I'm mostly with you, but I don't feel the need for separate mouse buttons, so long as the touchpad can give me feedback on clicks. If the whole touchpad is the button, and two finger clicks work for right click, then that's all right. Took some getting used to, but it works fine now. Tap to click though, I've never got that to not be annoying.
I've tried the clickpads. Requiring a more deliberate action to click is good; requiring an absurd amount of force compared to what's needed to push a mouse button is bad. And the "hinged" feeling where it's obviously attached on only one side feels bad, as well.
It's possible that a much better clickpad could be usable, where it's anchored in a non-hinged fashion so it pushes evenly, and the force required to click is comparable to a mouse button.
Not sure exactly which company you are referring to, but Apples clickpads haven’t had any moving parts for a long time—there is just a force sensor and a physical actuator to make it vibrate when tapped that makes it feel as if it moved. But it does not actually move, so there’s nothing to push unevenly about it. It can be a bit uncanny to use when the machine is powered off since the haptic feedback is designed just to trick the brain into thinking it moved.
Those aren't "clickpads"; they don't click. Some of the older ones had a "force touch" where you could push harder to do something different, but the amount of force required for that seemed excessive.
I'm talking about a touchpad that physically actuates like a button.
Gotcha. I remember those not working well.
I believe all newer models still do that too since 2016, but just not the UI (force touch was mostly only on phones in my recollection). It can be used as a fairly accurate kitchen scale even: https://github.com/KrishKrosh/TrackWeight
Agreed on all points.