This drove me crazy on the first Unibody MacBook I bought, which is why I gave it to my brother after three days.
I've since purchased a mid-2009 MacBook Pro, and I've gotten used to it the trackpad. I no longer rest my thumb on the lower part of the track pad, and I tap to click rather than click to click. It works for me.
I purchased a 13" MacBook Pro after the most recent update, and my experience with the trackpad has been very different. I am a user trained to use the rest-thumb-on-button method, and after an hour or so of being weirded out by the lack of button, I am still using that method to great effect.
First, the top of the trackpad is vertically fixed. If you experiment, you'll notice that it is easier and easier to "click" as you move down (towards the user) the trackpad. I believe the clicker itself is located at the bottom of the pad. Second, I usually leave my thumb on this clicker area and do not get the pinch-zoom effect. I'm not sure, maybe we're just using it differently, but the only problem is that very occasionally I'll be viewing a PDF and accidentally rotate a page. I have learned not to do this, however, and am quite happy with the new design.
It took me a little while to get used to the new mac trackpad, but once I was used to it I came to love the multitouch gestures - except the stupid two-finger rotate thing. Oh my god in Photoshop CS4 it's so easy to accidentally rotate your canvas. And it's impossible to turn off.
The new trackpad in general feels more clever than good. Multitouch is the new brushed metal.
PS: I won't buy a mac laptop till it has *three* buttons, but that's because I want to use X on it. Bud Tribble who managed the original Mac team and who made the original decision to just have one button explained the decision to me once and I understand why, but user interfaces are significantly more complicated now than they were in 1982. Computers are more complicated. Apple makes their users jump through hoops with modifier keys and all that junk to access the kind of functionality people want in modern applications, as opposed to say MacPaint.
I am confused. I am on a MBP and I can move the mouse using any part of the track pad, and can click by pressing any part of the trackpad, as best I can tell.
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I've since purchased a mid-2009 MacBook Pro, and I've gotten used to it the trackpad. I no longer rest my thumb on the lower part of the track pad, and I tap to click rather than click to click. It works for me.
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First, the top of the trackpad is vertically fixed. If you experiment, you'll notice that it is easier and easier to "click" as you move down (towards the user) the trackpad. I believe the clicker itself is located at the bottom of the pad. Second, I usually leave my thumb on this clicker area and do not get the pinch-zoom effect. I'm not sure, maybe we're just using it differently, but the only problem is that very occasionally I'll be viewing a PDF and accidentally rotate a page. I have learned not to do this, however, and am quite happy with the new design.
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The new trackpad in general feels more clever than good. Multitouch is the new brushed metal.
PS: I won't buy a mac laptop till it has *three* buttons, but that's because I want to use X on it. Bud Tribble who managed the original Mac team and who made the original decision to just have one button explained the decision to me once and I understand why, but user interfaces are significantly more complicated now than they were in 1982. Computers are more complicated. Apple makes their users jump through hoops with modifier keys and all that junk to access the kind of functionality people want in modern applications, as opposed to say MacPaint.
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CS2 probably doesn't have all the random-crash functionality of CS4 though!
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And if you tap the top part it does register clicks, or not?
I can work with minimal buttons, but the lack of a tap-click is what made me hate mac laptops.
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There *is* a tap-click. It's the first option in this control panel.
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