Apple Magic Trackpad

Apple 59.00

Once again Apple has surprised us - without even trying this device we all know, just by looking at it, what it will be able to do. It's immediately obvious how to use it.


The only questions we may have are rather with respect to spending out £59 on a peripheral that no one was using up until now. It'll need to find its niche.

The Pad range: the anti-PCs

The Apple strategy is impressive in terms of its implacability. While the PC world has been involved in in-fighting for years to develop "raw performance", with processing being sectioned off for GPU treatment and CPUs with ever-more cores, Apple is doing the exact opposite on its Pad range. They have gone back to the basics of today's digital experience.


95% of users know virtually nothing about the spec of their computer and they, frankly, don't give a damn! Knowing this is no use to them in their everyday digital experience.

The Pad range responds to the simplest daily requirements very well (internet, email, social networks, photos, video, gaming). This Magic Pad is part of the same logic. It has been designed to replace the mouse. This giant Pad is perfect for messaging, for sorting through photos, rotating them and zooming in on more detail. It's all you need to start and control a film - especially from your couch, as it has a range of 10 metres, though you do need to configure it on your Mac to be able to click just by tapping it - or check on a friend's online status.

Like the iPad however, the Trackpad won't be enough for certain other "expert" tasks. For most video games for example. Or for retouching a photo in detail, or editing a video. For all these usages, nothing yet measures up to a really precise mouse, such as the G500.

In practice

It's no surprise (we're talking Apple quality here) to see that the finish and the trackpad surface are really excellent. It is also robust and won't suffer from knocks or falls. Nor do the batteries dislodge easily: two batteries are used to power it (Apple is advertising its rechargeable batteries on the Magic Trackpad page...) and have been intelligently placed in the base used to raise the pad.

We do however differ from most of the opinion published so far in our analysis of its responsiveness. We have two Trackpads and both show latency on usage. There's a slight difference (a few tenths of a millisecond which you can even see on the video here, filmed at 30 fps or one image every 33 ms) between movements on the pad and what appears on screen - probably due to the Bluetooth link. Nothing too serious then, but certainly not perfect. Fussy users will of course notice it and the delay could even become annoying.