New Dell XPS 13 Plus has non-delineated trackpad.

[Cmaier]

Dell XPS 13 Plus hands-on: is that... a touch bar?

It’s a new era of XPS.

www.theverge.com

I find the trackpad here very interesting - I could see apple doing this (making the trackpad non-delineated) because Apple always likes going for the clean look.

 

[jbailey]

It also has a Touch Bar which is fascinating given the near universal hatred of Apple's implementation by the tech press. The Verge hands on of course grades it on their normal not-Apple curve.

The touch keys were responsive in my brief testing time, and I was never worried about accidentally bumping them like I always am with the Touch Bar on older MacBook Pros.

In my 2 years of using a MBP with a Touch Bar I was never worried about accidentally bumping it either but apparently it was a problem for some tech writers.

 

[Cmaier]

It also has a Touch Bar which is fascinating given the near universal hatred of Apple's implementation by the tech press. The Verge hands on of course grades it on their normal not-Apple curve.



In my 2 years of using a MBP with a Touch Bar I was never worried about accidentally bumping it either but apparently it was a problem for some tech writers.

I *always* accidentally brushed the touchbar. I hate the damned thing.

 

[Joe]

I purposely avoided the MBPs with the touch bar.

 

[jbailey]

I *always* accidentally brushed the touchbar. I hate the damned thing.

Really? Are you a touch typist? Mostly the annoyance for me is that the damn display was never on when I wanted to use it—which was almost never.

 

[Cmaier]

Really? Are you a touch typist? Mostly the annoyance for me is that the damn display was never on when I wanted to use it—which was almost never.

yep, touch typist. I type around 90wpm, and whenever I'd go for the number/punctuation keys, and sometimes just when I was shifting hand positions, my fingers would brush the Touch Bar and mute/unmute, invoke siri, etc. Hate hate hate hate the Touch Bar.

 

[Renzatic]

Hey, you know those two things Apple did that everyone really hated? Let's do that!

 

[Pumbaa]

Dell XPS 13 Plus hands-on: is that... a touch bar?

It’s a new era of XPS.

www.theverge.com

I find the trackpad here very interesting - I could see apple doing this (making the trackpad non-delineated) because Apple always likes going for the clean look.

Clean look, sure, but not at the cost of not knowing where you can and can’t click.

Kind of like reintroducing the puck mouse.

 

[Renzatic]

Clean look, sure, but not at the cost of not knowing where you can and can’t click.

I could deal with that quite easily, provided the actual touchpad has a large enough surface to work with.

Though with Dell being Dell, I can't help but wonder if the actual trackpad is fairly tiny, and offset to the left somewhere.

 

[Cmaier]

I could deal with that quite easily, provided the actual touchpad has a large enough surface to work with.

Though with Dell being Dell, I can't help but wonder if the actual trackpad is fairly tiny, and offset to the left somewhere.

That was my thought - the mac touchpad is very big, so I don’t think there would be much of a problem with not finding the edge. Heck, they could even use haptics to make it feel like there is an edge (I mean, I never *look* at the trackpad when I’m using at it. The edges are tactile to me, not physical).

 

[DT]

I hear that Dell is making a non-delineated keyboard without any markings ...

That trackpad implementation __is__ pretty sexy, hahaha, I wonder if there's any noise inside Apple, i.e., "WHY THE HELL DIDN'T WE DO THIS FIRST??"

 

[Thomas Veil]

There is such a thing as too minimalist. I realize it's lit, but looking at the picture, the Touch Bar icons look so small and faint that I think I'd be double-checking which button I'm hitting every time I use it.

As far as the track pad goes...yeah, you can keep that. What's next? A totally featureless panel that depends on touch typists "knowing" where the keys are supposed to be?

 

[Renzatic]

That was my thought - the mac touchpad is very big, so I don’t think there would be much of a problem with not finding the edge. Heck, they could even use haptics to make it feel like there is an edge (I mean, I never *look* at the trackpad when I’m using at it. The edges are tactile to me, not physical).

After typing the above, I went and looked up a few shots of the most recent XPS models. The 15 inch sports a fairly substantial trackpad, almost, but not quite as large as what you'd get on a standard Macbook.

So unless they made some incredibly bad decisions during the design process, this shouldn't be much of a concern.

...but I'm still not too keen on losing my function keys. I thought it was a terrible idea when Apple nixed them for the Touchbar, and think it's a terrible idea now.

There is such a thing as too minimalist. I realize it's lit, but looking at the picture, the Touch Bar icons look so small and faint that I think I'd be double-checking which button I'm hitting every time I use it.

It looks much better on the grey models. As seen here...

CES 2022: Dell boosts XPS to 28 watts for new look XPS 13 Plus

Keyboard on the new laptop ditches function keys for a capacitive row, increases the keycap sizes, and decides users don't need to know where the trackpad is.

www.zdnet.com

I have to admit, I'm intrigued...

 

[Yoused]

If only they put a thermocouple on top of the CPU to capture the waste heat, convert it to mW and cycle it back into the system. If it is an Intel CPU, they could probably power the house on that.

 

[chengengaun]

I wonder if it makes sense to make most of the surface 'south of the keyboard' a giant trackpad, then give users the option to delineate the active tracking area. The increased surface area should be useful when working with large external displays.

In my 2 years of using a MBP with a Touch Bar I was never worried about accidentally bumping it either but apparently it was a problem for some tech writers.

I used to lock the screen or trigger Siri by accident rather frequently; I am a touch typist as well.

 

[User.45]

After typing the above, I went and looked up a few shots of the most recent XPS models. The 15 inch sports a fairly substantial trackpad, almost, but not quite as large as what you'd get on a standard Macbook.

So unless they made some incredibly bad decisions during the design process, this shouldn't be much of a concern.

...but I'm still not too keen on losing my function keys. I thought it was a terrible idea when Apple nixed them for the Touchbar, and think it's a terrible idea now.



It looks much better on the grey models. As seen here...

CES 2022: Dell boosts XPS to 28 watts for new look XPS 13 Plus

Keyboard on the new laptop ditches function keys for a capacitive row, increases the keycap sizes, and decides users don't need to know where the trackpad is.

www.zdnet.com

I have to admit, I'm intrigued...

Touch function keys were on my HP Laptop like 15 years ago. Not too novel or practical. That keyboard entire laptop seems like a tactile nightmare.

 

[Yoused]

I wonder if it makes sense to make most of the surface 'south of the keyboard' a giant trackpad, then give users the option to delineate the active tracking area. The increased surface area should be useful when working with large external displays.

What would make sense in that case would be to have a starting square outside of which touches would not be registered but would allow you to track past its edges once touching inside it.

 

[AG_PhamD]

Good riddence to the Apple Touch Bar. I rarely actually use it except to do things like adjust volume and screen brightness. I always accidentally hit it too.

I have the 2018 15” MBP, so it has the trifecta of bad Touch Bar, atrocious butterfly keyboard, and lack of physical escape button. Honestly it’s my least favorite Mac I’ve ever owned in nearly 20 years of being a Mac user.

 

[Eric]

Good riddence to the Apple Touch Bar. I rarely actually use it except to do things like adjust volume and screen brightness. I always accidentally hit it too.

I have the 2018 15” MBP, so it has the trifecta of bad Touch Bar, atrocious butterfly keyboard, and lack of physical escape button. Honestly it’s my least favorite Mac I’ve ever owned in nearly 20 years of being a Mac user.

I know I'm in the minority but I really like it, if you're savvy with hotkeys I'm sure it's not a problem but I love mapping custom functions to it and the basics (volume, screencap and brightness) are easily accessible as well.

 

[SuperMatt]

I’m 50-50 on the Touch Bar. I do like it for quickly accessing emoji and some cool features in other apps, but having to tap twice to access volume control? Not so much. I actually just use the menu bar controls for volume now; I find it more convenient than the Touch Bar.