Apple Magic Trackpad

Pros: Customizability, Ergonomics, Inertia Scrolling, Design Aesthetic, Battery Life

Cons: Can only be effectively used on a hard flat surface, Not Particularly Accurate, Price

Summary: When shopping for a mouse I have to find something that fits in my hand comfortably and can be moved around fairly easily. When I first got my mac, I noticed the magic mouse was particularly uncomfortable, especially when trying to use the multitouch gestures. My hand started cramping within 20 minutes. I knew the magic trackpad was out there, but I didn't the full extent of it's features. I was desperate to get rid of the magic mouse so I shelled out the money for the trackpad.

I'm not a fan of a trackpad on most laptops. They're often to small to effectively move around the screen and often their tracking is subpar. So I was a little skeptical of a larger trackpad for an even larger screen. But it turns out that the trackpad succeeds as a decent input device even for semi-precise actions. You won't be making masterpieces with it, but it's very effective when dealing with UI and general productivity work. It's also very comfortable, because your not always gripping on to a mouse. Gestures are very natural and easy to remember. Ironically, this trackpad has greatly increased my usage of OS X features like Expose to switch between open windows.

I would be remissed if I didn't mention the outstanding feature of this trackpad, it's customizability. I had never played around with the trackpad settings on a Macbook Pro so I didn't know the extent you can customize the gestures. When you go into the preferences your greeted with a range of options including "Tap Click" which is good for clicking on an icon without using the physical click and "Secondary Click", also known as right click in the windows world. There are loads of other gestures you can enable or disable to make the device work the way you want it to.

Design wise it naturally fits into the entire Apple brushed aluminum aesthetics of other products such as the wireless keyboard. So it looks great, especially in front of my 21.5" iMac. It features the same type of battery compartment found on the keyboard and takes two AA batteries (I'm currently using the new rechargeable batteries from Apple). It also has the same power saving functions as the keyboard, which means you'll find yourself replacing batteries a lot less.

One of the downsides of this trackpad is where it can be used. The ideal situation for it is lying on a flat hard surface like the top of a desk, otherwise you lose function of the physical click. Also, $69 is not a cheap input device. At that price point you start running close to the higher end mice market. However, seeing as though this is only $10 more than the mighty mouse, it might be a wise choice for those looking for their next input device.