I recently upgraded my iPad Pro 11’ inch from Smart Keyboard Folio to the latest Magic Keyboard. And I love the experience. Its the best experience ever typing on this keyboard especially after Apple switched from the dreaded butterfly design to the new scissor-switch mechanism.
I also love it for the fact that it has a backlit keyboard and more importantly it has a trackpad. I absolutely love it. But then I noticed that I was having this pain in my left pinky finger (first joint) and it was just getting severe. It seemed like a RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) — something that I haven’t experienced in a very very long time, probably for couple of decades.
I started wondering what changed. Was it my work-from-home setup, now that I am working from home full-time due to the pandemic.
With that conscious/awareness in mind, I was finely observing situations when I felt the pain — during or after a particular time period.
Interestingly, what I realized is that my pain was more after I use my magic keyboard. But on closer inspection, the pain was actually during and after i click on the integrated trackpad.
Now that reminded me of another instance probably 3–4 years back when I was starting to experience a similar pain when I started using my company MacBook Pro. And then I had the Ah-ha moment.
It was the goddamn “Tap to Click” setting that was “off” by default. Which basically meant that I had to press hard on the trackpad to click something. Now, I obviously wasn’t using my pinky finger for clicking. But in spite and regardless of which finger i used for a “hard” click, it was putting some kind of strain on my pinky finger. I started developing this RSI kind of pain in matter of few weeks — it was not even “repetitive” — guess its more of Ergonomic issue.
Then I went back into settings to enable the “Tap to Click” setting — and boy what a nice feeling it is.
Now it was stupid of me to not enable it in get-go. But my point is, for heaven’s sake, why can’t Apple enable this by default. Guess, its some kind of an accessibility or backward compatibility consideration.
Anyways, I am already starting to feel better in matter of hours. But I will make it a point to come back with an update in few days/weeks.
I did not find anyone having a similar experience on the internet. I hope, for those of you (if any) who have this kind of a problem will find this article useful. If you did find this useful, I am very curious to know your experience.
Happy typing (on your Magic Keyboard)!!
