You realize Macbook touchpads are buttons right?

They have left click and right click with button action. It's just as intuitive as having 2 separate buttons, and even more so because of how customizable it is.

Not quite the same. For example, what happens when you run out of room on a drag-and-drop operation? You're holding down the whole track pad so you have two options: add a second hand to hold the button, which can make the cursor do weird things, or start over giving yourself more room. With a hardware button this isn't an issue.

That said, the Apple track pads are incredibly high-quality and I generally like them. I do miss the hardware buttons from time to time, though.

How do you drag? I do the initial click with my thumb on the bottom of the track pad and then drag around with my index finger. As long as the pad is depressed with the thumb, you can lift up and set down your index finger however you want to continue the drag.

Although I prefer the IBM TrackPoint -- to the point of buying desktop keyboard versions -- I'm currently using a Macbook Pro with a trackpad. I'd prefer to keep my fingers on the home row, but it's much better than all the alternative touch pads I've tried. Like you, I still miss the hardware buttons. The ergonomics of clicking while dragging just don't work for me.

But I've found a solution that works pretty well for me. I'm using KeyRemap4MacBook to create virtual right and left click buttons. Currently I have Function set to left click, and CapsLock to right click. I tap to click for things like following links, but hold and drag for text selection and the like. Since I usually am dragging with my right hand, using left pinky for "clicking" works quite well.

Highly recommend that you try it if you miss the hardware buttons. In combination with BetterTouchTool, I mostly have things working the way I want, and am almost (but not quite) past being tempted to get out the Dremel tool and retrofit a red nubbin in the middle of the keyboard!

Or you can just lift you finger, move it up where there's more space, and start dragging again, it's not complicated, actually it is very easy and fast.

I don't know how others prefer to drag, but I have the three-finger gesture enabled: holding down the fingers counts as a dragging motion, and if you release the fingers, it gives you about a second to lift the fingers, move them elsewhere, and continue the dragging motion. This way you can drag infinitely if you so desire, without a hardware button.

I lay my thumb on the bottom of the trackpad and hold it down, then my pointer is free to drag, lift away, reposition, and drag more. It's extremely convenient and certainly one-handed.

The trackpads are also multitouch, so they handle multiple hands as sensibly as you might expect.

> I lay my thumb on the bottom of the trackpad and hold it down

That's an awesome tip. I didn't know that the Apple trackpads would do that. They're less reliable if you just try to throw a second finger into the mix, which seems to generally lose the drag and turn it into a secondary click scenario. The bottom of the pad seems to be special-cased to avoid this.

But no middle click, which is something that the ThinkPads have and something I use every day. I also prefer the track point nub, as it lets me keep my fingers on home row.