ThorneLabs

A Quick Force Touch Trackpad Review


Force Touch was first revealed in the Apple Watch and now has made its way to Apple’s trackpads. I went to an Apple Store to try out Force Touch on the updated 13" retina MacBook Pro.

My first initial reaction to using the new Force Touch Trackpad was if I was really using the new Force Touch Trackpad.

I opened About This Mac to verify this laptop had the updated specifications to verify this was an updated model. It was.

I then began using the new Force Touch Trackpad while looking at it instead of the screen. The trackpad was clearly providing haptic feedback when I tried to push down on it but, visually, the trackpad was not moving. It was very bizarre to be feeling the exact same physical feedback I get on my 15" retina MacBook Pro but not seeing anything actually move. Apple really did a fantastic job making this change as unobtrusive and seamless as possible. The average user will probably not notice anything has changed.

Force Click, a feature of the Force Touch Trackpad, will take some getting used to. Force Click is activated when you apply more pressure than typically needed to active a regular click - though you can change this. It is very obvious when you activate it because the haptic engine generates more feedback than when you simply click. This feature can be mapped to a handful of native OS X functions such as opening QuickLook or bringing up the Dictionary.

What appeared to be a potentially gimmicky iteration of Apple’s trackpads has turned out to be something worthwhile and well done.

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