Comment by jillesvangurp

I actually hooked up my magic trackpad to Linux at some point because I got so frustrated with the crappy touchpad on my Samsung laptop. I also have a logitech wireless mouse for it. Anything is better than that crappy touchpad.

The point is that Apple's magic trackpad actually works great on Linux too. Smooth, responsive. accurate, multi touch and gestures, and all the rest. Just works. More or less exactly like it does on a mac. Too bad the blueooth stack on Linux is a bit unstable. Lots of issues with stuff randomly not connecting. Which of course isn't great with a trackpad.

The issue is that trackpads from other manufacturers just seem to be universally really, really bad in comparison to Apple's hardware. Particularly anything produced by Synaptics that I've had the displeasure of using is just mediocre shit in comparison. And they seem to dominate the market. It seems like they just gave up even trying to pretend to compete. If you see somebody using a wireless mouse, 9 out of 10 times they aren't using a mac. I work in a lot of co-working spaces. Lots of macs. Almost exclusively being used without a mouse. Just not a thing. The trackpad that comes with it is fine. If you see somebody using a mouse, it's usually with a windows/linux laptop.

That Samsung laptop was something I used in between two macs. My old intel mac died weeks before the M1 was supposed to come out. I used it for about half a year. I still have it and it runs Manjaro. From a software point of view, I can do anything I need to do on it that I would normally use a mac for and I'm actually completely fine with using it for work.

But the reason I went back to the mac is the hardware. Intel/AMD laptops are so completely miserably dreadful these days. Apple makes great hardware. Great screens, keyboard, trackpads, CPUs, etc. You always end up compromising on at least a few of these. It will have a great CPU but a shit screen. Or it will be overheating all the time and have a loud fan. Or weigh 10 kilos. Or have a lot of blinking leds and a fugly formfactor. It's always something.

I have considered putting Linux on my mac a few times. I'm pretty sure I could kind of make that work but the thing is that mac OS works well enough and I have no technical need to switch. And I can't really justify spending a lot of time trying to get things like GPUs. sound, touchId sensors, etc. to work. And I would expect having issues with all of that.

But in a pinch, I can live with a decent Linux laptop. I'd probably go for something a bit more premium if I had to go there these days. But Arch/Manjaro are great and do everything I need and I vastly prefer that over Windows.