaled up (and onto the market) there’ll be a micro PC that’s powered over USB-C and I can put together a small, laptop-sized case with everything I need.
The Frameworks are looking good, though, now that they’re selling AMD models. I’ll have to check in, in a year or so.
You could get an nvme to USBC thing, that should be pretty fast
TB4 is like 5000MB/s if the mini PC has that. Plenty fast for a lot of applications. It’ll cap an NVME but it’s good enough to run off of.
Is it? I haven’t tried, but there’s a pretty big gulf between an NVMe interface max bandwidth and TB4’s. I mean, TB4 is pretty amazing (40Gbps), but NVMe m.2 is 128Gbps; Sabrent makes an m.2 SSD with 104kGbps read speeds; heck, Crucial has a $114 2TB m.2 SSD they claim gets 40k/33.6k R/W. And this assumes that whatever computer you get access to has a TB4 port, and not just USBC 3.0, which tops out at 5Gbps.
But this all reminds me that I need to get a bigger NVMe stick and move everything off the SCSI SSD.
Depends on exactly what you need. For a lot of day to day tasks, especially if you’re not moving around large amounts of data, TB4 speeds are probably fine.
I wouldn’t do it with USB 3.0, but 3.2 gen 2 could theoretically work depending on your workload and use case.
My usage barely benefits past 3.2 gen 2 because my disk is never my bottleneck. It’s either network or processor. It’s one of those things where everyone has to look at their own usage and decide.
This is… fair. But, while I don’t often move large amounts of data, consider: this thread started with me speculating about using a bootable USB drive instead of hauling computer equipment around. So we have to consider that (a) booting will be frequent - more frequent than a desktop or even laptop, maybe twice daily if I’m moving between work and home. That’s going to be relatively slow. Then starting up whatever programs: the desktop, apps - god forbid I need to use Eclipse or another monster programs.
I guess I might be able to set it up for hibernate, but since that stores machine state including devices and network state which are going to vary between computers, I’m guessing that’s not going to work reliably if at all.
USB 3.x and TB4 put this more in the range of possibility, but it still sounds slow.
Yeah, I may have gone a bit far afield to try to point out that it can be done. It’s not going to be for everyone, and maybe it would be too slow for you.
It was fun to think about, and I enjoyed the friendly conversation.
Don’t get me wrong: the idea is super appealing, and the technology has gotten good enough it’s practical - i absolutely agree about that. I was only saying that there’d be a noticeable difference in performance of you’re used to M.2 NVMe.
I think a bigger concern is trusting other people’s hardware. It’s getting increasingly fraught, with key loggers and such; I’m not sure how much I’d trust my (digital) life to a random computer - and then there’s the issue of secure boot, and needing computers that have either unprotected BIOS menus or which are already configured to boot first from USB (which is IME an increasingly rare default configuration).
I can’t get over it.
You’re one neat backpack and a decent repurpose-able display tablet with a kickstand away from a dream nomad set up.
How big is this power brick that it features so strongly in the ‘cons’ column!?
It’s not, really: 10x5x2.5 cm, plus the wall plug; but it’s still there, and it’s irritating because they could easily have powered this thing over USBC. Hell, most of my flashlights have USBC charging ports. It’s an additional thing to carry, and another thing to have to plug in. Plus, not being USBC makes it far harder to run off a battery pack.
You’re right about the rest of it, though.
I feel bad for a drawing of a laptop with a face
That’s me!! Whenever I have that sucker at home from work the first thing I do is using my own peripherals. The difference is Day and Night!
I do you better. I have my macbook plugged into a 32", and a crappy 19" (which sits on top of my macbook), so I’m using two screens without using my macbook screen
I feel so called out
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