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118 of 120 people found the following review helpful.
Works just like the macbook pro trackpad
By P. Song
I have a strong preference for touchpads over mice so I was beauteous delighted upon hearing in regards to this being freed by Apple. I have another touchpad made by Adesso that I use with desktops, but it is wired and not closely as nice or big as the Apple one.
This trackpad works incisively like the built-in one on the macbook pro. It’s slim and very refined and tasteful looking. There is no lag like you get with wireless optical mice. The glass surface, however, has a bit of ‘texture’ to it not similar to the macbook’s trackpad which is shiny. It’s closely like a matte finish to it which is ok as a perfectly shiny glass surface may stick a bit if your fingers are a little sweaty. (But if your fingers are dry, the shiny feels a little better 
It’s well constructed and seems sturdy. The top share that holds the battery feels cool like aluminum though I’m not sure if it is. But it’s not cheap plastic. It has a nice solid feel and I’m exceedingly happy with it. I visited the local Apple store to undertake it out before buying, but they did not have it in yet. But I’m glad I went in front and ordered it from Apple because it’s precisely what I wanted. I will never use another mouse again!
When you get it, make sure that you update your OS software to get the trackpad drivers. It will work without the update but you won’t be competent to adjust it and features will be missing. You might have your computer on automati update in which case you don’t need to worry in regards to this. But if you’re a weirdo like me and prefer to manually update, then keep this in mind. When the batteries die, I’ll update this review to give a sense of how long the batteries last.
63 of 65 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent choice for your media center Mac
By Daniel Guerriero
I purchased the trackpad for my 2010 Mac Mini, which I use mainly as a media center appliance, with XBMC.
In this context the trackpad adds a lot of usability for the following reasons:
* I don’t need a surface for the mouse anymore. So it’s basically like another remote, sitting besides me on the couch.
* I no longer require to use the keyboard, for basic operations. Thanks to the gestures, I may switch amongst running apps (e.g. from XBMC to Finder) without the need of the keyboard. In fact, since I purchased the trackpad I hardly use the keyboard at all.
Cons (same context):
* If you’re keeping the trackpad with your hand or operating it on a soft surface (like the couch) you can’t use the click option, since it requires the trackpad to be sitting on a hard surface, like a desk. So you have to live with tapping for clicking operations.
111 of 121 people found the following review helpful.
If You Are Willing to Give It a Chance
By Glenn R. Howes
I’ve been using this as my mousing input device on my work desktop Mac for a couple of weeks. I made a sense of right and wrong crusade to leave my ease zone and move my regular mice away and rely solely on the Magic Trackpad. I did this because I was unconsciously reaching way over to grab the mouse whenever I necessitated something done and I wasn’t giving the trackpad a reasonable shot. Anytime you switch away from something intimate there is going to be stress. My long term preference for a pointing device is a Logitech thumb wheel style trackball, but anytime a co-worker came to use my machine I’d have to break out a mouse as their displays of awkwardness defy description. These things take time.
So I gave it a shot. What do I think?
I think the Magic Trackpad has potential if you are the kind of person that may internalize the gestures Apple provides. The 3 and 4 finger swipes in particular are utile and if I did them naturally and without much thought then the trackpad would have a substantial vantage over other pointing gadgets as I could do mutual actions like task switching or browsing back more quickly. This would be a skill worth mastering. I am not a master after a couple weeks, and possibly I won’t get there. After all, the Magic Mouse also accepts gestures and has the precision of a mouse. It’s possible that humans will find the trackpad is good for a lot of activities, such as web browsing where swiping and scrolling dominate, while reserving the mouse for actions such as file management or photo editing where precision is paramount. Nobody said you had to choose only one. Except perhaps your wallet.
The addition of iPad-like inertial scrolling is a huge win for Mac trackpad users, whether thru a built in Macbook trackpad or this Magic Trackpad, and we may suppose more gestures to originate on the iDevices and make their way onto the desktop. If you love the browsing experience on an iPad, you are building up attainments you may use with this trackpad.
It helps if you are a long time Mac laptop user. I’m so conditioned to using my thumb to click in the lower percentage of the surface that I never even detect there is no actual button there. Just as in the unibody series of laptops, the whole surface is a button, which is effortlessly pressed with my thumb after my index finger has guided the cursor. Users coming from a dissimilar hardware setup might try clicking with their forefingers and find it exhausting transmitting all that energy through a single extended digit.
The actual device is classic Apple, percentage work of art, share exceedingly minimalistic functionality. My one complaint with the hardware is that because clicking goes through the little rubber feet on the bottom front, I can not click when the trackpad is off the desktop, such as on my lap when I’m reclining. I had to enable tap clicking in the control panel, which works well enough, but I miss the firm solidity of the click. I still prefer a thumbwheel for it is unparalleled utility when my feet are on the desk and the device is in my lap or on my leg.
I ended up disabling all one finger gestures except for tap to click as they were driving me crazy with undesirable drags and contextual menus.
Who will like this device: iPad users, power-user MacBook owners, those with Mac Minis attached to a TV.
Who will hate this device: persons who perfectly love the precision of a mouse.
Is it worth buying now? I would say in all probability not. This is a hint at a future where the fundamental interaction among humane and computer is more gestural, subtle and sophisticated. I don’t know if I’m ready for that future.
[Update: if you watched the "Back to The Mac Keynote" on October 20, 2010, you saw that OS X 10.7 will be make much more use of gestures for navigation and control, so come summer of 2011 things will get started to get advanced.]
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