Ever since I started using the MacBook Pro my right wrist has been hurting. I suspected the butterfly keyboard first, but nope that’s not the culprit (in fact, the keyboard’s kind of good … it felt odd initially, not having much travel, but I quickly got used to it). I realized later that the problem must be the trackpad. You see, unlike with Windows I use the trackpad heavily here as the macOS has many useful gestures and although I try to distribute it evenly between my left and right hands the right is what usually does the work.
I thought of getting a regular external mouse first, but there’d be no fun in that. Then I seriously considered getting the Magic Mouse 2 and even went to the Apple shop to try it out … but boy it’s small! I can’t imagine how I would be able to use that. And finally, today, after a lot of thinking and delay I went for the Magic Trackpad 2. Yup, it’s not cheap, nearly double the price of the already pricey mouse … but what the heck.
I find that I am using the left hand more often now for swiping and gestures. And now my left hand too is starting to hurt! 😂
Speaking of Mac stuff I started using the Mac Mini as a regular desktop now with a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. I don’t get to do any mouse/ trackpad gestures but I realized I can assign keyboard mapping to get a lot of the functionality. Feels different, using a Mac device with a non-Mac keyboard and mouse … but hey, it works pretty well. The one thing that does not work so well is the monitor. I have two (a Samsung and an LG) 1920×1080 resolution monitors and they have worked well with Windows so far so I thought they’d do a good job with the Mac Mini too. But nope, they are fine, but not great. And that’s then I realized that not all monitors are the same. I knew better, but had not really registered in my head I think … just because two monitors might have the same resolution that does not mean they have the same ppi (pixels per inch). The more pricey ones, including the MacBook Pro screen, have a higher ppi and so everything appears smooth and pretty; while the not so pricey ones that I had have a lower ppi. That is why my eyes are able to notice the fuzziness. About 300ppi is where the human eye stops discerning the individual pixels so any monitor with 300+ ppi will appear amazing! These cost a lot more though unfortunately. (For now I decided to suck it up and stick on with the existing monitors. I use the Mac Mini to Citrix and VPN into work, so it’s mostly running Windows and that displays perfectly fine on the lower ppi monitors :)).