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Force Touch Trackpad what does it do ?
- Thread starter augustya
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It's a pretty cool feature, butI do have a little gripe with the feedback and accuracy involved with click and dragging at the same time. I find the "older" style trackpad great for that sort of motion, which I do a surprising amount of. I had issues with it working properly and behaving as expected the times I tested the force touch trackpad out.
That said, I do thing it is a pretty rad piece of technology.
That said, I do thing it is a pretty rad piece of technology.
The trackpad, instead of being a physical button, is a non-moving surface.
The click feel is done via what is called haptic feedback. Small motors vibrate in a certain way to simulate the feel of a click. Because the surface does not move, it can sense how hard you are pressing and translate that into commands.
It doesn't have much more than the old trackpad in terms of features, nor does it really "help" in any way either. It's just a trackpad. The force sensing can be used to determine say, how fast you want fast forward to go in a movie, which I believe is a feature that works in Quicktime.
Out of curiosity, why are you asking?
Now, I haven't tried the Force Touch Trackpad... but I can't help but feel that it is really nothing more than a tradeoff in order to make the trackpad thinner (and fit more battery power inside). It's marketed as a feature (of course) but tactile > haptic feedback in my opinion. Some user reviews I've read confirms this as well.
The press force interaction is gimmicky at best and will never be a replacement or requirement for any interaction in the OS since the majority of users are still using a traditional mouse anyway.
The press force interaction is gimmicky at best and will never be a replacement or requirement for any interaction in the OS since the majority of users are still using a traditional mouse anyway.
I've been using the force touch trackpad on my 2015 13" rMBP for a month or so now and although it takes a little getting used to the fact that the pad doesn't actually move anymore and what you are feeling is the haptic feedback, I really like the pressure touch feature and preview it offers for websites in safari.
If you go back to the old touchpad you will really notice the difference with the way it clicks in.
If you go back to the old touchpad you will really notice the difference with the way it clicks in.
I met a new user of the 2015 13" rMBP recently. She had had the machine for about a week when I spoke to her, and she had no idea at all the Trackpad was different from the one on the cMBP she had been using previously.
That's how convincing the mechanism is.
That's how convincing the mechanism is.
In my opinion, this is the first noteworthy innovation since multitouch. This is truly an additional dimension of computer interaction, and one that is extremely intuitive.
It might be true that many people are using a mouse... but that still doesn't diminish the additional functionality one has with pressure sensitive UI. For me its a great deal. And I only use a mouse when playing games. Apple Trackpads are that good.