Review: Apple Magic Trackpad
Apple’s Magic Trackpad: an oversized MacBook Pro glass trackpad.
The above statement may either be music to your ears, or turn you off from the trackpad completely. If you’ve used the unibody MacBook’s glass trackpad, then this Magic Trackpad is basically just like it, but larger – Apple claims it has nearly 80 percent more area, which after my calculations is more or less accurate.
Size
The Magic Trackpad measures approximately 13cm x 13cm, but if we’re talking about only the surface area for finger control/swiping, it’s 13cm x 10.8cm.
In comparison, my 13″ MacBook Pro’s trackpad measures 10.4cm x 7.6cm. Taking the area of the Magic Trackpad divided by the area of the MacBook trackpad gives us ~77.6% increase in surface area. Not too shabby! The Magic Trackpad gives you a ton of surface area to use, whether it be for Photoshop, Chinese hand-writing, gestures, or simply every day use.
Apple Magic Trackpad
Apple update adds inertial scrolling and three-finger drag gesture to MacBooks
Finally, inertial scrolling has come to our trackpads on older MacBooks via Magic Trackpad and Multi-Touch Trackpad Update 1.0. The 79MB update requires a restart but now my mid-2009 13″ MacBook Pro has inertial (momentum-based) scrolling. The faster you flick, the further you scroll. Previously I had a 3rd party app installed but this official update adds much smoother inertial scrolling.
I haven’t figured out how to use the 3-finger gesture for window dragging yet, nor did I see a new option in the Trackpad prefpane.
What’s more magical than the Magic Trackpad?
The Apple Battery Charger! LOL
Available now for only HK$ 218 from the Apple Store and comes with 6 batteries. (link)
Now there’s a better, more environmentally friendly way to power your wireless keyboard, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad or just about anything that requires AA batteries. The Apple Battery Charger kit comes with a sleek, compact charger and six high-performance AA NiMH batteries that are ready to use straight out of the box. The reusable batteries are exceptional at holding a charge and last for up to 10 years. Which means you can finally break the cycle of buying and disposing of those toxic, single-use alkaline batteries.
Magic Trackpad is HK$ 518. (link)
The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. It uses the same Multi-Touch technology you love on the MacBook Pro. And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen. Swiping through pages online feels just like flipping through pages in a book or magazine. And inertial scrolling makes moving up and down a page more natural than ever. Magic Trackpad connects to your Mac via Bluetooth wireless technology. Use it in place of a mouse or in conjunction with one.