The trackpad for iMac died last week, or half died. It was still sort of responsive but I couldn’t force-click it anymore. I guess the haptic feedback carked it. Annoyingly, it was perfectly functional except for one task - clicking and dragging. I put up with it for a couple of days before finally surrendering and going in to the Apple Store on Saturday. No, there was no diagnostic test. Yes, of course they would replace it, if it was less than a year old.
I read your post, the usual clear precise prose I have come to expect and relish. I thought for a moment about making my usual joke about "individually the words make sense but put them together an I don't understand" (I don't have a lot of Apple tech). Instead I wondered how many years/months back in time would I need to go before the English above would be incomprehensible. "trackpad" "iMac" "force-click" "haptic feedback" "one task - clicking" and "dragging". If weak AI are permitted to scape all the available contemporary data then they will certainly have a better chance with keeping up with rapidly evolving language but certainly won't help interpreting elegant text from a more civilized age.
for some reason my brain associated kerputten as a post about cats and once i read it i was surprised to find out its not about cats but mice (mouses?). Not one mention of a cat
As a PC person I found the initial laptop trackpads so infuriating that I have remained a committed mouse person ever since, to the point of lugging around separate peripherals for my work and personal laptops over the years. And maybe it's me not grokking trackpad functions, but I found a mouse to be faster, more precise and easier to use than a trackpad (I've never used a Mac so can't comment on the fruit experience).
Omigod. Just reading this thing about 2 finger, 3 finger (snerk snerk, yeah yeah, doublay that entendre) swiping. Tried it on my pc laptop. There's all this other functionality!? What the Actual? How long has this all been available. And I don't mean on your fancy pants fruit-based ecosystem. I mean in boring, beige/grey, PC land. Why did nobody tell me?
There's a bunch of unknowable complexity in Apple's haptic trackpads, and sometimes (in my experience) they get their knickers in a knot. A variety of bone-pointing, rebooting, power-cycling, cable-changing and settings panel frobbing have always managed to restore the missing functionality. The only trackpad in my house that has not fully recovered eventually (but mysteriously) was the one I dropped a glass on, and discovered that the top surface really is glass: it shattered. Check out the Apple forums (which Apple staff never read or respond to): you'll find it's full of similar stories. I recommend that you give yours another go, perhaps after switching from bluetooth to USB connection, or switching it on and off a few times. Or the computer.
I love my trackpad(s), and you can keep your shoulder-ache-inducing mice, irrespective of how many buttons they have, or how well they appear to work (now).
A dysfunctional trackpad sometimes means the battery below it is expanding, pushing it from below - ie the initial expansion, before the main supernova explosion. It's being polite and letting you know in advance that the splodey could very literally jump off the page of one of your novels as you are typing it. I'm not sure how the battery is organised for the separate trackpads - my main experience there is with laptops and I've never witnessed an actual firework, always replace it before then. I would guess the trackpad battery is a much smaller affair than a laptop, so maybe it's less dramatic than I'm making it sound :). Four years is a decent age for a rechargeable battery to attain, so might be time for it to put its feet up, bore the younger peripherals with its stories, and write angry letters to The Australian.
I still don't get apple products, we had the silver tower ones at art school, and those all in one coloured plastic fish bowl ones at law school. I remember the warnings about needing to eject usb drives out of them, and the funny hockey puck mice. But they couldn't play call of duty so I never bought one. But recently I've been using Dell laptops with touch screen and a tiny ssd hard drive , and boyhowdy they are utter crap, no response, slimy feeling plastic, missing cursors , windows 11 . Absolute over priced trash, and that's probably why our taxes are so high paying for garbage IT gear so the public service can take computers home with them , for policy emergencies you understand.
I read of a family that went tech cold turkey for a period of time. The kicker that led to this decision was a father watching his tween daughter reading a magazine, and her inadvertently swiping the pages, as opposed to turning them.
My 2 year old daughter has attempted to zoom in on pictures in a book. True story. I'm not proud but I honestly don't think that there's anything that can be done about this. She'll also never know of a time when television didn't have remote controls, or that your favourite show was only on at a specific time. I guess this is the world in which she lives.
I read your post, the usual clear precise prose I have come to expect and relish. I thought for a moment about making my usual joke about "individually the words make sense but put them together an I don't understand" (I don't have a lot of Apple tech). Instead I wondered how many years/months back in time would I need to go before the English above would be incomprehensible. "trackpad" "iMac" "force-click" "haptic feedback" "one task - clicking" and "dragging". If weak AI are permitted to scape all the available contemporary data then they will certainly have a better chance with keeping up with rapidly evolving language but certainly won't help interpreting elegant text from a more civilized age.
for some reason my brain associated kerputten as a post about cats and once i read it i was surprised to find out its not about cats but mice (mouses?). Not one mention of a cat
As a PC person I found the initial laptop trackpads so infuriating that I have remained a committed mouse person ever since, to the point of lugging around separate peripherals for my work and personal laptops over the years. And maybe it's me not grokking trackpad functions, but I found a mouse to be faster, more precise and easier to use than a trackpad (I've never used a Mac so can't comment on the fruit experience).
Sometimes the original tech is the best?
Adjustable DPI 7 button gaming mice are a gift from God. APPLE people are missing out.
Omigod. Just reading this thing about 2 finger, 3 finger (snerk snerk, yeah yeah, doublay that entendre) swiping. Tried it on my pc laptop. There's all this other functionality!? What the Actual? How long has this all been available. And I don't mean on your fancy pants fruit-based ecosystem. I mean in boring, beige/grey, PC land. Why did nobody tell me?
I'm not sure I approve of your having access to this functionality on on Apple merch. Imma ask Tim about this.
I find these things accidentally when I do some fat finger thing, but never need it, as far as I'm aware, so I forget.
also IT here, have you tried turning it off on on again?
There's a bunch of unknowable complexity in Apple's haptic trackpads, and sometimes (in my experience) they get their knickers in a knot. A variety of bone-pointing, rebooting, power-cycling, cable-changing and settings panel frobbing have always managed to restore the missing functionality. The only trackpad in my house that has not fully recovered eventually (but mysteriously) was the one I dropped a glass on, and discovered that the top surface really is glass: it shattered. Check out the Apple forums (which Apple staff never read or respond to): you'll find it's full of similar stories. I recommend that you give yours another go, perhaps after switching from bluetooth to USB connection, or switching it on and off a few times. Or the computer.
I love my trackpad(s), and you can keep your shoulder-ache-inducing mice, irrespective of how many buttons they have, or how well they appear to work (now).
But… but… I am a Mouse Man now
A dysfunctional trackpad sometimes means the battery below it is expanding, pushing it from below - ie the initial expansion, before the main supernova explosion. It's being polite and letting you know in advance that the splodey could very literally jump off the page of one of your novels as you are typing it. I'm not sure how the battery is organised for the separate trackpads - my main experience there is with laptops and I've never witnessed an actual firework, always replace it before then. I would guess the trackpad battery is a much smaller affair than a laptop, so maybe it's less dramatic than I'm making it sound :). Four years is a decent age for a rechargeable battery to attain, so might be time for it to put its feet up, bore the younger peripherals with its stories, and write angry letters to The Australian.
Great. Great. Good to know.
I still don't get apple products, we had the silver tower ones at art school, and those all in one coloured plastic fish bowl ones at law school. I remember the warnings about needing to eject usb drives out of them, and the funny hockey puck mice. But they couldn't play call of duty so I never bought one. But recently I've been using Dell laptops with touch screen and a tiny ssd hard drive , and boyhowdy they are utter crap, no response, slimy feeling plastic, missing cursors , windows 11 . Absolute over priced trash, and that's probably why our taxes are so high paying for garbage IT gear so the public service can take computers home with them , for policy emergencies you understand.
Retro tech ? What’s next? A flip phone? A Walkman? Positively Luddite. Bravo
I read of a family that went tech cold turkey for a period of time. The kicker that led to this decision was a father watching his tween daughter reading a magazine, and her inadvertently swiping the pages, as opposed to turning them.
My 2 year old daughter has attempted to zoom in on pictures in a book. True story. I'm not proud but I honestly don't think that there's anything that can be done about this. She'll also never know of a time when television didn't have remote controls, or that your favourite show was only on at a specific time. I guess this is the world in which she lives.