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It's Time For Laptop Companies To Switch To Precision Touchpad (arstechnica.com)
A new Windows 10 insider build (version 14946) comes with a new interface for configuring touchpad gestures. In the recent months, Microsoft has also improved the detection of two-finger gestures and clicking on Windows 10, and also added new four-finger gestures. These are welcome changes, and something that many would find useful. Except they won't because their computers likely don't comply with Precision Touchpad spec. ArsTechnica has an opinion piece today in which journalist Peter Bright is calling on all the OEMs to do the needful changes moving forward. From the article: Precision Touchpad made its debut with Windows 8. Co-developed between Microsoft and touchpad company Synaptics, the spec changed how Windows works with touchpads. Traditionally, touchpads masqueraded to Windows as essentially USB- or PS/2-connected mice -- simple two-dimension, single-input devices. Features such as multitouch and gestures were handled by a combination of the touchpad firmware and proprietary drivers. This meant that Windows itself had no ability to add new gestures or refine the finger-detection algorithms; it was all an opaque feature of the third-party drivers. With Precision Touchpad, the raw touchpad input is exposed to Windows itself, allowing the operating system to choose how it handles the complex multi-finger inputs. The gestures, the disambiguation of taps and swipes -- these are all now performed by Windows, not a third-party driver. Unfortunately, many PC OEMs haven't been equipping their laptops with Precision Touchpads. As such, they can't take advantage of the new Windows capabilities. As far as we can tell, it would normally be straightforward for an OEM to make the switch; touchpads from Synaptics, for example, can work as both Precision Touchpads and "legacy" mouse-emulating touchpads that use the Synaptics driver. It's just up to the OEM to pick one option or the other.
Honestly, I have a $150 chromebook that has a trackpad that is 100x better than all 3 of my $1k+ Windows laptops. Not having proper support in Windows has driven a lot of that, so it's Microsoft's fault. But also, the drivers that implemented these gestures made by the touchpad companies sucked.
This is just another example that if you leave it to OEMs, they basically suck at everything. Microsoft, Google, etc are all learning that they need to drive the bus here, because otherwise the OEMs find ways to cut costs, even on their highest end laptops, and as a result we are getting a lot better hardware here.
When I used windows enabled laptops I was never able to use a touchpad or clit, I just couldn't. I always carry a mouse with me. Then I changed to a MacBook and I learned to use their touchpad. I though it was of necessity that I learned, but recently I had to use a Windows laptop touchpad and figured out that the problem wasn't me but the touchpads. Will this make Windows laptop Touchpads similar to Apple's?
So basically, stop buying cheap ass bargin basement Windows laptops and get a Mac? Thats what you're saying?
I have a lenovo that cost more than my MBP (which was maxed out at the time of purchase in 2012), the lenovo is only a year old, and its trackpad is complete and utter crap. Blow on it the wrong way and it jumps around, god forbid you touch it by accident or rest your palm on it while typing.
It is so completely unusable it blows me away that other people haven't returned these things, its my work laptop so it sits on my desk ... closed ... while I use my 4 year old MBP that has hardware that isn't crap. Yes, I paid a overpriced premium for it, but it cost less than the Lenovo and is still a better machine even with 3 years of age on it.
Yes, I'm a fanboy of MacBook Pros. Show me a laptop that the ENTIRE PACKAGE is of that level of quality and I'll switch in an instant, but you're going to have a hard time beating the quality (not impossible, but hard) and you're not going to beat the OS by subjecting me to Windows 10 or Linux and buggy video drivers/sleep/sound/(Whatever This Weeks Issue Update Is That Has Half The Devs That Swear By Linux Running Around My Office Without Functioning Machines), so its pretty much a non-starter
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Glad to see someone's already covered Fingerworks. I'm still sore at Apple, though, for shutting them down and sitting on so much of their gestural vocabulary. My TouchStream keyboard let my wrist RSI heal, and I still miss it (it eventually failed after a number of years). If I could buy another, with support, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I see a lot of people here complaining that "trackpads suck" and "gestures suck" and "tapping sucks", because (apparently) their trackpads suck. I'm totally happy with my Macbook Pro's trackpad, with one push-to-click surface, which I only use for dragging; taps for everything else. But, yes, using the trackpad on an HP laptop was physically painful.
Fingerworks did a remarkable job of getting gestural and zero-force input right. Apple didn't completely ruin it when they bought out the technology. It would take a lot to independently engineer a system that works as well, but if anybody has the resources to do it, it's probably Microsoft.