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MacBooks to Feature iPhone's Multi-Touch?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Jul 01, 2007 10:50 AM
from the don't-touch-me-there dept.
from the don't-touch-me-there dept.
Gadgets Lover writes "According to CrunchGear's 'trusted source' that the upcoming MacBooks which are expected to be released around October will support the iPhone's multi-touch technology built into their touchpads.
The feature will be built into the touchpads, allowing you to navigate through your notebook's files, applications, etc. the same way you can on the iPhone. (Yes, I know you can already scroll with them, that's nothing new. I'm talking about all the other finger gestures that can be done on the iPhone's screen)
On June 20th, CrunchGear reported, "The upcoming MacBooks will be about half the thickness of current models (which would be quite the feat) and they'll be made from new plastics/materials"."
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Yeah, and... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:4, Funny)
Floating in mid-air would certainly look cool, so this should be a hit with the Mac crowd.
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Re:Yeah, and... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Yeah, and... (Score:5, Funny)
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Not just the touchpad (Score:5, Insightful)
They did it w/ USB. They did it with mice.
"Blah blah greasy fingerprints on monitors" Yeah, anyone with half a brain can think of 10 reasons why this is dumb. But it's the crazy guy in the back of the auditorium who's going to figure out how to get rich off of it, and in doing so will make the standard transition from 'crazy wacked out goofball' to 'eccentric visionary'.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Would make more sense if the Finder CoverFlow feature allowed touching and dragging the images rather than requiring a scrollbar (the way it is in iTunes now). It could be a usability improvement to allow that sort of scrolling in other documents, like webpages.
If this is coming, then the changes are in Leopard now. Maybe some WWDC attendees know the answer.
I just looked at the ne
I think this is just a software change! (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, using the Xorg drivers and GTK configuration applet gsynaptics [sourceforge.jp], you can set up a touchpad to do different actions based on double-tapping, triple-tapping, scrolling via linear and circular dragging, etc.
So if Apple figures out how to make an intuitive user interface out of touchpad motions, that's pretty cool, and other operating systems should be able to adopt similar features quickly!
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As the article mentioned, they already do support scrolling with a two-fingered gesture. I can see the pinch gesture that the iPhone uses for zoom being pretty useful as well. I'm less certain about the 'flicking' gesture for scrolling in the iPhone, although I haven't tried it myself.
Re:I think this is just a software change! (Score:5, Informative)
It's not clear from his site which models *do* implement true multi-touch, or even whether what he has done requires it. It could be a timing-related kludge if all it supports is taps and not drags. (ie: if I get 2 or 3 clicks within 5 ms, I'll assume the user did those simultaneously and send event X not event Y)
The multi-touch touchpads on a Macbook(Pro) can scroll any window that has the mouse within its borders by:
- pressing one finger onto the touchpad
- *simultaneously* dragging a second finger up and down.
That's multi-touch. And there's no reason why window-resizing or other manipulation couldn't be done...Simon.
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Multi-touch was hard to get right. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.fingerworks.com/ [fingerworks.com]
Look under news:
http://fingerfans.dreamhosters.com/forum/viewtopi
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Re:I think this is just a software change! (Score:5, Informative)
Fingerworks vanished off the face of the internet a couple of years back. Apple quietly bought the company, its patents, and and the key researchers and engineers. Since then, they've been puting the Apple shine on their technology since then. Much to the likely delight of the "Fingerfans" [dreamhosters.com] the iPhone is the first product to ship with this technology since Fingerworks' was bought.
It *might* be possible to hack something together with a synaptics pad, but the hardware itself is likely deficient to do full-on multitouch. See section 1.3 of Westerman's thesis, linked below, esp. the pre-Fingerworks prototype hardware "producing a 50 frames per second (fps) stream of proximity images." I note that the Fingerworks devices connected via USB, but had on-device processing and firmware notably richer than what's in a simple touchpad. That alone may spell death to attempts at pure host-side multitouch with a "dumb" touchpad.
[1] PDF: Hand Tracking, Finger Identification, and Chordic Manipulation on a Multi-Touch Surface. [udel.edu]
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Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Not just the touchpad (Score:5, Funny)
STOP! Hammer time!
You can't touch this
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Bad logic (Score:3, Insightful)
So, because some people can't use a technology, nobody should be able to?
Lots of people can't eat corn, maybe we should ban everything with corn in it too? And nuts. With the war, how many people are missing an arm? Best not make cars with stick-shifts...
I'm not saying ignore people with disabilities (many of my friends have serious disabilities), but you can't make the world one-size fits all. And, as much as blind people might not enjoy the new iPhone, deaf people may enjoy being able to send email, p
One step towards... (Score:5, Interesting)
Every time ... (Score:5, Funny)
My Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
I have the last revision of the MacBook Pros that just came out. It's a great little laptop. It wouldn't surprise me too much if they did have multi-touch trackpads in the new Macs. It wouldn't surprise me if it was in mine and could be added with a software update. After all, they've supposed detecting when there are two fingers for a while, how much harder can it be to detect the stretching and squeezing motions? Apple has silently updated things before. For example, the cameras in the latest MacBook Pros are 1.3MP instead of 0.3MP. It's not exposed in software, but it's there.
The 1/2 the thickness thing? Never. Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to see that. That would be amazing. But I just don't think it's really possible with the MacBooks. Now if you got rid of the hard drive and optical driver, you'd have a better shot... but I'd still peg this as very unlikely.
Re:Agree about the thickness (Score:4, Interesting)
The 17" could get 2.5mm thinner. They could use the 9.5mm optical drive from the 15" models. Since the 17" has enough room for the optical drive to fit completely under the right palm rest, it doesn't have to fit under the keyboard like it does on the 15".
But the 17" is already too flexible... to make a 21mm thick 17" model work you'd almost have to have new case materials.
I think you're right, though, that the big gains will come from flat solid state HDs. I don't know how they'll deal with the optical drive issue in the models (all but the rumored MBP subnotebook) that need an optical drive.
In any case, it's time for new MBP form factors. The Al enclosure has to be one of the all-time best notebook designs -- it's still more functional and useful than most others -- but, for crying out loud, the 17" version was introduced in early 2003, and hasn't appreciably changed since!
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higher pixel density (Score:2)
British humour (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't surprise me (Score:2)
Or maybe just a Leopard feature. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lenovo has had a multitouch touch pad (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Next iPod (Score:2)
I think it's unlikely for Apple to release an iPod with a screen as big as the iPhone, simply because there is no need for so much information on a simple music player.
What about the heat? (Score:5, Insightful)
With that said, they only thing that bugs me about the Macbook I have is how hot the bottom gets. I had to buy a laptop pad which is a pain to have to remember to bring with me. In constrast, my Core 2 iMac is always cool and very silent. Are the newer models of Macbooks cooler so you can comfortably keep them on your lap?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
better still - will the new macbooks have the Santa Rosa platform that is known to consume less power and generate less heat? and will the screens be LED like the Pros? multitouch is cool and all but is a very minor upgrade, as has always been the case with MacBooks. some love for Cinderella too, please!
OT, is it just me or am I seeing more Apple stuff being leaked out pre-release? whatever happened to the ultra-secret keep-it-under--wraps-until-very-last-minute Apple obsession?
Re:What about the heat? (Score:5, Informative)
The MacBook Pro also has LED backlighting rather than fluorescent backlighting. This is very significant in that the backlight becomes pretty much immortal...it will last as long as the computer does. With fluorescents, eventually you have to replace the fluorescent tube, which is a pain. I'm sure that eventually the MacBook will get it, but not just yet.
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According to the town hall notes (Score:5, Interesting)
So if this is true(hard to believe the half size thing, but..) we should be seeing them soon I would wager. Though I doubt the macbooks would get a feature that their pro bretheren do not have first...
ease of service, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
gestures that can be done on the iPhone's screen) On June 20th, CrunchGear reported, "The upcoming MacBooks will be about half the thickness of current models (which would be quite the feat) and they'll be made from new plastics/materials"."
Hopefully they'll be more serviceable, too. Personal best for disassembling a G4 iBook to get to the hard drive? 45 minutes, and that was after doing it three times. The screw count is staggering; one heat shield had TWELVE screws. Most of the screws lack threadlocker (or it isn't strong enough) and the screws are so loose they are almost ready to fall out after 3 years of daily use.
With IBM/Lenovo and Dell laptops (and probably many others), the drive can be accessed with one or two screws and they slide out of the chassis, even on their smallest+thinnest models. Why can't Apple do the same, especially given how Apple continues to supply mostly Toshiba drives, which have the highest failure rates of laptop drives? Even setting aside drive-manufacturer failure rates, drives are the most failure-prone components in any computer (well, save video cables and screen hinges, again in Powerbooks and iBooks.) I've never seen an Airport card or memory fail, yet they're the easiest to get to on almost any Apple laptop.
Re:ease of service, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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With IBM/Lenovo and Dell laptops (and probably many others), the drive can be accessed with one or two screws and they slide out of the chassis, even on their smallest+thinnest models.
This is particularly useful when "recycling" a laptop that's being replaced. I get a new laptop every 2-3 years to get the latest features and performance stuff, and when I do, I pull the HDD out of the old laptop and set it aside, as a "just in case" if I discover some important data that I forgot.
Using Dell laptops at our company, this is a VERY painless process - it takes seconds to pull the old HDD, stick in the new one, and start loading Windows. Why wouldn't Apple do this?
Because Macs had target disk mode for ages?
CPU to monitor? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Touch screens, poor ergonomics (Score:4, Interesting)
text entry needs work (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
what about linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
According to my dmesg output, the touchpad on my HP does indeed have the flag set for "SYN_CAP_MULTIFINGER", which I assume means it can report the positions of multiple touches.
Running "synclient -m 10" however reports a constant "0000000" under the "multi" field.
Anyone know how to properly access the multitouch data provided by the Linux synaptics driver?
Multi-touch Mac Mini (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have only had ONE on any Mac running Mac OS X. That was because I had the buggy version of the WiFi driver (fixed now) and I hit a WiFi access point that was malfunctioning.
Re:Stop it. Stop it. Just stop it. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Stop it. Stop it. Just stop it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2)
It will take forcing her to use one. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a common thing among people. They'd rather cling to outmoded ideas or irrational opinions to which they're already married because switching would be admitting they're "wrong," a terrifying prospect in modern day society, as the smallest admission of imp
Get one yourself and let her see you use it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)