Mac Book Pro retina 15" mid 2014 - problems with touchpad 3-finger swipe?

[jappe]

After using the  MBP for some time, I really think it's the best laptop I've used.

There is however one annoying problem that occurs every now and then:

I use 3-finger swipe to rotate knobs etc, but sometimes it doesn't work, but instead starts moving the device, or scrolling the rack.

Anyone else seeing this?

I don't know if it's a problem with dry fingers or something, I haven't yet seen any pattern when it occurs other than when it occurs it seems that the problem stays for a little while (a swipe incident never comes alone.). But for periods, a whole day even, I can have zero problems.

When it happens, I can ofc use the workaround to press down the mousepad and then move to change the knob, but I'd rather not - 3 finger swipes are awesome in comparison.

EDIT: The above problem is not related to only Reason...I think. But the following problem is: 2-finger swiping in the sequencer lane horizontally doesn't work very well. Very reluctant and laggy scrolling. No problems at all with vertical scrolling. This works perfectly in for example Safari, so I guess it's a Reason problem.

[Puckboy2000]

Is that an auto shortcut? I have never used that before (I have always used the left mouse click and drag for knobs). I didn't know I could do that with with the 3 finger swipe. Not that this post helps you, but to let you know that you happened to help me. Thanks.

[jappe]

YW!
It works out of the box in Yosemite. It makes me love the MBP even more:-)

[plaamook]

Yeah, the track pad is a game changer. Also, look into this... http://www.bettertouchtool.net/
It allows you to customize the track pad even further. So I've got gesture short cuts for switching between Rack/Sequencer/Mixer. Just tap the corners, or however you choose to set it up.

As for your problem, it sounds like you're just grabbing the device. I don't know how long you've been using Reason but one used to only be able to grab devices at the corners. People complained about that so they changed it so that you can now grab the device from anywhere. No we complain about that. I personally find the current state very annoying since missing a knob drags the device all over the place. Pain in the ass. Not sure about the scrolling problem though.

If its genuinely a consistent problem try resetting the PRAM and SMC on your mac. A google search will give you instructions.

[jappe]

Thank's for informing about bettertouchtool! I will try it out. My goal is to have a large enough set of swipes for working in Reason, while reducing the risk of accidental unintended commands getting executed.

I will analyse the problrm I have with 3 finger swipes further. It happens also when the pointer is exactly in the middle of a knob.
Perhaps there is one of the fingers hitting slightly too late,so it gets identified as a 2 finger swipe.
Perhaps I move my finger too many fractions of a millimeter before all 3 fingers touches down.
I will get to the bottom of this and update this thread.

[plaamook]

The other thing about the track pad, three finger thing is that you can put three fingers on a knob and move only one. Try that too.

[jappe]

The other thing about the track pad, three finger thing is that you can put three fingers on a knob and move only one. Try that too.

Ah yes thank's, better precision. Sometimes even when using shift I struggle to enter a precise value. I need to tweak the sensitivity I think.

[jappe]

UPDATE:
After lots experiments:
I found a way to reproduce the error more often.
I also found a workaround.

The problem is exclusively for three finger swipes, and it is virtually randomly occurring. (perhaps 10-20% of all three finger swipes fails for me)

To make it happen more often: Spread your fingers a little.
To make the problem go away:
  1. Keep them very close together. If you still have problems, let the middle finger be a bit above the other two.(i e they will form a triangle and not a line)
  2. Don't use the top of your fingers.

I suspect this is a driver defect, or possibly I have some problem with my trackpad.
Would be interesting to study trackpad functionality on a detailed technical level, to understand why the above workaround works.

[plaamook]

Well either you have a driver/hardware issue or you're just doing something weird with your mac. I've tried every way to just wang my fingers on the thing and it works just fine every time.

[jappe]

...and  another update: an hour after verifying that the above workaround + way to reproduce the problem more often actually worked, it stopped working and three finger swipes were failing 90% of the time for some periods.

And now I cannot even reproduce the problem.
Yesterday the laptop was rather warm since I had Reason in the background+sun was shining on it.
Perhaps temperature is a factor.