Pointing

In my eternal quest for workflow perfection, and unsatisfied with even a very advanced mouse, I tried two different trackballs on for size. They were underwhelming and clumsy, and expensive to boot. I had a very hard time getting them to do what I wanted, so I returned them.

 

I had been reading about the Apple Magic Trackpad for a while, it's been showing up in rumor sites for a year or more. Basically it's a multi-touch trackpad like the current MacBooks have, but with a much larger surface and Bluetooth, and made for a desktop. Finally the thing was released into the wild and I got one. It's been reviewed quite a bit and the general consensus is that the gestures are fantastic but it lacks pixel-perfect precision of a good mouse because it's all driven by a big fat finger. I have only spent a few minutes trying it out so I really can't say how good it will be for getting accurate curser control with Photoshop, but the gestures are truly cool. The pinch-to-zoom feature alone is worth the price ($69).

 

Navigation will be awesome with this, flipping through photos, zooming and panning, switching apps. It remains to be seen how well it will do in the pointing department but I suspect I'll probably use it in combination with a mouse to get the best of both worlds.