Wow, the mac touchpad. It still baffles me how much I use it.

I have never been a touchpad kind of guy. Ever. In fact every chance I got I would use the mouse. Touchpads were a nuisance. They interfered with my ability to type. They made simple operations hard. They were not comfortable. Made me use my fingers in ways that were not pleasant.

But then I got this Macbook Air. It all changed. All the awkward motions of touchpads disappeared. I will start with the most basic and work to advanced features.

Lets start with the single click. On a regular touchpad I had two options: tap-to-click or click the left button. The left button is WAY out of the way, so I always had tap-to-click. TTC sucks because if I accidentally touch the touchpad, the cursor clicks somewhere and makes me lose my typing place. very disruptive. On the mac, not an issue. I have two choices: tap-to-click or click the whole damn touchpad. The whole thing is a big easy-to-press button. No awkward motions, just ease of use.

Next, right click. On a regular touchpad I had one option: Right click button. With special drivers, two finger tap. The right click button was always hard to get to due to me using my right hand.  The two finger tap suffers from same problems as single click. On Mac, no problem. I have two choices, two finger click, or click on the lower right side of the touchpad. I like two finger. Never an issue, and never out of the way.

Next, drag. On a regular touchpad drag is click twice, the second click makes you go into drag mode. In drag mode you move your finger not letting go until you want to drop the thing. On Mac, again its better. The touchpad is made of a material that is quite slippery, unlike non-mac touchpads. But better than that, the action is click with one finger, and use a second finger to drag. So motions like move a finger right, let go, move it left, touch again, and right again, which is how you move "far" on the screen is never an issue. In fact it is straight up pleasant.

Next, scrolling. On a regular touchpad scrolling is a special place on the touchpad that scrolls up or down. It's rather annoying since missing it you just move the cursor around, and hitting it accidentally is annoying. Also I like to use that space for motion, but it winds up scrolling. Recently two finger scrolling has been gaining some half-decent implementations. On a mac, two finger scrolling in any direction. Marvelous. Love it more than a mouse actually.

Next, in OSX 10.7 there are multiple desktops via full screen applications or an awkward interface to create multiple. You scroll through them with four finger swipes left and right. This is great.


This is pretty much all I use. What is interesting is that I find it more awkward to use a mouse on a mac than a touchpad. My fingers are already in place, as it is perfectly located, to use it, rather than move to the mouse. I wind up not moving my hands at all while I am using the mac. The whole "all you need is a keyboard" mentality disappears when your mouse is right there, though I still prefer keyboard over touchpad.

So some unscientific accuracy numbers:
Accidental clicks while I am typing:
Mac: ~1%
Windows: ~30%, I had to disable large chunks of the touchpad to just be able to type.

Accidental right click while trying to scroll:
Mac: ~1%
Windows: ~50%, two finger tap and two finger scroll combined = recipe for accidental right clicks.

Accidentally missing the scrolling:
Mac: 0%
Windows (old style touchpad): ~30%

Accidentally scrolling instead of moving mouse:
Mac: 0%
Windows (old style touchpad): ~15%

Ability to start drag:
Mac: 100%
Windows: 70%, 30% of the time I wind up double-clicking the icon instead of dragging it.

Ability to drag anything into exactly desired target in first drag:
Mac: 90% meh sometimes my finger just lets go by accident
Windows: 50%, usually I have to drag twice or more to get it into the right spot, or ensure my finger starts on the oposite end of the touchpad when I even begin dragging.


So there you have it, on my mac I wind up not using the mouse. On a windows machine I dread touching the touchpad, sometimes even using the "disable touchpad" feature. Hell having that feature is a workaround for a real problem.