Re:The Framework Laptop
by charrondev on Thursday February 25, 2021 @10:23PM
(#26271067)
The latest iterations as I understand are like this:
- keyboards were reverted similar to how they were around 2015. - all the new trackpads are don’t require a physical actuation to activate. You can apply the same amount of minimal pressure anywhere on the trackpad and it “presses back” at you to simulate a physical click. It’s quite convincing.
Force touch is useful feature last missing on other PCs.
On 2015 or later MacBooks, you can adjust the force required for a click: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204352 (“Adjust trackpad settings”)
This is software adjustable? That's very impressive engineering. Unfortunately this a 2014 MBP.
Re:The Framework Laptop
by vladvasiliu on Friday February 26, 2021 @03:36AM
(#26272602)
AFAIK the button doesn't actually move, it's like the home button on some older iPhones (like the 7). It detects the pressure and has a haptic feedback to make it feel like a button. If you look at a powered off iphone 7, the button is just an indent on the otherwise fixed glass panel.
Exactly. The most impressive part is that it really feels like a click, down to the illusion it's moving down (but it's not, at all). When powering off (or there's a crash), the feeling of it being immovable is surreal. Plus the surface is suddenly responding evenly (the clicking ones had a hinged design, so it became increasingly hard to click upwards the surface)
One can leverage the haptic feedback to make the TouchBar a bit more lively[0]. The illusion breaks a bit since the haptic device is farther away from the touch surface but it's still quite a transformative experience for the TB.
My understanding is that Apple has made the clicks much lighter in their later models - along with doing the exact same thing with the keyboard keys, which for me goes much to far in the other direction.