thinking about the new MacBook

I've been using my new MacBook for awhile now, and there's one thing that completely annoys me: the trackpad.  I've spent quite a lot of time messing about with the preferences, and I still find myself having difficulty using it.  The problem is in fine movement.  If I care about just nudging the cursor a little bit, I'm having a hard time getting it where I want it to go.  This is especially true if I want to nudge it and then click, because the action of clicking (since there's no separate button to click on) often causes the cursor to move a little bit more.  

Another problem lies in clicking: since I rarely look at the trackpad when mousing around or clicking, I haven't been clicking down far enough at the bottom of the trackpad for it to register as a click.  I still hear the click, but the click doesn't register on-screen.

Hopefully I'll get used to it over time, and hopefully getting used to it on this MacBook won't mean that I won't be able to use the trackpad on my old MacBook Pro (which still has a button on the trackpad).  We'll see.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 23, 2009
  Hi, it seems you're not a trackpad user ;-) why don't you active the click anywhere on the trackpad ? if you think the cursor move too quickly, why don't you reduce sensibility ? (with the acceleration you could still make big moves) among all the trackpad I tested, Apple's ones are the best to me, so if you're not happy with it, I hope you'll never have to use others. this can be a question for your following post ; do they force you to use PCs ? if yes what kind of machine do you have ? and what kind of Macs also ? and if not, what about MS employees outside the MacBU ? can they choose to use a Mac (with Entourage of course :-) ) ? thanks for sharing this and all your experiences,

• mathieu

• Anonymous
  November 24, 2009
  It's not that the cursor moves too quickly, it's that it doesn't move smoothly when I'm doing fine movements.  It moves a little bit, and then it jumps.  I've been playing with the sensitivity since I got the laptop, and haven't found something that works for me yet. Enabling click-anywhere meant that I was accidentally clicking when I didn't mean to. I have noticed that the trackpad works better when my hands are warm than when they're cold.  Sadly, they're often cold. (I'll answer the rest in a real post, since that's a bigger question. :)

• Anonymous
  November 30, 2009
  Have you tried turning on tapping? After a bit of practice, some people get used to it, and it's easier on the fingers. Do you notice the motion sensitivity when you're working in Windows or OSX? It could be that the ballistics are different on Windows (I don't know). It could also be that you got a faulty one that isn't sensitive enough... I'd try another machine just to check. (Disclosure: I work at Synaptics, which makes a lot of PC touchpads, but I'm not trying to sell you anything... I just spend a lot of time thinking about touchpad usability. :)

• Anonymous
  December 01, 2009
  The comment has been removed