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I really, really hated the trackpad on my Wind. Actually, I thought I hated all trackpads until I bought my Mac and realized that the other ones were just too small  (that’s not Mac-specific gushing, I just don’t know any other models off-hand with gigantic trackpads). The trackpad on the MacBook Pro is so big it actually dwarfs my iPhone 2G’s screen.

I own a Logitech VX Nano that I bought to use with my Wind, and I kept it around because I thought I’d need it for the MBP. However, I’ve found that between the size of the trackpad and the multi-touch gestures for alt tabbing and right-clicking (it does exist on the Mac after all!), I really don’t need a mouse for activities outside of gaming. There has been one downside to the trackpad usage, though, and it took me two whole months to realize there was a ridiculously simple solution.

One of the ‘new features’ of the 2008 aluminum MacBook lineup was the new buttonless trackpad. It works a lot like the Blackberry Storm where the whole touch surface is the button. Unfortunately, due to my lack of experience with previous trackpad setups, my first instinct was to navigate and click the trackpad with my pointing finger. It made sense to me, but it was also really, really tiring. The MBP’s trackpad is a button, but it has a fair amount of resistance unless you click from the lowest point — preferably in the corner.

After a couple of hours of photo editing and surfing, my finger would get worn out and I eventually began wondering how other users coped with “trackpad fatigue”. Then earlier this week it dawned on me that there was a reason the lower portion of the trackpad was clickable, but not touch-sensitive (the cursor won’t move at all if you touch along the bottom). That’s where my bloody thumb is supposed to go while I navigate with another finger. Then I looked at all of the other trackpads on all of the other laptops I’d ever seen where the buttons were positioned right along the bottom. Ohhh.

Ever since that pathetically obvious realization, I’ve been using the trackpad as it was probably designed. Looking back on it now, it’s funny how differently I approached the trackpad because it was just one gigantic clicking slate. If there was some sort of obvious dividing line or a separate physical button, I would probably have picked up on the thumb-and-finger usage a lot faster.

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