> I don't know about the boundary between keys thing, but for tactile feedback: Force Touch?

I've (briefly) used a device with Force Touch. It doesn't come anywhere close to replacing the depress-and-release of a physical key. It's better than nothing, barely. But I don't want to use a tablet with an on-screen keyboard as my primary productivity device; I want to use a laptop with a physical keyboard.

> I don't think so. I touch-type, but I hardly ever touch-type the function bar. Doubly so on a Mac, because the function bar is, by default, used for brightness and media controls.

That seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I also know many Mac users who don't know why anyone would need a right mouse button, let alone a middle mouse button. If you design your interface to not need it, and you know people will never run third-party applications that do, then sure.

>I also know many Mac users who don't know why anyone would need a right mouse button

Macs have effectively had right mouse buttons for around a decade. Two finger click on the trackpad, or a literal right click on an Apple mouse (there just isn't a physically separate right button).

Well it's ok because it's a function bar, which is barely used on any Mac at all, aside from (as others have pointed out) odd cases or people who are super dedicated to some sort of function mapping.

The right click thing is astounding to me... Everybody uses right click. Mac or not.

Nobody does need a second or third mouse button. I spend hours a day in Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops and the pointing experience with a trackpad on a Macbook blows away what you get on any of the others, no matter what hardware is plugged in.

You'll get my highlight-buffer-paste-on-middle-click only if you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

If you've trained yourself to only need one button, then yes, you only need one button. But look how well that's worked out on the iPhone, with a heavily-overloaded one button, with hard-to-discover functionality.

Running Debian on an old Macbook 4,1 (2008) on my first ever Mac and am not thrilled with the trackpad, or the keyboard layout. The best configuration I've yet mustered is:

  #!/bin/bash
  synclient TapButton1=1
  synclient TapButton2=3
  synclient TapButton3=2

This gives a minimally usable touchpad, with two-finger-tap right-click, side-scroll and tap-select.

I am still scratching my head at the absence of right-click and the key layout. I have no actual Mac OS experience to compare to, but Imagine they've done it all well when it's used as intended. Otherwise, it's working great and the build quality is solid. I am already fantasizing about Linux on a newer model, maybe with a PC mouse or external touchpad though.

Yes, but you have to configure it. You setup your gestures, fix their backwards idiotic "[un]natural-scrolling", and make sure you have your right mouse button setup.

The right mouse button is set up by default.

Just an aside you can change the configuration to default to function keys and require th fn key for the system functions like brightness and volume. It's the first thing I swap. Hate having to debug with one finger on the Fn key.

You can even change this on a key-by-key basis using a neat tool called FunctionFlip. This enables you to have certain F Keys work natively, while other F Keys require you to hold down Fn...

http://kevingessner.com/software/functionflip/

I'm glad you can do that, but I'm not going to. The only time I really use those keys is for the brightness/media controls.