is it worth upgrading to the overpriced Magic Trackpad 2?

[Anarchy99]

You may live in a city without an Apple store, but I live in a country without one, and there are still plenty of in-store demos around.

so then your still privileged, some people live in places without any store that has instore mac demo units.

not to mention even if magically every town had mac demo units, many people can't know if something will work with their workflow with the few minutes you'd get standing around in a store and need a longer time to try it.
either way your statement proves nothing.

To answer your question,

wasn't a question, it was a statement of fact whether you like it or not.

the return policy is a marketing ploy, just like a lifetime guarantee, which is designed to increase sales by removing doubt.

yes, exactly and like I said they wouldn't use such a sales tactic if it was a net loss for them.

It is very effective and has an extremely low take-up rate

once again they wouldn't use such a sales tactic if it was a net loss for them, there are people at Apple that have factored in the expected utilization of such a policy, if it was way off the mark they would change policy to account for that.

most people still do their thinking before they buy and the product usually works as advertised.

it has nothing to do with thinking or lack thereof.

no matter how much thinking you do you wouldn't know the keyboard on a 2016+ MBP is crap to type on, or how the lack of escape key effects your day to day use,<insert other problem with whatever device here> etc.

that's where using it for longer than a few minutes at a time in some store comes in handy.
(almost like they planned it with some kind of policy )

Some people, on the other hand, abuse it as a trial.

not abuse if its designed for that, which it is.

That is not its purpose or how it is expressed.

that is one if its purposes, as mentioned before if it wasn't it would be a no questions asked policy and/or they would charge a restocking fee on returns that are not due to manufacturers defect.

Even if it were

I think you mean: Even though it is

one would like to think that we are all doing our bit to help out by reducing costs, traffic congestion, carbon footprints, and the other effects on our fellow earthlings.

yeah a person ordering one or a bunch of apple products using them for a few weeks then returning them has a smaller footprint then that same person driving back and forth to the store multiple times because as I've stated you need more than a few minutes with the thing so you'd probably go back to try it multiple times in that scenario.

But let's be real, if carbon footprint is your primary concern you're not using a computer, personally I have more important things to deal with.

Even Apple's own green initiatives are only paying lipservice for publicity.
If that wasn't the case they would be pro right to repair etc. Because it's way more green to upgrade the device or fix the device then buy a whole new one but That's a discussion for another topic.