Reviews for Magic Trackpad

I found the trackpad to work okay with my Mac Mini but I didn't enjoy it as much as the trackpad on my 13" Macbook . I'm using a 24" monitor so maybe the size made a difference. I found my logitech mouse to be quicker and more precise. The bluetooth connectivity was solid however. Overall, this pad is alright.

Effective tool however strain on wrist. I lift up my hand and still bothersome.
Feels better when the trackpad is on my lap.

Perhaps making one for table-top with arc in the same curvature as the magic mouse. Tilt forward a little more. A shape that will make less hand movement with more efficiency.

A pressure sensitive pen would be a nice option. Allow trackpad mapping to the screen size.

Not really usable for things like photoshop, illustrator, photo editing, etc. I gave it to my wife after using it for an hour.

OVERVIEW
The main reason I use the Magic Trackpad is to have consistency of use between when I'm working at home at my desk vs working directly from the MacBook. The Magic Trackpad is ideal for this however, there are a couple issues I've found that make it a bit of a challenge.

CHALLENGES:
(1) The Magic Trackpad has a fairly short battery life, especially when compared to the wireless keyboard. If you're considering the Trackpad, be sure to also get the rechargeable batteries from Apple or other rechargeable AA batteries because you will go through them.

(2) The Trackpad has an issue with the click action in that it will stick for no apparent reason. The device has never come in contact with any liquids or anything sticky but when in frequent use, it will stick and I'll have to raise it slightly off the table and drop it to unstick it. This can be very frustrating particularly when you're working with engineering diagrams or editing photos.

SUMMARY
In concept and purpose, I should give this device 5 stars but in execution, I can only give it 3 stars. If Apple would improve this device to enable the battery to last as long as the keyboard or to resolve the sticking issues with the click feature, this would actually be a perfect device.

This would be a really interesting product if it worked well, but the implementation and app support just isn't there yet in my opinion.

In Safari, the horizontal 2-finger swipe to go forward or backward is really nice: fun, useful, superb design. The problem is that not many apps have that level of attention to detail. Most apps I've used, even ones from Apple like Logic, don't support 2-finger swipe at all. Chrome recently started to, but its implementation is just as a kind of flaky "forward" or "back" button - you don't get that smooth interactive feedback Safari does.

Even fundamental Apple software like the Help viewer doesn't support the trackpad. In general, the pinch and reverse pinch work ok in some apps, but it's often a bit flakier than using a CMD-+ or a mouse button programmed to that.

It's not obvious, but it's much better for swipes to be keyed to some gradual motion - if you just bind them to a keystroke, it's hard to know, say in a browser, if your swipe is even registering.

Worse, much worse, is that there is no way to program in preferences for exactly what the swipes do. I assumed when I got this that Apple would make a menu for writing your own gesture shortcuts, like a mouse with hundreds of buttons. But it doesn't - you are limited to a few predefined gestures, most of which are hard-bound to fairly pointless functions. (There is some free program that claims to do this, it's in alpha I think still, and it's such a fundamental feature, and the functionality was still not that reliable in the base hardware, that I did not want to try it).

I found a gaming mouse, together with something like SteerMouse gave me more control. Yes, when the Trackpad works, it's better than a mouse; and if it could be really configured well, it would be a lot better. But for now, I found the mouse was more reliable: I know the apps support it, I don't get in these situations where I don't know if the Trackpad missed a gesture or if the app doesn't support Trackpad or if I am in some state in the app that the gesture doesn't apply.

Once all the apps support Trackpad well, and once Apple adds full customizable gestures for all apps, then I may switch back.

The ONLY thing I dislike about the trackpad is that there is NO SENSITIVITY setting for tapping nor touching. MS Windows has it for their 'pads' . It's very frustrating when anyone accidentally brushes a body part on the pad & something unintentional or unexpected happens on my iMac screen! (like when my grandkids are here!). I bought the magic mouse because they dropped my 1st wireless mouse many times until it broke, so I bought the trackpad as a backup. How difficult can it be to write an update adding this almost imperative feature to the trackpad? Otherwise it's a perfect product. PLEASE HELP.

At minimum, I should be able to do everything with the trackpad that I can do with my trusty old Logitech wheel mouse. But there's no way to do a "hold down the wheel and drag" or a wheel click, and because I need both of these in a program I use fairly often, I can't completely retire the mouse just yet.

I'm also a bit dismayed by how quickly the trackpad drains a pair of fully charged batteries, because I could swear I read reviews claiming that it was more power-efficient than Bluetooth mice. In fact, to date I've found that a charge lasts only half or two thirds as long.

I've only had it for a month so I might still be making my own fine motor adjustments, but I find the "single tap" sensitiviy to be erratic. Sometimes it seems like the click event is fired when my finger barely grazes the surface, while other times even a solid tap doesn't do it.

One driver change I would recommend is to ignore very light "taps" that happen while another finger is resting on the surface, as these are almost certainly accidental. At least provide a settings option to change this, as it gets quite annoying sometimes.

Overall, I find myself wanting to love this product because it looks great and is such a great idea, and maybe I will eventually, but I'm not head over heels yet.

I have always used the trackpad on my MacBook Pro. My brother says that he can't control the trackpad on his MacBook Pro and uses the Magic Mouse. "The trackpad on the MacBook is always launching something," he says.

Well now I know what he means. Just a little bump on the side of the pad while typing on my wireless keyboard and I'm inserting text in a paragraph back at the top of the page.

I always set the MacBook Pro track pad pref to "Ignore accidental touches while typing" but with the MTP there is no such pref. Or any sensitivity pref. So now I keep the MTP well away from the keyboard.

It would be nice to release drivers designed for Windows based PCs. It does work as a simple left-click only trackpad, but I think that this would open up the market for more people buying this product. Apple is very innovative and I love all their products. Would be nice to be able to move this around to all my multiple devices i have around the house and not just limit it to my Apple products.

Love the idea of the trackpad and all of the control, but I think they designed it wrong.

Your hand and forearm shouldn't cramp after just a little use. The pad is elevated with the battery compartment underneath causing your hand to have to lift up to make gestures or scroll. Just the thing that brings on Carpel tunnel.

They should have designed it lying flat with the battery compartment on top. I flipped it over and felt more comfortable. Obviously it doesn't work that way, but maybe they should redo it to do so.

Works great otherwise, but kinda of a bummer, was really looking forward to using it alot.