All Macs come with very capable multi touch mice or touchpads. Clicking with two fingers (or more) for secondary mouse buttons is perfectly convenient and two finger scrolling is just awesome.

Are there no drivers or what?

Of course, most people have pretty childish tastes and prefer shiny things. But I guess de gustibus non est disputandum.

[And yes, I do feel like I have a bit too much karma... ;]

This is a hard one, and I would need some more evidence. Don't you have a steve jobs quote?

So both are right, we should not be discussing taste and we are deemed to only discuss about taste.

I'll let some other HNmate complement with a Steve Jobs quote, if they wish.

That's not timeless design. That's a timeless pice of crap!

Now the MacBook Pro trackpad... Fingers fly on that glass.

Once you get used to the TrackPoint, you'll realize what a piece of crap the MacBook trackpad is.

Ooooooh no you won't. Sorry Wintermute, but you're speaking from a very, very small niche market. In my experience a huge majority of people overwhelmingly prefer the mac trackpad for all conceivable uses. Two-finger scroll is a killer app.

In my experience, a huge majority of people don't even know what a TrackPoint is, let alone give it a shot.

I won't deny that this is because Lenovo's advertising is nonexistent. Apple has done an excellent job over the last 5 years of convincing the general public that they have the best hardware on the market. And although I personally relish the unchanging ThinkPad design, I can see how many people would find it to be anachronistic in the 21st century.

> Two-finger scroll is a killer app.

I've had 2 finger scroll with the TrackPoint for years, and it's a lot better than the trackpad way - my right index finger moving the TrackPoint and my right thumb holding down the middle mouse button. My fingers stay on the home row, and I use my left thumb for the space bar and my right thumb stays on the mouse buttons at most times. I've tried the MacBook "two-finger scroll" method, and it just breaks my train of thought to have to move my hand back and forth from the trackpad to the keyboard.

In fact, I like the ThinkPad keyboard so much that I have the USB model for use with my desktop.

I use a ThinkPad E520 at work. Every day. For 8 hours+.

I like the TrackPoint. I use the TrackPoint. I think I'm fairly proficient at navigating with it. But the only reason for using it, in my opinion, is because of how bad the ThinkPad's trackpad is.

I'll take my MBP's trackpad over Lenovo's trackpoint any day of the week. It's faster in most cases and much more accurate. It's just better.

As both a Linux and Mac user, I'm happy a PC manufacturer is finally getting it.

With a multi-touch extension like jiTouch that lets you configure your own per-app multi-touch gestures, the large trackpad (especially external trackpads) are no-debate the most versatile "mouse" alternative.

I have many keyboard shortcuts mapped to gestures for PyCharm, Sublime and Xcode that let me do very cool things during specific workflows (think: debugging, deployment, etc). I've only been using it (and Macs in general) since November but it's the first time i don't totally loathe having to move my hand from the keyboard.

On the other hand, with a properly configured (tap to click) glass trackpad that problem goes away.

[1] http://blog.laptopmag.com/thinkpad-type-off-is-lenovos-new-i...

[2] http://blog.lenovo.com/products/why-you-should-give-in-to-th...

Not to feed the troll, but that is a pretty childish thing to say.

But they are an equal footing in the same way a Jaguar E-Type and a Jeep are both iconic designs.

That was the topic of discussion, I think. I certainly didn't mean to imply that Macs are better than ThinkPads.

A Mac is an ugly laptop? Compared to a Lenovo? In what universe?

Is there a parallel universe in which Apple laptops do not win all the design awards and are generally and widely considered the best looking by plain folks and designers alike?

>But I guess de gustibus non est disputandum.

Oh, the irony.

The only real issue I have with Linux is that something keeps eating my bootloader, so I have to keep a GRUB boot CD around to boot into it.

But it's too bad, Apple went from making subpar mouses to some of the best I've ever used in the last five years or so. The trackpad is pretty great too.

See eg. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Multitouch and https://lists.launchpad.net/multi-touch-dev/msg00997.html

You wouldn't. Linus Torvalds would --and actually did. And he says that his Macbook Air is the best laptop he ever had, and that Lenovo doesn't even come close.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium...

Sure, happy to oblige. It was on a comment in his Google+ page (around 1/5 scroll length) he said:

"no, Lenovo doesn't [still make quite decent hardware]. I have the Lenovo X1. It's bigger, plasticky, and has worse battery life".

https://plus.google.com/102150693225130002912/posts/1vyfmNCY...