M3 MBA 15" bad pinch to zoom works really bad

[Torty]

So I got the new 15" M3 Air everything is VERY fine but the pinch to zoom is very bad. When I do that gesture with iPhone, iPad and my old mid 2012 MBP it's working ALWAYS.
Now I have a failure rate of ca. 10 to 30% which is huge and not acceptable.
Is it Sonoma 14.4?
If it is a bad hardware the other gestures should be affected too? But there are working fine. No prob with scrolling, swiping, 4 finger gestures. Only pinch-to-zoom is not working as it should.
Very annoying cause if I spend 2750 Euros for a Laptop I expect it to work.

Anyone else has this problem and found a fix or did I got a lemon and I need to go to Apple Store again?
BTW I configured the track pad to "tapping" instead to "pressing". Same configuration I had with my old MBP.

 

[za9ra22]

It's not a gesture I ever used, so I just tried it to see. Hopeless. It works occasionally, but it seems to require that the motion of both fingers begins at precisely the same moment. If not, I get scrolling or rotation (depending on which app).

I will say that I have very poor motor control so I expect a bit of issue with these kind of gestures - hence not using them - so assumed it was a 'me' fault.

So I tried on my 13-inch M1 just to make sure, and it's the same. Perhaps slightly more reliable, but not much. And mine is NOT set for tap to click - which makes it even worse!

I can't make it work with thumb and forefinger, but it does better with left and right index fingers.

 

[Torty]

It's not a gesture I ever used, so I just tried it to see. Hopeless. It works occasionally, but it seems to require that the motion of both fingers begins at precisely the same moment. If not, I get scrolling or rotation (depending on which app).

I will say that I have very poor motor control so I expect a bit of issue with these kind of gestures - hence not using them - so assumed it was a 'me' fault.

So I tried on my 13-inch M1 just to make sure, and it's the same. Perhaps slightly more reliable, but not much. And mine is NOT set for tap to click - which makes it even worse!

I can't make it work with thumb and forefinger, but it does better with left and right index fingers.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I also found out that both fingers must be on the trackpad at the same time. What wonders me is that there is zero prob on my other devices with the same gesture I do.

 

[za9ra22]

Thank you very much for your feedback. I also found out that both fingers must be on the trackpad at the same time. What wonders me is that there is zero prob on my other devices with the same gesture I do.

I'm the worst person to help test this since my motor control prevents reliable and accurate placement and movement of my fingers, but I wonder if part of the issue is that the trackpad is so large it requires greater spacing between the touch points. With left/right index fingers I can make it work reasonably reliably with a bit of practice and my fingers more widely spaced.

Hopefully someone else with better dexterity than me will leap in, but I'll keep experimenting. So far though if I try something simple such as the two-finger 'smart scroll', all I get is a continual menu.

 

[Torty]

Tried it with both index fingers: 2 times out of 10 it didn't work. Really frustrating.

 

[diamornte]

I thought it was just me. I thought my new Macbook Air 15” M3 only recognizes the pinch to zoom if I deliberately do it slow and with both fingers firmly on the trackpad… but it doesn’t about 1/3 of the time. IDK how Apple could ship new hardware like this. Here’s hoping to a fix ASAP……

 

[Torty]

I think more and more it's s SW bug. e.g. double tap always works but not in iMessage when I want to reply to a message. Then most of the time it isn't recognized.

 

[za9ra22]

Yeah, I'd say unlikely to be a hardware bug, or I'd not experience the exact same behavior on both M3 15-inch and M1 13-inch.

 

[Torty]

Yeah, I'd say unlikely to be a hardware bug, or I'd not experience the exact same behavior on both M3 15-inch and M1 13-inch.

After searching the web this is no new issue. So it's more likely a HW defect. Can't imagine that such a bug will stay open for over a year. Next days I will go to Apple Store and check how the MacBooks behave.

 

[za9ra22]

After searching the web this is no new issue. So it's more likely a HW defect. Can't imagine that such a bug will stay open for over a year. Next days I will go to Apple Store and check how the MacBooks behave.

I don't have access to an Apple Store unfortunately, but I strongly suggest since you do that you take your MBA in, and not just try out models yourself, but have a genius test yours. If he/she doesn't replicate your experience, ask how it's done reliably. If they can reproduce it, ask them to log it and report it up the chain.

That latter you can do yourself of course via customer service. They're usually pretty good, even if sometimes slow to catch on.

 

[Timpetus]

I don't have an MBA but I can confirm that it works pretty reliably on my 14" M1Max MBP, so Apple does have the ability to make it work as expected.

 

[Torty]

I don't have an MBA but I can confirm that it works pretty reliably on my 14" M1Max MBP, so Apple does have the ability to make it work as expected.

What are your trackpad settings? I found out that on iPad you can switch from one finger moving to zooming if you simply add another finger.
This doesn’t work on macOS maybe because we have the secondary “click” here.
So on mac it’s more sensitive by default. But yes, same was for my old mbp where it works perfectly.

 

[arcite]

Pinch to zoom works fine for me. However, Sonoma is a bit buggy, you could try signing up for Beta program from Apple and get that; they are fixing bugs all the time.

 

[Torty]

Tried pages and numbers: zoom works perfectly with comm+option+scrolling. Pinch to zoom same bad accuracy as with safari and other apps PLUS it gives haptic feedback. Why is this?

 

[Torty]

After searching the web this is no new issue. So it's more likely a HW defect. Can't imagine that such a bug will stay open for over a year. Next days I will go to Apple Store and check how the MacBooks behave.

So I visited the Apple Store and played around a bit. For sure it's no scientific test. But the behavior was the same for all M3 devices incl the pro. Interestingly in my case the accuracy of the M3 pro and M3 max was better. Almost all pinch-to-zoom gestures I did were recognized.
So I think it's SW maybe it's by design to safe battery. I don't know how much CPU resources the trackpad will get.
The Pro and Max have more efficiency cores. But that's only theory and it's very possible I am wrong here.

 

[diamornte]

"So I think it's SW maybe it's by design to safe battery. I don't know how much CPU resources the trackpad will get.
The Pro and Max have more efficiency cores. But that's only theory and it's very possible I am wrong here."

I doubt that it would require a lot of CPU power or that it would be a huge problem eating up battery power to enable "pinch to zoom" which is something that all iPads can iPhones have been able to do (for years now) with less "efficiency cores" or battery power.

 

[javisan]

I too have the new 15" M3 Air and noticed this issue fairly quickly. Pinch to zoom is very unreliable. I can only get it to work on the first try maybe half the time (being conservative). I'm coming from a 2018 MacBook Pro, which did not have this problem. Even my work Windows laptop is doing pinch to zoom better than this 15" M3 Air.

I hope this is a bug that will get fixed soon. But I'm not too optimistic to be honest.

 

[Torty]

I doubt that it would require a lot of CPU power or that it would be a huge problem eating up battery power to enable "pinch to zoom" which is something that all iPads can iPhones have been able to do (for years now) with less "efficiency cores" or battery power.

iPads and iPhones are running iOS.

 

[MayaUser]

I doubt that it would require a lot of CPU power or that it would be a huge problem eating up battery power to enable "pinch to zoom" which is something that all iPads can iPhones have been able to do (for years now) with less "efficiency cores" or battery power.

Even on Intel crap you could do it, i think even on 12" macbook...so its clear a bug and not intended to "save battery"

 

[MayaUser]

iPads and iPhones are running iOS.

Intel Macs ran macOS...still, its an SW issue and should not behave like this
People should report it to Apple feedback section

 

[za9ra22]

the odd thing for me is that I could never get pinch to zoom to work unless I used left and right index fingers. Today, on re-finding this thread, I tried again on my M3 MBA, and got it almost every time with thumb/index finger and even index/second finger on my right hand.

Motor control is a big problem for me so some days are better than others, but I also had undated the M3 to 14.4.1. No way I can tell if that's coincidence.

 

[Torty]

Intel Macs ran macOS...still, its an SW issue and should not behave like this
People should report it to Apple feedback section

Do they really care? Seems it's no bigger topic only a few complaints.

 

[SkippyThorson]

I saw this thread and couldn't resist sharing my experience on something I do frequently.

I don't like the compromise of a smaller resolution across the system, so I let macOS and Windows do their thing with the maximum / optimum resolutions. In windows, I ctrl+scroll within applications to zoom into content the rare times I need to read smaller text.

In macOS, I found pinch-to-zoom to be equally as unreliable as others have stated here, so instead, since my 2004 iBook, I've always enabled the accessibility feature of the same ctrl+scroll to zoom in and out on the cursor placement.

Even today, on a 2019 iMac with a bluetooth trackpad, or on my 2015 MBP's native trackpad, I find pinch-to-zoom not working probably 1 out of every 10 times. It's almost like the first time you go to use it, macOS has to think about if it was or was not in error. It's rather fluid after its initial little hiccup.

You pinch (unpinch?) to zoom more or a second time, and it goes OH HEY BUDDY I GOT YOU. It's usually also accompanied by a glitchy "snapped" zoom experience as though the first attempt was recognized. It's brief, and slight, one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it things.

On iOS, it's buttery smooth. On macOS, it's almost like the animation of zooming has a millisecond stutter. I've thought that for years.

 

[za9ra22]

Do they really care? Seems it's no bigger topic only a few complaints.

Just saw this.

It's typically the smaller complaints where reporting a problem via the feedback page actually helps. The big things Apple already know about. Small issues that aren't reported don't get any attention at all.

As to whether they care, I don't know. I can say that they certainly used to, and I suspect they triage and collate feedback that is specific to an issue and forward it to the relevant teams in much the same way as before.

 

[Supermallet]

Using a 15" M2 MBA and pinch to zoom works perfectly for me.