I seem to be in the minority, but I honestly don't get how people can develop productively on a laptop. The lack of full size keyboard, screen real estate, and uncomfortable touchpad compared to a mouse just feels horrible to me.
I’ve grown to hate using a mouse, and love the MacBook trackpad. Having your hands so close to both keyboard and trackpad means less travel time between.
It really helps if you set up your environment to mostly not need accurate clicks. For example, avoid needing to grab window title bars or corners, use keyboard-driven window managers. Use keyboard commands instead of clicking buttons. When I last used a Thinkpad, the only time I had to aim at all was clicking links on web pages. I still used the trackpoint to switch active window, but it was a "shove toward upper right", not aiming the pointer at anything (I liked the spatial aspect of it, compared to keybindings).
I also had it configured to move significantly faster on strong input, and slow down with gentle input.
The way I have my trackpoint set up (low sensitivity, no acceleration) makes it more accurate than trackpad, even. No acceleration means it always behaves extremely predictably; for me it's most useful when typing in forms and clicking around in them. It's extremely accurate and useful when set up properly. You can make tons of fine, precise movements and clicks when filling out documents and forms without even needing to move your hands from the keyboard.
Low sensitivity and no acceleration means it takes a very long time to move from one side of screen to the other. I guess I really don't fill in many forms where I can't tab between fields. But many of my habits also predate mainstream availability of GUIs...
Force yourself to use it exclusively for a while, no cheating. For better (it's great) AND worse (you have fewer options for laptops), there's no going back after that. I love it and even use Trackpoint with my desktop computer.
I used a couple variations for about 2 years - Thinkpads with a red trackpoint thingy. never liked them. Continually felt unnatural and clunky. Mac trackpad was a game changer for me.
Are there any hot-swappaple mechanical keyboards with a trackpoint? The only mechanical keyboard with a trackpoint I can find is the Tex Yoda II, which isn't hot-swappaple, and is also very expensive.
True, but in terms of development, the main use of mouse is really selecting text for copy and paste (unless you are hardcore vim user), and scrolling.
Id be impressed if the speed at which you can select text accurately is higher on the trackpad than a mouse. I have seen lots of developers at work on their macbooks do the standard select text->copy->paste, and everyone is way slower at this then people who use mouse.
Maybe its my FPS gaming days that make me better at this, but then again, nobody really plays FPS seriously using trackpads
Not a gamer - haven't 'gamed' since pitfall - so no experience with mouse vs trackpad in that respect.
What seems missing from all this is the notion of gestures. The two finger scroll, single finger pointer move, pinch/zoom, etc - the trackpad is flexible in ways a trackpoint thing just can't be.
"I have seen lots of developers at work on their macbooks do the standard select text->copy->paste, and everyone is way slower at this then people who use mouse."
Not really sure what you're getting at. Selecting with a... trackpoint can be faster than using a mouse? Maybe, for some people. I'm constantly surprised by mouse-using/GUI people who always do so much more with a mouse than you need to. But I'm not sure that takes away any argument from the mac trackpad.
Pretty sure they're saying that mouse accuracy trumps trackpad for cut/paste operations.
> What seems missing from all this is the notion of gestures. The two finger scroll, single finger pointer move, pinch/zoom, etc - the trackpad is flexible in ways a trackpoint thing just can't be.
Yeah, these are great. You can get the best of both worlds on a Magic Mouse, though.
Personally I do alright with a trackpad, but I also lean heavily on the keyboard regardless of auxiliary input devices. In particular, I don't do pointer-heavy workloads like e.g. image editing.
I prefer an (Apple) trackpad to a mouse to the point where I even have one now at my desk setup. I've used BetterTouchTool to configure custom gestures like three-finger swipe to open new tab/close window, rotate left/right to switch tabs etc.
The MacBook desktop environment combined with the trackpad (and gestures) are a big contributor to being productive in that context (though it also sucks so bad in some scenarios).
Swipe left, swipe right, terminal, editor, browser, etc.
Swipe up, see all open windows.
Before long I am using a single laptop monitor about as effectively as a multi monitor desktop setup.
In general though, companies tend to issue laptops. So even if you have a desktop setup with multi monitors, keyboard, mouse (which I do and use daily), it will be backed by a laptop on a dock.
Personally, I like being able to work out and about. I work from cafes, planes, poolsides, my couch, my bed. That style of work limits your hardware choices
To the last point, I have a tiny Bluetooth mouse. Not much bigger than the single AAA battery that powers it. I don't know how I managed to use laptops without one before. (Usually with a full-sized wired mouse, come to think.) I also prefer a traditional keyboard and large screens and so I normally use a desktop. But if you need portable, you need portable.
