Magic Trackpad: Erratic & Unpredictable Behavior

Thanks, Scott. I'm going to try the church's trackpad tomorrow morning.

I just called MacAuthority (our nearest Apple store is a 90 minute drive away). The service guy I talked to thinks it's a hardware problem – the same conclusion you and I had come to. If that is confirmed, they'll send it back to Apple & see if they will give me a new one at discount. Since the trackpad has been perfect for over three years, I can't really conplain. Thanks for your help. I'll post back when I know anything – it might help someone else.

I've tried out the church's trackpad. It seems to perform without any problem at all. I even gave it the Snood test – no out of control cannon. Frankly, I'm relieved to have isolated the problem.

We've had no hardware problems with our Apple products before, and our first new Apple computer was purchased in 1985 - a IIe. It's in the basement and still boots up and runs. So having a relatively inexpensive peripheral fail after 3 years is no big deal. Relieved. I'll be getting a new Magic Trackpad this week. A discount would be nice, but I'm certainly willing to pay full price.

So for those with wacky Trackpads still under warranty, get Apple to replace yours. If no longer under warranty, replace. In my case this was not a Mavericks problem, and it probably isn't your problem, either.

Great news. For something as relatively inexpensive as a trackpad - one has to weigh the cost of your valuable time against just buying a new one and being done with it.

That's exactly right. If I had a software issue that neither Disk Utility nor TechTool Pro could fix, then what? That's why the relief – no more time and frustration trying to diagnose the problem. Easy fix.

Glad to hear that you narrowed it down to a trackpad issue - rather than a quirk with Mavericks. It is a little unusual that the problem started after Mavericks upgrade. But ... it is also possible that Mavericks changes the way the way that the Mac interacts with the trackpad - and if the trackpad was borderline failing just prior to Mavericks upgrade - then maybe whatever change was introduced by Mavericks - was enought to make the trackpad failure surface.

What may also have happened is that the problem developed and was just worsening over time. The introduction of Mavericks could have been just coincidental. MacAuthority checked it out and it passed their screening tests.

However, the dead giveaways that the issue was mostly, if not all, hardware were:

1) the erratic behavior of the failing trackpad on three different computers, all running the same OS, and

2) the flawless performance of the church's trackpad on my Air (where I first saw the problem).

Anyway, I replaced the trackpad the the problem is solved. I brought the wacky one home from MacAuthority, too, and have been using it off and on on my Mac mini which is used as a back-up but mostly for media (EyeTV).

My husband switched mice and his problem has cleared up, too. Here we were blaming Mavericks when the truth was that we happened to have hardware issues on two different devices within a week of each other. Weird.