Writing in his Technologizer blog, Harry McCracken wonders if anyone will figure out how to make the Magic Trackpad work with Windows, or if the company would consider a PC-friendly model, noting that while he rarely uses desktop computers these days and being not exactly anti-mouse, he does find that they’re sometimes hostile to southpaws like him.
Will a meaningful percentage of iMac and Mac Pro owners choose one over a mouse? McCracken muses, noting that he doesn’t have a clue, but is curious, and observing that while touchpads have been the dominant integrated pointing devices on laptops for a decade and a half, he knows plenty of people who still aren’t fans and who travel with mice rather than being forced to use a touchpad.
Magic Trackpad Signals The End Of The Mouse Era?
TechCrunch’s MG Siegler thinks that easily the most interesting new hardware Apple unveiled on Tuesday is the new Magic Trackpad, which he thinks is about “trends and the future,” noting that an Apple rep. observed to him that that more folks are using trackpads because there are more notebook users than desktop users, with laptops having been Apple s best-selling computers for some time now, meaning an increasing number of users are accustomed to using their computers via trackpads, and that “people love the trackpad… so we wanted to bring that kind of design to our desktop users.”
Siegler notes that the Magic Trackpad has 80 percent more surface area than trackpads used with MacBooks, and contends that Apple is moving towards a place where the majority of computer interaction is done through touch gestures, but reports that Apple spokespersons he queries hedged a bit, saying that plenty of people at Apple use the Magic Trackpad alongside the Magic Mouse, with some computing operations being better with a mouse, some with a trackpad, but acknowledging that some users will likely ditch the mouse in favor of the new device.
Seigler says the Magic Trackpad is going to replace his mouse, and that of late he’s been using his laptop more and more simply because he prefers the trackpad with its multi-touch gestures, speculating that the mouse could eventually be relegated to status as a precision tool for professionals like designers.
Well, maybe. I’m an exclusive laptop user, albeit much of the time in desktop substitute mode, and while my unibody MacBook has a glass, Multi-Touch trackpad, I still connect a mouse whenever practical to do so and tend to use it for all but a fraction of pointing and clicking tasks. I’m perfectly comfortable with trackpads, and like them, but I still tend to prefer that mouse precision, particularly with hard-wired mice.
