Of Mice and Me

I feared the track­pad. I am not the biggest fan of the track­pad. I gather that my name­sake, the CTO at Syn­aptics is respons­ible for some of the biggest break­throughs as the track­pad gained laptop cred dur­ing the 1990’s and so I feel a little loy­alty if only by asso­ci­ation. How­ever, my favour­ite means of input is the Track­Point — the little red nubby (that becomes less red real fast) that the IBM Think­Pad is most closely asso­ci­ated with. This is a very per­sonal area. I know many users that could just not get used to using a single fin­ger on an ultra-sensitive tiny joy­stick. The cursor and they could not become friends with the Track­Point in the equa­tion. Ran­dom sur­vey indic­ates most people still carry a mouse with them and con­nect it — this is the case for Track­Point as well as track­pad users. I am glan­cing around the cof­fee shop right now and frankly I am the only one rely­ing on the built in track­ing device. There’s a lot of users with big mice and small mice, but mice non­ethe­less. There is even a user care­fully bal­an­cing one on the arm of an easy chair — that can’t pos­sibly be com­fort­able.
With apo­lo­gies to Douglas Engle­bart, I can­not go back to the mouse. Not for the laptop, and only grudgingly for the desktop. I gave the mouse another try for the last week as I wasn’t con­vinced that the Track­Pad was hack­ing it. Con­clu­sion, the mouse is even more for­eign to me now. I used a nice little Apple Mighty Mouse. Lots of sur­faces to asso­ci­ate with dif­fer­ent out­comes, but it just doesn’t feel right. There was a time when it did. I used a nice Microsoft laser mouse for the first few weeks with the first Think­Pad I used. And then I got used to the Track­Point. Very used to the Track­Point. Heresy of her­es­ies, I actu­ally pre­ferred using it for work in Illus­trator and Pho­toshop, com­pound­ing the fact that I was using these applic­a­tions on a Windows-based machine. My first Apple Port­able was the ven­er­able box from 1989? that had a track­ball as input device. I liked the TrackBall…and still do. It fits my hand and lets me use my fin­ger­tips with per­cision. My thumb and/or pinky drop down and con­trol the click­ing sur­face. Even Len­ovo (just to keep it cur­rent IBM actu­ally made the choice) offers all but the small X series with both the Track­Point and a Track­Pad.
Maybe my choice of Point-Pad-Ball is because I don’t touch type. I am proud of the fact that I have a very rapid rate using about 4 digits, I know it doesn’t rival you speed demon TT’s, and that’s prob­ably the major­ity these days. Its me, I don’t touch­type and that may impact on input device of choice. Maybe the Track­Point gets in the way of folks hav­ing to sur­render a digit (but ulti­mately a full hand) to nav­ig­a­tion.
When I got a Twen­ti­eth Anniversary Macin­tosh in 1997, it came with a beau­ti­ful leather wrapped key­board on a tether which I imme­di­ately lengthened. In the middle of the palm rest was a decent sized track­pad for input. Apple didn’t ship a mouse with this piece of art. In fact, you could remove the track­pad out of the key­board and Apple included a leather piece to put in the miss­ing space. The track­pad could then be used sep­ar­ately and had its own cord. It was all very neat. This factor alone con­vinced my Mother that she wanted one of these as well.
At that time I found the track­pad so, so. It wasn’t my chosen means of input, but the 20th Anniversary wasn’t my main machine, so occa­sional use was ok.
Input devices have come a long way since then and our haptic trans­ition to gesture-based induct­ive sens­ing has cre­ated the usual iFrenzy. Its prob­ably the future and try­ing pinch­ing and the like on an iTouch or iPhone is very cool. Not sure its for me, but haven’t indulged in such toys — yet. But what I can con­clude is that I am no longer a mouse kida guy. I prob­ably will always mark the Track­Point my favour­ite, but back to the Track­Pad.
The Power­Book 12inch has a tiny track­pad. Its far more sens­it­ive and dis­crete than the track­pads on my TAM or on my Power­Book 540c. I have installed <a href=“http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/” target=“_blank>SideTrack to enable scrolling on the edge of the pad (des­pite their warn­ing I use it under Leo­pard no wor­ries). The middle but­ton on the Think­Pad had wed­ded me to that func­tion. In hon­esty, Apple’s track­pads and those of other man­u­fac­tur­ers have improved much even in these past few years. To the extent that I find myself admit­ting that I am not dis­sat­is­fied with the little track­pad, but its just not quite the Track­Point — for me at least.