Hands on with Apple’s Magic Trackpad

Apple’s Magic Trackpad is a new $69 pointing device that can replace (or supplement) your mouse. Apple vice president of hardware marketing David Moody told us that lots of people at Apple are using the Magic Trackpad in addition to their mouse, but that others prefer to use it all by itself.

The Magic Trackpad is the same height and angle of inclination as the Apple Wireless Keyboard, making them a good fit in terms of size and style.

The Magic Trackpad, like the Apple Wireless Keyboard, comes preinstalled with two AA batteries. Apple will separately offer a battery charger with six rechargeable AA batteries—two for the keyboard, two for the trackpad, and two to keep in the charger at the ready.

The new Magic Trackpad offers all the features you get in a MacBook trackpad, including multi-finger gestures such as two-finger scrolling and four-finger Exposé. Since roughly two-thirds of the Macs sold are laptops, even most desktop Mac users will be familiar with the gestures. (You’ll need to run a software update before your desktop Mac provides you with the Trackpad control panel previously seen only on laptops.)

The bottom of the Magic Trackpad box features a handy list of the different finger gestures you can perform on the device.

Despite the Magic Trackpad’s thinness and its support for the same tap-to-click feature as MacBook trackpads, you can also click by pressing down. The trackpad surface itself doesn’t depress, though–instead, when you press on the trackpad, the force from the surface it’s sitting on will depress the two round feet at the trackpad’s base. That’s what registers a click.