Sorry dude, you're stuck in 2001. Physical trackpad buttons break, and break often -- which is why they're disappearing. MacBook trackpads are widely recognized as superior, and they are buttonless. The "clit" is also a history footnote at this point, it never got mainstream adoption. If you like Thinkpads that's fine, but don't try to pass your judgement as something universal because it's clearly coming from a very small minority.
Sometimes 90% of people like a technology, and when that technology crowds everything out it's really sad for the 10% that loved the alternatives.
I quite like button-less touch pads. But I also LOVE hardware keyboards on phones. The market decided my preferences aren't commercially viable, but I weep at the imprecision and slowness of touch screen phones, not to mention the general crappiness of terminal emulators without a physical keyboard.
When Logitech stopped making them I started stockpiling Logitech's Cordless Optical Trackman because it's the greatest trackball ever made. It will be a sad, sad day when the last one kicks the bucket, especially since working ones on ebay can be several hundred dollars.
I guess people really just have wildly different feelings. I think Apple's laptops are terrible. Hot, poor keyboard, hard trackpad - you've gotta really press down on the thing. Maybe I'm "using it wrong". (Excellent screens though.)
I think I've had trackpoint buttons fail once, sorta. On a used ThinkPad X201 I got for $300, and just this week, clicks seem intermittent. But it's been under heavy use in an elementary classroom so I'm not sure what kind of stress it's gone through. I've never had an issue with laptop buttos otherwise that I can recall, thinking back to the early 90s.
I don't think you're using it wrong, but the default for the trackpad is a hard click, as you say.
But you can set the trackpad (Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click > Tap to click) to accept a soft finger tap. And two finger tap is equivalent to a right click.
I think the MBP trackpad is the primary reason for me not moving to another laptop, even as I become less and less enamoured with OS X itself.
The Macbook, no-button trackpads also break constantly. Every Macbook I've owned over a few months has had a broken trackpad including Retinas and Airs. On my current Retina, it's broken twice and after the initial replacement during warranty, Apple does not give you any additional warranty on its parts or labor for repairs (beyond 30 days). The repair cost for a trackpad on a Retina or Air: $320 + tax. Ironically, the only trackpads I've worked with that haven't broken are ones with separate physical buttons like the old Macbook Pro ones and many crappy trackpads from companies like Acer that are unusable to begin with. I suspect this is why Apple went with a no moving parts design for their latest trackpads: they simply cannot build a proper trackpad with moving parts that won't break after a few months of even light use.
You realize it's a laptop, not a punching bag, right? Out of the hundreds of Apple laptops I or coworkers/friends have owned, I've only seen a few with broken trackpads, and all were five or more years old and most (all?) had something dropped on it.
Without your great insight, I never would have realized my laptop is a laptop and not a punching bag. Thanks for making everything so clear! I now understand why my punching bag doesn't compile.
Also, your anecdotal evidence is meaningless and doesn't disprove my experience despite your rude attempts to do so.
Apologies, didn't mean to be condescending explicitly. Was intending it to be a light hearted joke to then be backed up with my personal experience. Any time someone has repeatedly broken something which a vast majority of folks haven't broken implies the problem is them, not the product itself.
