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Comment by ziml77 | Hacker News Reader

Because simply putting my finger onto the trackpad may trigger a click when I only intended to move the cursor or even just rest my finger. Leads to unintentionally following links or dragging things around.

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Is there a reason why you have to rest your finger on the trackpad? For myself I view the trackpad as the one place you'd want to avoid resting any appendages on, unless you need to interact with it.

For example, I haven't heard of similar arguments for a phone's touch screen, probably because you don't rest your thumbs on the screen itself.

Maybe resting it there was the wrong way to put it. It's more like I think I'm going to want to move the cursor in the next few seconds, so I put my finger down there.

Sure, I could train myself to not do that if I really needed to, but the thing is that I don't need to since I can turn off tap to click.

I'm not sure why phones are different here though. This isn't something I've been conscious of. Maybe it's because the thumb's natural position when holding a phone is to actually hover above the screen? Or maybe touches just register differently enough on a phone that it's not a problem?

At least on my Macs, if I rest my finger on the trackpad, without moving, thinking of where to move the cursor next... It doesn't register as a click. It acts exactly as expected: if I lift my finger, it still won't register as a click, and if I start gliding on the trackpad, it will register as mouse movements.

But it's not just putting a finger on the trackpad, that doesn't trigger a click. It's a really quick tap. But I'm not out to convince anyone so do your thing :)

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