Re:The iPad's new cursor and keyboard
by mirroregami on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @10:38PM
(#23099088)
My only gripe with the smart keyboard is the touchpad uses a mechanical button for clicking. It feels clunky compared to the crispness of the last few mbp generations which use a haptic electromechanical component to (perfectly) simulate a click feel.
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Wow. This so perfectly simulated a click feel for me that I didn't even know this was a fake click until reading your comment.
Re:The iPad's new cursor and keyboard
by hombre_fatal on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @11:07PM
(#23099266)
Funny thing about haptic click is how jarring it is if it's off, like pressing your iphone's home button before you realize it lost its charge. It really feels super-dead.
I’ve known it’s fake for years, and I still feel like it’s moving.
Re:The iPad's new cursor and keyboard
by renewiltord on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @11:34PM
(#23099438)
Right? It's a masterpiece in design. I know, I look, and I still feel the movement of a click. How?!
To be fair, it moves just a tiny bit. But the click feeling itself, yes, that is magical.
iPhone home buttons do the same.
Have you tried tap to click? After discovering that on my laptop years ago, I would never ever go back.
I'm also a tap to click person.
It used to be terrible on old non-mac machines (probably still is), but Apple's trackpad has been good enough for tap to click to be preferable since at least 2014, maybe earlier.
Another lesser known feature I think is great is three finger drag. This lets you move a window by just using three fingers on the menu bar of that window. It used to be an easy to find setting, but they've since buried it in trackpad accessibility settings for some reason. It's still one of the first things I enable on a new machine.
Yes, three finger drag is a huge friction-saver. Any time I see someone working without one or the other I cringe.
That's been a feature since at least Windows XP (also you could tap the GHB nipple/TouchStick)... so it was really confusing when laptops started having clicky touchpads :D
There's not enough space. The iPhone 7 Taptic Engine (the only one I could find dimensions for on short notice) was .4 inches on it's smallest dimension. The new Magic Keyboard is .25 inches thick. I don't think it's worth doubling the thickness of the keyboard portion for the improvement the haptic version might give, it already takes the super thin iPad and basically doubles both it's thickness and weight.
I never understood that. Why do you need a skeuomorphic click? You don't trust that tapping works? Whenever I set up a new phone it's a mad dash to disable the haptic tap feedback before I go crazy.