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Comment by sxg | Hacker News Reader

What's your opinion on the trackpad? The thing I love most about MBPs is the trackpad—the size, responsiveness, gestures, and being clickable everywhere make it feel great to use. My girlfriend has a Lenovo T460, and I've been a little disappointed with the trackpad on that laptop.

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I like it. I feel it's about the right size and the texture/precision is good. It's a bit smaller than my 2014 rMBP which I thought was fine too.

On the other hand, the new MBPs have these comically massive trackpads which also scared me away. Less room to rest your palm, lots of accidental clicks, etc.

Overall, I don't think about it which probably means it's good. There's also the optional trackpoint/nub. I use it occasionally for fun, but I'm not a fanatic about it yet. Nice to know it's there, I guess? Might be handy for some kinds of games on the go.

Palm detection on the new MBPs is extremely good. You can rest your palm on the touchpad without any accidental clicks. It's far ahead of any other touchpad I used so far.

I've read posts stating the exact opposite here on HN. So clearly it is subjective.

I use an x230 (amazing little machine). I deactivated the touchpad in favor of the trackpoint. I would go nuts if I had to move my hand back and forth in order to move the cursor. If your profession involves a lot of typing, the trackpoint is the pointing device of choice, IMHO.

If you happen to use the trackpoint, I suggest replacing the default rubber piece with a concave one. Here is an example: [0].

https://superuser.com/a/854794/431390

"Better than everybody except Apple, not quite as good as Apple" is roughly my opinion. I usually turn it off on a thinkpad since I vastly prefer the trackpoint but Apple's trackpads are, at least to my mind, noticeably superior, just not enough to make me give up my trackpoint.

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