Friday, July 30, 2010

Magic Trackpad - the missing feature

The Magic Trackpad is the product I've been waiting for Apple to release since the first Mac Mini came out lo those many moons ago.

I bought a mini almost immediately after they came out to use as an HTPC, and it's served that role very well indeed. The only drawback is that we've had to use a wireless mouse to use the thing. That's less than a couch-friendly solution. We have a table between our two chairs in the living room, but that means that if you're in the right seat, you have to mouse with your left hand. Not very convenient.

The Magic Trackpad solves all of that, since it doesn't need to sit on an actual surface in order to work (unless you want to actually make the internal button click - then you must push the pad downwards on its feet. But the trackpad can work just fine without ever having to be clicked physically).

But now the only problem is that the trackpad is a separate unit from the keyboard.

If you set the trackpad next to the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard, it's obvious that they were designed to sit next to each other. It's only natural that you'd want to actually attach them together so that you could pass them back and forth on the couch as a single unit.

So why didn't Apple include some sort of mechanism to do exactly that?

There are some objections that need to be overcome. First, when the two are side by side, the battery door of one of them will sit right on the power button of the other one. So the two would need to be able to be routinely separated in case you needed to push the power button and to change the batteries.

So duct tape and rulers aren't going to be a 100% solution.

No, this is going to require some sort of rail and groove setup to allow the trackpad to slide into place, yet still be able to be slid off to change the batteries.

I look forward to multiple postings on There, I Fixed It covering this topic.

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