Linux Support For Apple's Latest Magic Trackpad USB-C Model

[risho]

Who the hell buys a USB Trackpad? It's so unintuitive in comparison to a mouse.

trackpads are great. the problem is all trackpads that aren't made by apple suck. they have a bunch of gestures that make navigating around your os super convenient. switching between virtual desktops, scrolling in all directions including left/right, swiping up to reveal all windows, etc.

[jeisom]

Who the hell buys a USB Trackpad? It's so unintuitive in comparison to a mouse.

The port is mainly for charging and a full charge can last over a month with pretty heavy use. I got the lightning version and it works excellent on linux.

[ahrs]

especially slinging files around a lot..

Pretty much anything involving drag and drop (like slinging files around) is awful with a trackpad. There's never enough surface area to do it so you have to do an awkward dance with your fingers whereby you keep the thing held down but then reposition your hand again so you have more area to drag.

[Espionage724]

Who the hell buys a USB Trackpad? It's so unintuitive in comparison to a mouse.

Same people that buy trackball mice, and even those who still buy old IntelliMouse models; a mouse isn't a one-size-fits-all, and every mouse does something different with firmware/sensors. For a trackpad, I like the idea of a giant touchpad! I can drag some bulky piece of plastic to aim a cursor, or I could drag my finger to control the cursor (no extra weight; my hand/wrist is still moving across a mousepad-like surface). A good high-polling large touchpad sounds like it'd be great, and I trust Apple designing an external touchpad like that would have all the low-latency and hardware down to have it work to justify selling quantity at a high price point to anyone not a casual user toying with the idea (aka it's sold to people who knowingly want it and expect quality).

My only experience with a large touchpad was on an older Wacom drawing tablet that happens to have a touchpad component. The surface isn't ideal for finger-dragging, and polling feels cheap/low. It conveys the experience can work, but I need better hardware to truly test that. Apple's Magick touchpads are the best thing I'm aware of right now.

What I'd really be interested in is a large touchpad with Absolute input! 100% would run right to osu! to test that I had a minor taste of that years ago with putting a Synaptics laptop small touchpad in Absolute mode and it was kind-of cool, and the only difference there is using a stylus vs a finger (although it'd probably be even cooler with multiple fingers for across-screen jumps)

[timrichardson]

"
Who the hell buys a USB Trackpad? It's so unintuitive in comparison to a mouse."

Me. The gestures to change workspaces are great, and they don't get captured by my fullscreen VMs so it makes gnome much more useful and productive. And you get amazing control over the cursor while using much less desk real-estate. Mine is an apple one, I have a cable connection via the older USB port. I would hate to go back to a mouse. Mice are simple, but we have multiple fingers, and the track pad uses more of them.

[Noitatsidem]

Who the hell buys a USB Trackpad? It's so unintuitive in comparison to a mouse.

gnome and kde have really good gesture support.

[mdedetrich]

Who the hell buys a USB Trackpad? It's so unintuitive in comparison to a mouse.

People like myself, its much easier to use than a mouse unless you need pinpoint precision (really only relevant in gaming). I actually bought the latest USB-C trackpad as I was waiting for a USB-C variant so I am glad to hear that a patch was posted to Linux kernel so quickly, when I get my new linux desktop up and running it should be in the released kernel by then.

As others have noted, the Apple trackpads are in a class of their own and blow their competition out of the water by a wide margin.

[Sonadow]

Trackpads are superior to mice for practically everything except click-and-drag.