I agree with you in general, but a trackpad is in fact really, truly horrible for these tasks. As humans we are designed to rotate objects precisely, and that design does not involve using two fingers to slide about arbitrary locations on a flat plane. It involves grasping and rotating with the hand. For rotating and/or zooming, a large knob attached to a high-resolution encoder would be a million times better.
A common complaint around here is about how touch screens have taken away better tactile controls, but so have our keyboards.
The obvious answer to the challenge is a touchscreen.
I didn’t mean for it to be that exclusively. I tried to say that keyboards are the best text input device, but gaming mice and controllers are the best gaming input device, graphics tablets are the best graphics input device, and video editing input devices like the ones I linked in my original comment are probably best for video editing (while trackpads are at best decent scrolling/browsing devices, but IMHO I personally prefer keyboard scrolling like in the terminal pager less, the PDF and other document viewer Zathura, and vi-inspired browsers/browser plugins like luakit, qutebrowser, and Pentadactyl).
Obviously it's not as great if the measure you're looking at is "how quickly can I go back to typing?".
But Apple trackpads are not hugely popular, they have a fraction (~10%, likely less) of the global market. Does the fact that non-Apple computers are hugely popular indicate that the needs of Apple trackpad fans are not typical, and they should not extol their virtues to others?
> Show me a better multi-purpose input device that I can use to rotate objects on a screen. Or zoom into a specific object without affecting other objects on a screen. Or configure to have multiple hotspots that when tapped can trigger events or macros.
I’ve previously used a normal Apple mouse and keyboard to do all of these things in Adobe Photoshoshop and Illustrator on macOS and subsequently a random BestBuy mouse and ancient Compaq keyboard to do them in Gimp, Inkscape, and Blender on GNU (with xdotool for hot corners, which I’m counting as close enough to tapping hotspots). A graphics tablet would only work better.
> Again, trackpads aren't your thing. Good for you. Other people love them, and millions of people get real work done on them each day.
Again, non-Apple trackpads don’t seem to be your thing. Good for you. The majority of trackpad users use them every day.
You can as long as you can order x86 Macs with Bootcamp.
> No one is like, “I could have the Mac trackpad for the same cost, but I prefer the stuttery trackpad that moves the cursor and selects bleep when my palm gets too close”.
No, but there are plenty of people who think “I prefer no trackpad to accidentally swipe [—even if palm rejection is perfect, I want total hand —including finger— rejection—] at all”, from people who buy Macs and use the setting Apple provides to disable the trackpad when mice are plugged in, to people who use their Mac as a PC laptop and manually disable the trackpad (https://www.lakshmikanth.com/how-to-disable-trackpad-on-boot...), to people who try to more permanently disconnect broken old Mac trackpads (https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/386625/macbook-pro...), to people who physically disconnect their trackpads, to people who buy old thinkpads because eg. at least some x200s have only a trackpoint and fingerprint sensor.
If you've used a Magic Mouse, then you've used a mouse with a trackpad on its back. Glad you liked it!
And no, rotating in Photoshop with the keyboard isn't the same as rotating with a trackpad. It's an entirely different process that is significantly less efficient, unless you already know the exact angle of rotation you want down to the 0.1°.
My mistake. I used a standard Apple mouse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Mighty_Mouse). I used its clickable scroll ball and squeeze functionality and suspect I would dislike the Magic mouse.
> And no, rotating in Photoshop with the keyboard isn't the same as rotating with a trackpad. It's an entirely different process that is significantly less efficient, unless you already know the exact angle of rotation you want down to the 0.1°.
IMO the ideal mouse + keyboard rotation style is Blender’s, which is more efficient in this scenario than a trackpad. But I still believe a graphics tablet would be objectively superior.
The person you're replying to said "trackpads are popular" with no mention of Apple. Your entire argument so far has been against trackpads in general. Why shift goalposts?
Yes.
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/laptop-faqs/what-is-a-trac...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-trackpad-settings/...
http://support.blackberry.com/kb/articleDetail?articleNumber...
https://edgeup.asus.com/2019/the-asus-screenpad-2-0-lets-the...
https://wikidiff.com/trackpad/touchpad
Trackpad and touchpad are generic synonyms according to every source I can find.
I don't have the data but I think this is like the motherboard / logic board split. In other words "trackpad" may be Apple for "touchpad".
I gave you data by showing links where other companies like Blackberry, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Asus use the word "trackpad" themselves for their own devices. Lenovo even cutely capitalizes the P to fit their ThinkPad branding. You could also google around and see random people on reddit and elsewhere talking about the "trackpads" on their dells, hps, vaios, matebooks, and so on.
I'm not saying that "touchpad" isn't more common, but the evidence _clearly_ shows that "trackpad" isn't exclusive to Apple devices.
Your point is only correct if you replace the word "most" with "my." The fact that trackpads are hugely popular indicates that your needs are not typical, and you should not impose your choices upon others with different needs.
would be better done with a specialized non-keyboard, non-trackpad input device
Show me a better multi-purpose input device that I can use to rotate objects on a screen. Or zoom into a specific object without affecting other objects on a screen. Or configure to have multiple hotspots that when tapped can trigger events or macros.
Again, trackpads aren't your thing. Good for you. Other people love them, and millions of people get real work done on them each day.