Review: Apple Magic Trackpad
Since moving my desk setup to having my MacBook Pro in clamshell mode, I’ve missed having a trackpad. The reason being that Apple’s trackpads support gestures that can make doing a lot of things way faster than using a mouse. So after months of stalling, I finally bit the bullet and handed over $169 CDN to Apple to get this:
Meet the Apple Magic Trackpad. It supports both Force Touch which is the ability for the touchpad to react to how hard you press it. That’s handy for apps that actually support this feature. It also has zero moving parts like the touchpads on Apple’s MacBooks. Thus everything you feel is simulated via Apple’s haptic feedback tech. So if you’re used to that, you’ll feel right at home. Finally, it supports multi touch gestures. More on that in a bit. It’s available in white or in the black that you see here. I don’t know about the white version of this, but the black version attracts fingerprints like crazy.
On the back is an on/off switch, as well as a Lightning port for recharging the trackpad seeing as it’s wireless. Much like the Magic Keyboard, I have to ask why do we not have USB-C on this in 2024? I guess that the EU needs to force Apple to get with the times as this is just dumb. For what it’s worth, the battery inside the trackpad lasts just over a month, and it comes with one of these:
It’s a USB-C to Lightning cable that is pretty good quality.
Back to why I got this for myself. Over the years I have come to rely on the multi touch gestures that Apple has offered in their notebooks to navigate and do things in macOS. If you’re interested in learning what these gestures are, this can help you. And that fact that this trackpad supports them immediately makes me way more productive at my desk. For example I often use apps in full screen and swipe between them using the trackpad. And doing that takes far less effort with the trackpad than it does with a mouse. Having said that this trackpad will not completely replace a mouse as it is simply not as accurate as a mouse. Thus I always have a mouse on standby should I need to do something that requires some level of accuracy. Color correcting a photo would be an example of that.
Here’s one thing that makes this trackpad worth considering. Unlike the Magic Mouse which for reasons only Apple understands requires you to flip the over to charge it, rendering it useless in the process, you can use the trackpad while you charge it. It makes me think that these two devices were designed by two groups of people who clearly didn’t talk to each other.
So would I recommend the Apple Magic Trackpad? If you want to accelerate your workflow and don’t mind spending spending some time to learn the multi touch gestures, then yes. If you’re used to how your MacBook behaves and you want to replicate that on your desktop, then yes for that as well. Just don’t throw away your mouse as that will come in handy from time to time.
Oh, I have a message for Apple. You need to move these accessories to USB-C. It’s 2024 and you really have no excuse anymore.
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