This is the biggest waste of words next to a “Trump-said” article.
Laptop makers once put pop-out mice on laptops. They were horrible. Toting a wired mouse around was a pain in the ass too. There’s a reason touchpads took over. It doesn’t mean people don’t know how to work a computer.
And just because a laptop has a trackpad doesn’t mean people don’t use them with their laptops. Our office is 90% Macbook pro and of those users only 10% use a trackpad (the external bluetooth one at that, not even the built in one)
As of 2024, Apple sells just one computer with a mouse included
Apple sells 0 mice with 90% of their computers, the iMac is the only model that comes with any external peripherals besides a charger. The Mac mini has always been a “bring your own keyboard and mouse” type device, and the Mac Pro/Studio are for people who probably already have a keyboard and mouse.
I still use a mouse with my laptops. The button-less track pads are junk. Most programs are not optimized for touchscreen use and I don’t want fingerprints all over my screen anyways. The Thinkpad trackpoints are OK, but they are not usable in CAD software that needs 3 buttons and a scroll wheel to navigate.
I use a MacBook Pro at work, and supposedly it has a fantastic touchpad, yet I use a mouse when I can. I don’t even do CAD, I just don’t like trackpads. I use a Logitech Master MX 3 at work, which has two scroll wheels, back/forward buttons, and a thumb button, and it works well. At home, I have the Triathlon, which I actually prefer because I seem to constantly hit the side scroll wheel on accident.
I love my personal ThinkPad with a TrackPoint though. It’s great for pretty much everything except CAD. There are three buttons, so it can scroll, it’s just awkward to switch between scrolling and rotating. When I mess with modeling, it’s on my desktop with a proper mouse anyway.
FreeCAD has a navigation method specifically for trackpads
The mouse was never the best tool for a lot of computing jobs, it was just what caught on.
I still primarily use my computers as a desktop, and I don’t like it when software requires me to reach over to my pointing device. When it does, the majority of the time I reach for a trackball which is far more comfortable.
After dabbling with tiling windows managers in Linux some years ago, I came to realize that pointing devices are often the slow way to do things.
The main thing I want a pointing device for these days is for scrolling through documents and web pages, and the vast majority of mice are just bad at that. Precision scrolling is only available on a handful of mice, and its niche enough that consistent software implementation is just not a thing.
I’ll still keep a mouse on hand for playing the occasional video game that works better with one, but that’s not really how I like to play games usually.
Back in something like 2003 the computer I had at work had a trackball instead of a mouse. I hated it, until I finally replaced it with mouse and found myself really missing my trackball. Still use them 20+ years later.
My wife still only uses Logitech track ball mice on her desktop. On the rare occasion I need to use her oc for something, it’s always an interesting time haha. Only takes about 10 seconds to be ‘calibrared’ to it now.
I’m also using a trackball, it was Logitech ones and now a Sanwa Gravi
I’ve been on a Penny & Giles for over 10 years. Couldn’t compute without it.
nice one :)
I started with Logitech, now I use Elecom.
Been using the Kensington Expert Wireless a couple of years now.
I’m too sensitive for a trackpad. I hate touchscreens.
Look, early Android phones had a tiny trackballs, some buttons and even physical keyboard.
Who wants a stylus?
👀
I miss the physical keyboard of my first phone. It was so cool! I filled flipped out open and turned out horizontal to thumb type.
It was really hard moving to a virtual keyboard. Swype helps but it also make a ton of mistakes too.
My go to smartphone keyboard is MessagEase. A few larger buttons instead of many small. You can get quite fast on it, and larger buttons means fewer mistakes.
Sir, this is Lemmy.
“We’ve forgotten how to use computers - The hex keypad is sorely missed”
Remember (if you can) the classic drag-and-drop: You’d mouse over to a file or a folder, click to slide the icon to the trash, then release to drop it in.
Did anyone everr do that though ?
