Usability notes on Apple’s new Magic Trackpad
- You can rest all of your fingers on it and just move your index finger.
- Pinch-to-zoom is much more reliable than on the MacBook trackpad. On the MacBook you could zoom multiple times on one gesture. With the trackpad, regardless of how pronounced you perform your pinch gesture, it only zooms one step. Come to think of it, I don’t know if this is due to the new drivers; if it is, maybe it’s fixed on the Macbooks too.
- You can still use the thumb-click + index finger to drag things around. On the 27” iMac I was testing it on, I was able to drag a window all the way across the screen without lifting my finger.
- Three finger drag works for more than just windows. It is a general drag feature. This means it also works to select text.
- Right clicking using the bottom-right-hand corner is touchy. It did not always register as a right click.
- As you’d expect, accuracy is not as good as with a mouse but it’s perhaps a little better than the MacBook trackpad.
- After using it for a while, the fingers that I’m not using are more strained than they would be with a mouse. It’s probably because I’m trying not to touch the pad with them.
