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For a desktop computer, a mouse is a great pointing device. For a laptop if you don't want an extra device to keep track of, you need an alternative. The options I'm aware of:

1. Nub. Low-tech, cheap, compact and reliable, but miserably imprecise. Did they ever fix that? Is it even theoretically fixable or is it a limit on the precision of the human finger?


2. Touchscreen. Looks great when an actor is using it for ten seconds in a movie, kills your shoulder when you try to do it all day in real life.


3. Touchpad. It took a while to get the technology to work properly and even then it's awkward to use and takes up a lot of keyboard space. Modern laptops seem to have settled on it anyway, perhaps because it's thin?


4. Trackball. Fast, precise, easy to use, not even expensive.

Seems to me the trackball is the best option. Why didn't it become more widely used? I suppose it would have disappeared eventually because of increasingly strong manufacturer preference for thinness, but why wasn't it more widely used before that?

Trackballs are Alive and Well

I have a Logitech M570 for my desktop computer. I have another one for my laptop. I got another one for my daughter. Every few years they break and I replace them.

I find that trackballs are superior to mice in many ways and recommend them to plenty of people. But the average user just gets a mouse, IMHO simply because they don't realize there are better options.

Except BUILT IN on Laptops

There are, however, two specific reasons that they are no longer found (and were relatively rarely found in the past) built in to laptops:

• Cost - I don't know the specifics, but a trackball has moving parts. Moving parts cost money. A touchpad has no moving parts - it is a sealed sensor package. In fact, many touchpads are indistinguishable from the rest of the laptop bezel - just some markings printed around it to indicate that it is there. For the same reason that laptop keyboards (and bundled desktop keyboards too!) keep getting thinner - less plastic and other parts = lower cost. Trackballs do cost more as separate items too - typically much more than mice - but there it is a user choice. With a built-in pointing device, the manufacturer has to cover the cost for all users whether they consider it an advantage worth paying for or not. In the competitive commodity world of 15.4" 5 lb. laptops, every penny counts.




• Size - Thin is in! As laptops get thinner and thinner, a few millimeters of extra height for a trackball becomes a problem. If you make the trackball too small then it loses its advantage in usability over other input devices. These are the same laptops where the extra cost would not be as big a factor - but the trackball still loses.

Why did trackballs disappear?

To start with, they didn't. They are still around and can be bought in many variations. Only their time attempting to work as a general pointing device is gone.

Nub. Low-tech, cheap, compact and reliable, but miserably imprecise. Did they ever fix that? Is it even theoretically fixable or is it a limit on the precision of the human finger?

The Nub itself isn't imprecise at all. At basic it's a joystick with no sense for urgency (speed) to various driver profiles have been developed offering non linear movement - this in turn is something not everyone can get along with - especially nit at first.

Touchscreen. Looks great when an actor is using it for ten seconds in a movie, kills your shoulder when you try to do it all day in real life.

In fact, I really like it. Back in my Newton days I was constantly hitting the CRT to acknowledge some messagebox - until I spend a lot of money on an early touchscreen.

Touchpad. It took a while to get the technology to work properly and even then it's awkward to use and takes up a lot of keyboard space. Modern laptops seem to have settled on it anyway, perhaps because it's thin?

Part, but also because it's more natural (see below).

Trackball. Fast, precise, easy to use, not even expensive.

If it's supposed to be fast and precise, it's anything but inexpensive.

Seems to me the trackball is the best option.

If you can handle it, then yes. For most people it doesn't work. At least not from the start. Computers have been optimized (or evolved) to provide a satisfiying first time user experience over an efficient long time usage. Basically the same process that (almost) eliminated the keyboard as #1 interactive tool, desprite being in most situations faster and more exact than any pointing device.

It's all about the learning curve.

Humans pointing somewhere don't use their fingertip to waggle around, but the whole arm and hand, while the index finger is just, well, the tip. That's the way we are trained to do since being a toddler.

Reducing this to just forearm and hand, with the finger giving the affirmation is as well trained into our Motor Cortex. That's why most people get along with a mouse without much training. It also adds that the mouse if 'glued' to the hand, so no active control for repositioning needed.

A touchpad comes next, as it's till pointing with the finger, but a restriction of movement needs to be learned, as well as a way to handle repositioning, as there is no haptic feedback for this.

Even the Nub comes before the trackball, as it works by applying force in the direction one wants to move the cursor. As intuitive as a joystick, just a bit more delicate.

While the Trackball is an awesome device, once learned to use it, the learning curve is way steeper than with any of the other, as it's handling goes against our natural movement.

So from a motoric point of view of an untrained person (beginner) the trackball comes last. This may be quite reversed, once time has been invested to learn to handle a trackball on intuitive level. But that's not how everyday interfaces have been optimized. So track balls are nowadays back in the realm of experianced professionals.