Results on my #survey about trackpad tap to click.
114 responded.
65% enable tap to click and love it!
29% disable tap to click.
6% had tap to click enabled and hate it!
So about two thirds prefer tap to click.
Personally I would argue that it should be off by default, but I belong to the last group. I was finding that I was having a lot of issues with my trackpad and most went away when I changed the setting. I still have an issue at times that clicking sometimes leads to right clicking.
I have been using trackpoints for years, so I guess I am rather used to an experience with clear button clicks.
@jon To me, it's sort of like touch screens. With a touch screen you end up not actually seeing what you click because by its very nature you are covering it, and with trackpads you can carefully navigate to what you want to click, but because you now have to click on your aiming-device, you lose some precision.
Indeed. That is the reason why, IMHO, touching should not click. Only clicking should. Kind of like moving a mouse does not click, it just moves the cursor. Clicking requires clicking a button.
Now it is clear that most of those that took the survey do not find this a problem. Maybe it is a question of how you sit with your computer, angle and size of fingers, etc.
@jon@kly
I'm sure the quality of the trackpad makes a difference (how good it is at figuring out what the user intended) as well as what people grew up with.
Personally, I find it works perfectly fine on my Macbook, but needed to turn it off on every PC I've ever used - but the one on my Mac is more like a hidden button under the trackpad. I can feel the difference between touching and clicking.
For me the Mac was just as bad or even worse. The multi layer trackpad, made it really hard. Soft click, hard click. I would click and it did not work. So I would click harder, but that is another function. This is the opposite of the simplicity that Apple would stand for in the past. Now, some of that simplicity was too much for me, that that is question of preference. I prefer separate buttons to overloaded buttons.
@jon@kly
Like I said, it's a combination of quality and what you grew up with. The one on my Mac works fo me. Doesn't mean it has to work for you.
However, your description also makes me suspect we are talking about different generations. Mine only has two levels - move and click. There is no clicking harder.
I think the Magic Pad technology got introduced back in 2014 or so. It has features like this:
"Click: Press anywhere on the trackpad. Or enable “Tap to click” in Trackpad preferences,
and simply tap.
Force click: Press firmly until you feel a deeper click. You can force click to look up more
information—on a word to see its definition, on an address to see a preview in Maps, and more. "
So in my case, I was struggling with having the right level of click, so I would click harder to make sure it worked, but then I force clicked. After reading the documentation, it got easier, but I still did not like it.
Now, if you would enable tap to click as well, you would have three levels of clicking potentially, although tap to click and click are normally the same thing.
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