I haven't seen a non-crap touchpad that didn't have buttons, likely because my definition of crap is different than yours and includes massive surfaces that feel awful and get in the way of using the keyboard, and hoping the proper amount of fingers hit the touchpad within the correct window of time (and weren't too close together and counted as a single finger) to perform the click I meant to.
I don't think it's the fact that it's buttonless that make my new non-button pad non-crap, I think it's the fact that they aimed for the quality (and part cost) of the MBP trackpad that makes it also achieve that kind of quality feel.
I'm one of those strange people that finds mac touchpads maddeningly annoying. I used to carry a mouse with me when I had a macbook for work. So non-crap is the opposite direction from that for me. But hey, to each their own. That's why it's nice to have the choice of a wide range of machines, everyone gets what they want.
With proper palm rejection the trackpad should not interfere with the keyboard. From personal experience, Macbooks trackpads rarely register spurious touches while typing.
I've used a number of computers with apple-style the-whole-trackpad-is-the-button systems. The quality varies considerably, from completely unusable to my favorite way of controlling the cursor (better than a mouse, for casual purposes like web browsing). Mostly it's a problem with the software.
I currently use a Thinkpad T440p, which is of the generation of thinkpads universally reviled for their "shitty" trackpad and lack of discrete trackpoint buttons. I can't comment on the trackpoint since I have no interest in using it, but the trackpad is truly unusable on Windows.
It seems that most non-apple laptop manufacturers that have adopted this style of trackpad have done it for aesthetic purposes, to mimic Apple, and to give users more space to move their fingers over. Their trackpad designs are essentially what you would have if the surfaces of the physical trackpad buttons were also touch sensitive on a tradition trackpad design: the bottom-right corner of the trackpad is a right-click area. I hate to evangelize Apple for fear of being associated with people who evangelize Apple, but Apple understands interface design well enough to realize that that's a terrible way to design a trackpad.
The point of Apple's design is to unite tap-to-click mode of traditional trackpads with the button-activated mode. The tap-to-click mode has always been simpler because you don't have to keep your thumb on the button all the time. This gives your hands more freedom; you only have to maintain one point of contact with the trackpad, and you can pivot around that point however you want, rather than being anchored by a second point. This might help defend against RSI, and also makes it faster to transition between controlling the cursor and typing. But the problem with tap-to-click has always been sensitivity. Typing on a laptop with a tap-to-click trackpad is a horrible experience because your wrist accidentally contacts the trackpad and activates a click event, moving the carat or focusing on a different field and suddenly your keystrokes are being sent to the wrong place. Apple's trackpads solve the problem by changing tap-to-click to push-down-to-click. When they introduced this on their laptops it was fantastic, it was what a trackpad experience should have always been like.
As someone who's used Apple's "Magic Trackpad", which is huge, I can say there's almost no value in a larger trackpad surface, which is what other manufacturers are going for. I don't move my wrist when using the trackpad, my range of mobility is limited to the range of my knuckles. If I want to move the cursor a long distance, I'll move my finger quickly and take advantage of cursor accelleration. For moving short distances, it's intuitive that you wouldn't need any range of motion.
So the "soft buttons" that they put on "clickpads" are terrible. They have all the disadvantages of traditional trackpads in that they anchor your hand position, but there's no tactile indication of where the button is, so sometimes when you want to right click, you accidentally miss the button and left click. Worse, they make the entire rest of the trackpad surface a left click (like in Apple's design), so it's tempting to use it like an Apple clickpad, but if you do that, sometimes your finger will end up over the right click button and it will do the wrong thing.
If you have a shitty clickpad and you use linux, `synclient ClickPad=0` will fix it and make it work like and Apple clickpad. You can also set ClickPad=0 in your Xorg.conf to persist it.
Personally, I've always preferred tap to click over the whole trackpad being a button. I find it infuriating to use a mac with tap-to-click turned off (as it is by default) because the entire surface of the trackpad is not usable as a click button. If my finger is near the top when I want to click, I still have to lower my finger to the hinged area.
Not so with tap-to-click. The entire surface can click. And I've never had a serious problem with spurious clicks that other people report, for some reason I'm not really sure of.
I agree that softbutton areas (for click and scroll) on PC trackpads are terrible, though.
That's true, I forgot about that problem with apple's trackpads. I don't remember running into problems with it too often, but I can imagine that different hand positions and sizes could hit the top of the trackpad more often. The thinkpad clickpads don't have this issue.
Try out the newer Apple trackpads (introduced a year ago). They have no hinge and can be "clicked" anywhere. The haptic feedback really feels natural to me.
