Gestures: Hard to use, harder to find
It’s nice that you can tap-and-drag on your Mac’s trackpad, swipe on your iPhone, or pinch on your iPad. These options offer a welcome change to the old keyboard-based approach to computing. But as gestures multiply, I’ve come to find them confusing, and I realize that rather than simplifying my use of computers, phones, and tablets, they make it more complicated.
Some of the gestures are simple and logical—the two-finger downward slide on a trackpad, for example, which you can use to scroll through long documents or webpages. Likewise, the two-finger tap that lets you display a contextual menu is much easier than pressing the Control key and clicking with a pointing device. (You can still right-click if you use a two-button mouse, of course.)
But deeper in the jungle of gesture controls, you get the two-finger-double-tap, the five-finger-reverse claw, and the six-finger-tap-drag-wiggle. All of these sound more like figure skating moves than like touchpad maneuvers, and they're too complex for me to remember. In addition, some are the equivalent of rubbing your belly and tapping your head simultaneously—a development unwelcome to users who aren't especially coordinated.
To be fair, OS X gives you good ways to learn how to use gestures. Open System Preferences, click the Trackpad pane (which appears only if your Mac is connected to a trackpad), and then click one of the three different tabs. Apple realizes that gestures are complicated, so it includes brief videos showing you how you move your fingers, and demonstrating what will happen when you do.
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http://www.macworld.com/article/2029146/gestures-hard-to-use-harder-to-find.html
