Trackpad issues

Yes, I'm having this class of issue on my new MBP(late 2008) as well. The most severe is the simple click, I find for every 20 clicks, I probably register about 15, which is a completely unacceptable failure rate.

And often, when I'm using two finger scroll in Safari, I end up in "selection" mode, dragging a highlight area around text instead of scrolling, as if the trackpad has moved into "click-and-drag" state instead of two-finger-scroll state.

It's all quite disconcerting, and not at all close to justifying the Jobsian-Ive beauty of the new trackpad. Every time a simple mouse click isn't registered, the new trackpad gets a little less beautiful. I'm on day 3 of this machine, and wishing I had my Aluminium MBP trackpad back already.

This happens to me too, but not quite as often.

It could very well be only when one hand is on the keyboard on the other using the trackpad. Different people must have unique hand placement. Although, I could swear that my keyboard hand/thumb is not touching the trackpad.

More accounts of trackpad wonkiness here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1755498&tstart=0

It is happening to me every 5 minutes of using the MBP.

I click the trackpad making sure only one finger is touching it and it totally ignores it until about the 5-10th click.

I also get the text size increasing in Safari.

Holding control and clicking on a misspelled word in safari is a nightmare as it almost never works.

I hope this is all software related.

What he said...

I'm getting about the same failure rate. About 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 missed clicks.

I see this fundamental problem snowballing until a FW fix is release.

Yes, I got my new MBP on 10/16/2008 and every few minutes I "lose" my cursor on the screen temporarily even when I make big circles on the buttonless trackpad. Then it finally reappears or I see that the cursor is "frozen" someplace on the screen. When I lift my finger off of the trackpad and replace it the cursor then works just fine for a while. I am not resting any other fingers of either hand on the trackpad when this happens. I also experience periodic "misfires" when I click down on the pad. When I press it again HARD it usually works. These two problems are unacceptable. They offset all of the MANY exceptional features of my new Mac. Can we have the old Pro trackpad installed in place of this dysfunctional new one? The old one worked just fine. I am new to Apple Discussions--how do we officially report this problem to Apple? This could trigger a major recall if it is a hardware problem. Thanks.

Well, I thought I'm delusional. But it looks I'm not alone here. Just got a new MBP 2 days ago and noticed this weird cursor issue. What i found:

1. Occasional cursor freezing using trackpad. Sometimes I have to touch a trackpad a few times to make it move. It never happens with a mouse attached thou.
2. Occasional cursor disappearing. For example, in Firefox if I press Esc it's gone and comes back when I move a mouse or touch a trackpad.

Not related issue.
An open window of System Pref. sometimes disappears too. I keep it open pretty often, especially when I set up the system. So, it's usually behind other windows. When i click the icon in the Dock nothing happens, the Pref window is gone. I have to quit Sys Pref and reload it again in order to get it back.

So, it's quite disappointing issues for a overall nice machine.
I believe these are software related thing, maybe because of Nvidia chipset and can be fixed by firmware update.

Sorry, forgot to mention.
Transferring user data from my older (very old) PB Titanium 10.4.11 onto MBP Unibody killed scrolling feature of a trackpad on it. Well, go figure. I ended up reinstalling Leo de novo and dropping the idea of migrating a user account.
Not a big deal but strange.

Here's how to report it as Apple does not officially respond to these forums as I understand it:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

I also had trackpad issues. Seems the Migration Assistant transferred old system software from my G4 Powerbook that screwed things up. I went back and did a clean install from the restore disk and everything is perfect.

I had this same issue.

Did you reinstall your software after the restore? Did you use migration assistant again? I obviously need to move my data from my old machine so I can't just restore and then start fresh... The problem is I don't know which part of the migration caused the problem.

Nope, I stayed away from the Migration Assistant and reloaded all my software over again. I did, however, back up the entire contents of the previous G4 Powerbook hard drive and selectively copied over things such as my e-mail files and Safari bookmarks but did not transfer over any system files. I should have learned my lesson a couple of years ago when I replaced my old G4 desktop with a Mac Pro. I used the Migration Assistant and it sent over some old system files that corrupted the Airport and it took me hours to get things working.

I'm having the same exact issues as you. The Safari zooming in and out is especially insidious. I wonder if Apple even thought all of this out much. They def. need to come out with better software to allow people to have global and application specific settings as most multi-button pointing devices have. I like your idea about being able to effectively turn off the bottom portion of the pad so that is becomes a de facto button only.

I have one other issue thought and I'm wondering if I'm alone. Tracking is kind of jerky. With my previous MPB and all my old PBs the pad would detect even the slightest amount of finger pressure and the cursor would glide. The glass trackpad is not nearly as sensitive and causes the cursor to "stutter" or pause as you are navigating in a window or across the screen.

I'm not really sure this a glass panel problem. I spent time yesterday and went 2 Apple store to test the trackpad issue on display MBPs units. I tried 2 of them and did not notice any cursor freezing. Trackpads worked properly and the panels were accordingly sensitive.
I think I'm going to make an appointment with G.bar to replace my defective unit.

btw, I noticed trackpad problem before migrating settings. after i moved system settings it killed scrolling function on MBP. i ended up reinstalling Leo and coping files from my old PB by old fashion way.

I concur. No migration assistant, no transferred setting...just issues with the trackpad. At first I attributed it to unfamiliarity with the touch features, but the more I use it the more I think it is just glitchy. It freezes, the click doesn't always work. Apple better do something...

I too am having problems with my Trackpad. Just this morning when I used my MBP my trackpad just stopped working, along with my keyboard. I then closed the lid to put it to sleep, then opened it to get my trackpad and keyboard working. In 3 mins it stopped working again. I just shut it down and then rebooted and for now it seems fine. Maybe it is an issue coming out of sleep.