The Trackpad
If you’ve ever had to suffer through using a non-MacBook laptop with a trackpad, you’ve probably already come to the conclusion that Apple makes fantastic trackpads, and the Magic Keyboard is no exception here.
While obviously this isn’t an advanced Force Touch trackpad like you’ll find in a modern MacBook Pro, it is responsive, well designed, and supports multi-touch gestures. It’s a little smaller than you might expect, due to the limited space at the bottom of the keyboard, but it works, and it works really well. In fact, I found the hardest thing in getting used to the Magic Keyboard wasn’t using the trackpad so much as reminding myself to use the trackpad and shake the habit of simply tapping the screen instead.
In fact, while iPadOS 13.4 added support for using just about any mouse or trackpad, there are a few more advanced gestures that Apple has reserved for its own Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad 2, largely because few other trackpads offer any kind of multi-touch gesture support. These include things like using three-finger swipes to pull up the home screen, open the app switcher, or swipe between open apps, or using two fingers for a right click.
Note that by default, you’ll need to “click” the trackpad to select items, and while some have commented that it’s a bit loud, I personally like the very definite clicking sound, which isn’t really any louder than the sounds the keys make when typing on the keyboard. Apple does offer a touch-to-click option that can be enabled in the iPad Settings app, under General, Trackpad, but personally I found it was better to leave this option off, as the false-tap detection isn’t very good; with it on you may find your insertion point jumping around as you accidentally brush against the trackpad while typing.