> It takes a hour of research to know if the trackpad is not-awful
This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually know which ones are these!
At computex two years ago, Sensel had a couple demo ThinkPads with their trackpad on it. It felt very good, not glass but haptic, I would be very happy with it.
Didn't see them last year at computex and never found that Lenovo model again, not sure what happened with it, at the booth they said they had a partnership. I was hoping they'd link up with framework and make a module for them.
The early aluminum MacBook systems used a hinged trackpad. The "click" was a physical button under the trackpad, and you couldn't click on the top of the trackpad (because the hinge was on that side).
The MacBook Neo is a return to physical clicking, but they're using some sort of new mechanism which allows clicking anywhere.
Not really, not exactly. The older “clicky” MacBook trackpads couldn’t quite be “clicked” anywhere. They were levered at the top of the trackpad, so if you tried to click on the very top edge then they wouldn’t really click. Anywhere else, it felt fine, but maybe the top inch didn’t feel good. Not really a problem in normal use cause most people don’t try to click on the very top edge, but perhaps this new trackpad fixes that (I haven’t tested one myself). The current gen haptic ones have the same exact click feeling no matter where you press, of course.
That’s because PC manufacturers compete on spec sheets and how much does the trackpad suck isn’t one of the numbers on the spec sheet so they don’t care.
I used to use track points before moving on to Mac. After I tried moving back to Thinkpad I couldn't stomach the track point anymore , it's just too imprecise and I think it's because we use way higher resolutions nowadays with many more densely packed UI elements to click on.
You can buy a Magic Trackpad and pair it with your Thinkpad no problem. It's much more comfortable to use it side-by-side with your keyboard, most of the time I'm reaching for the Trackpoint if my hands are on home row.
If I use one of my Macs then I have to resort to hacks to get a decent OS. A crappy trackpad is ~10-20x less annoying than a hostile OEM, at least for my non-bus-based work.
In any case, my response was to cromka's comment and our shared dissatisfaction with Asahi.
I don't think you need a Mac to get a decent trackpad. You need one maybe to have a great one.
That is the main difference to me. I hate crappy trackpads but the ones on my 2 thinkpads are good enough for the nomad/mobile use. That doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer the one on a Mac but I wouldn't want to suffer a hostile, OS and lack of repairability just to get a better trackpad.
tbqh I think one can survive with a merely decent trackpad on a bus or at meetings.
I've dual run Macbooks and Thinkpads for a while and the Thinkpad trackpad really isn't that bad (the trackpoint getting randomly stuck in a non-neutral position is a common thing I've experienced though)
The nicest thing for the Macbook for me in practice (disclaimer: I don't do fancy things on the trackpad) is the size. It "feels" fancier but the thinkpad plastic works totally fine for me.
I think some Mac users overindex on the quality of like... $400 Acer laptops from 2008 or whatever as their metric for "cheap Windows laptop".
Software stuff is still garbage but lots of machines have just straightforwardly decent hardware. Apple hardware is _very very good_ but it's not like the bad old days of "I actually cannot use this trackpad" in windows land. As much
This, so much this! I run Asahi on M1 Air but wanted to upgrade to something with fuller Linux support. After trying Thinkpad T14s, trackpad quality has rosen to my attention, something I never thought about before. Turns out glass, haptic trackpads are still only available in probably about a dozen laptops on the market and it's not easy to actually know which ones are these!