Magic Trackpad 2 Unboxing (it works with pre BT4.0 Macs!)

[haruhiko]

Today I went to the local Apple Store to try out the new Magic Trackpad 2 and walked out with this new peripheral. It's pricey (HKD988 ~USD128), but from my first impression the build quality is phenomenal. The thing is beautiful.

There were a lot of stock for the new Magic Trackpad 2, Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Keyboard. Everybody in the store were queuing up for iPhones so I had plenty of time to try out the new Trackpad.

Surprisingly, the store was obviously unprepared for this Force Touch Magic Trackpad since the brand new iMac 27-inch there had not been properly configured for the Force Touch features. I tried so hard to Force Touch on the demo unit but there wasn't any Force Touch preview on images and links on Safari. It turned out that the Trackpad setting was set to 3 finger tap instead of Force Touch. I had to configure it myself to verify that Force Touch was indeed working. Also the touch sensitivity was set to the lowest so I had to really touching with substantial force to activate Force Touch.

Overall speaking it was a very bad demo at the store due to misconfiguration and the staff there really didn't care about this product.

I will try it out for my newer and older Macs to find out about the compatibility.

Enjoy the pics!

The box after the shrink wrapping was removed.

The Lightning cable and the documentation.

The trackpad is white. It's like nostalgia, seeing Apple's white products from a decade ago.

The charging port is at the back.

The side of the Trackpad.

 

[haruhiko]

Confirmed: It totally works with my ancient 2008 Core 2 Duo iMac, wirelessly, with Force Touch. Just plug it in once with the Lightning cable provided, turn it on and it will be paired.

Note: The iMac is running OS X El Capitan.

 

[LevMac]

Thanks for your review and write up with photos

That is good news, I have a late 2008 15" MacBook Pro running Bluetooth 2.1 so everything (including Force Touch) should technically work then?

 

[haruhiko]

Yes, it's working (including Force Touch) even with the Lightning cable unplugged after the initial automatic pairing process, but I guess the battery life will be less than advertised due to Bluetooth Low Energy being not available on old machines.

While I can afford it, this thing is really expensive for what it does. Well, it comes with a Lightning cable, a built-in battery (I absolutely loathe rechargeable AA batteries unlike everybody in MacRumors who seems to like them so much), is bigger, and it's white! With a charging port! Works with my ancient Mac....

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Thanks for the review, haruhiko. It is a very good news that it's compatible with older devices. A wonderful product with FT.

 

[haruhiko]

Also, as others have reported, when the Magic Trackpad 2 is connected to the Mac via the Lightning cable, the Bluetooth is disconnected and the thing works just over the USB connection. This basically makes the new Magic Trackpad the first wired trackpad made by Apple.

 

[haruhiko]

Just tried to pair the Trackpad with my MacBook Pro Retina 2012.

It was as simple as plugging the Trackpad to the MacBook through the Lightning cable and boom it's paired with the MBP. That was quick and easy!

 

[2128506]

Confirmed: It totally works with my ancient 2008 Core 2 Duo iMac, wirelessly, with Force Touch. Just plug it in once with the Lightning cable provided, turn it on and it will be paired.

Are you on El Cap? 'cause the thing doen't work properly in Yosemite.

 

[haruhiko]

Are you on El Cap? 'cause the thing doen't work properly in Yosemite.

Yes, I'm on El Cap

 

[MacGurl111]

I was looking to get one. The price is a bit steep for a trackpad. I have the older trackpad and am now curious what the new one can do.

Anyone get the new keyboard as well? It felt flimsy at the store.

 

[rgarjr]

I was looking to get one. The price is a bit steep for a trackpad. I have the older trackpad and am now curious what the new one can do.

Anyone get the new keyboard as well? It felt flimsy at the store.

The big feature on the new trackpad is force touch. Yeah it is a little wider and has a built in battery which is cool.

 

[MacGurl111]

The big feature on the new trackpad is force touch. Yeah it is a little wider and has a built in battery which is cool.

I just saw that its wider. I like that. Maybe the angle is much better too.

 

[haruhiko]

Sometimes I just think what's the point of Force Touch if I could always do the same thing by three finger tap...

 

[dyn]

Are you on El Cap? 'cause the thing doen't work properly in Yosemite.

At least now you know why El Capitan is in the system requirements

 

[2128506]

At least now you know why El Capitan is in the system requirements

Yeah, it's called "forced upgrade". There's no sane reason for MT2 not to be supported in Yosemite, as it is still maintained OS. In fact, there was a security update just today.

 

[dyn]

If we look at it without any knowledge whatsoever then yeah we can call it that. If we do look at it with at least some knowledge we see that things aren't that simple, some things are simply too deeply integrated into an OS. Especially if it is a new kind of interface (do yourself a favour and lookup what an interface in IT actually is). Besides, there isn't that much force touch support in OS X at the moment. This is still a bit too new. I wouldn't call this a "force upgrade" at all. To me it is just a bigger and more sleek trackpad than the previous model. If you have that then do stick with that.

 

[2128506]

If we look at it without any knowledge whatsoever then yeah we can call it that. If we do look at it with at least some knowledge we see that things aren't that simple, some things are simply too deeply integrated into an OS. Especially if it is a new kind of interface (do yourself a favour and lookup what an interface in IT actually is). Besides, there isn't that much force touch support in OS X at the moment. This is still a bit too new. I wouldn't call this a "force upgrade" at all. To me it is just a bigger and more sleek trackpad than the previous model. If you have that then do stick with that.

So your point is that 10.11 requirement is because... reasons?

You might be missing the fact that MT2 works in Yosemite. It's just Trackpad Preferences not supporting it, so there's no way to set up tap to click/right click. Could they "support" it? Obviously.

 

[zone23]

I just saw that its wider. I like that. Maybe the angle is much better too.

Yes the angle is definitely better the old one hurt my wrist after a while. The FT is harder press then I thought it would be you really have.. to... FORCE.. IT? Yeah you do.

 

[dyn]

So your point is that 10.11 requirement is because... reasons?

You might be missing the fact that MT2 works in Yosemite. It's just Trackpad Preferences not supporting it, so there's no way to set up tap to click/right click. Could they "support" it? Obviously.

The question is not if they can support it, the question is if they can do it without having to rewrite or add things that would warrant a new OS X version.

A formula 1 engine can be put in a Fiat Panda without any problems. You just need to completely redesign the Panda...

 

[2128506]

The question is not if they can support it, the question is if they can do it without having to rewrite or add things that would warrant a new OS X version.

You're kinda missing the fact that Force Touch is supported on Yosemite with new MBPs just fine. Code is already there and already working.

And I'm pretty sure MT2 is identical with MBP in trackpad department.

So obviously it's a matter of plist with device IDs somewhere.

 

[dyn]

You're missing some history regarding Apple trackpads both hardware and software (trackpads have done multitouch for quite some time but not all of them were able to recognise more than 2 fingers). You're also missing the difference between the Apple trackpads and the ones from other parties (third party trackpads cannot use the built-in gestures, they require their own software for that). Just because OS X allows some gestures/force touch options doesn't mean that there is full and complete support. AirDrop is another very good example of this which is far more appropriate since the new AirDrop functionality requires BT4.0 since previous BT versions do not support it. Yet we've seen that older Macs were and still are able to use AirDrop. And lastly, you are missing the fact that Apple has always put out customised OS X builds for new hardware (i.o.w. just because Yosemite on the MB and MBP with force touch trackpads supports force touch doesn't mean OS X on any Mac supports it).

Like I said: the question isn't if they can support it (they do already to some extend), the question is if they can do this without having to rewrite or add things (in case of the new AirDrop that answer is "no" and that might very well be the same case for force touch).

So obviously it is a matter of looking at it realistically instead of wishful thinking

 

[2128506]

So obviously it is a matter of looking at it realistically instead of wishful thinking

So obviously it is a matter of reading what I've written – Yosemite supports Apple's force touch trackpad of MBP, which is the same as MT2.

I'm not very good with hacking on OS X, probably someone will do it and make MT2 device ID recognized as MBP trackpad, for example.

 

[dyn]

There you go, if you don't fully understand OS X then do not make claims as if you do. You can't just simply make a device recognised as another device. There can be quite some checks that you need to circumvent and we've seen that things like the API also has to be compatible. There have been OS X versions in the past that were tied to specific kinds of hardware.

Rich Trouton has some blogposts about how to change hardware id's of a vm in order to mimic certain Apple hardware (this is used for things like creating an OS X install image). There are some caveats and it requires editing quite some files. With SIP in place this might be troublesome (you need to disable SIP before you can even touch certain files). Then you'd have to do something similar to the trackpad and hope that there aren't any more checks, that they aren't even more thorough and that things like the API are fully compatible. Not to mention that other parts of the software won't cause any problems.

Just don't get your hopes up about this. Usually there are very good technical reasons why support is like it is.

 

[2128506]

if you don't fully understand OS X

With SIP in place this might be troublesome

I'm humbled by your deep understanding of OS X internals.

Yosemite does not have SIP.