Clicking on the MacBook Pro is entirely artificial

This is probably old news for most, but it still blew my mind: only now I realized that the clicking feeling and sound on my MacBook Pro’s trackpad is artificially generated. I did the experiment of turning on “Silent clicking” and turning off “Force click and haptic feedback” on the trackpad preferences panel and, indeed, the clicking is gone. Wow (/ht @jsnell)

To aid in the process, the Magic Trackpad apparently even generates its own artificial clicking noise (as the Force Touch trackpads in the MacBook and MacBook Pro do). If you think that’s weird, you can enable Silent Clicking in the Trackpad system preferences pane, and the artificial sound will shut off. (There’s still a sound when you click, though, thanks to the vibration—but it’s much subtler.)

As on the MacBook, it’s kind of hard to believe that the Magic Trackpad 2 isn’t actually clicking when you push down. The glass does flex with the pressure a little bit, but that clicking feeling is entirely artificial.