MacBooks to Feature iPhone's Multi-Touch? 276
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"."
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.
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yeah, and... (Score:5, Funny)
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'.
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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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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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Unless I'm being dense, none of the things you mention require multi-touch. They're just single-touch gesture detection routines. Looking at the author's website reveals that the only multi-touch support is two-finger or three-finger taps, and that this is not supported on all models.
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)
Well... every laptop model I've used does support these, at least with the Linux drivers, whereas the Windows drivers vary a lot. Tap and drag is also supported on every model I've used.
The multi-touch touchpads on a Macbook(Pro) can scroll any window that has the mouse within its borders by:
That's multi-touch. And there's no reason why window-resizing or other manipulation couldn't be done...
Simon.
That may indeed exceed the capabilities of Synaptics touchpads. Though I'm not honestly sure. I wouldn't be surprised to see the capabilities of Synaptics pads improved rapidly if the iPhone interface becomes a hit.
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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Not to stray off topic, but you can drag both fingers and scroll horizontally or vertically. Holding one and moving the second also works (I tried it on my MacBook), but moving both at once may be easier to do.
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But there's no multitouch. Just try touching a synaptics pad with two fingers at once and wait for the unpredictable results.
Multitouch doesn't refer to double or tripple tapping / clicking. Its about using two fingers independently.
Or am I the one missing something? Is there an uber-foo tab on gsynaptics I missed?
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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Who says it needs to be limited by this design only? Remember Tron and Ed Dillinger's desk panel? You could easily have the screen at eye level and controls and wrist level. Whatever the case...
The main benefit of such technology is portability. Also, the next phase of Apple's technology (I hope) would be voice recognition. If we can offload graphics to a dedicated GPU, why not
Re:Not just the touchpad (Score:5, Funny)
STOP! Hammer time!
You can't touch this
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Ever looked at a monitor? (With the power off?) (Score:2)
Its just brilliant of apple to realize that the way the technology is supposed to be used is not how is used, (like hos bright do you have to be, right [but people will deny the evidence of their own senses in the face of everything {like how long did people think the earth was flat?}])
I look forward to being able to USE my flat panel display for the other half of interactivity and have the system recognize it.
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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)
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finally (Score:2)
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.
yes but (Score:2)
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Core 2 models run Vista x64 just fine, except that the Boot Camp drivers for the iSight, the sound hardware, and Mac-specific keyboard features don't work. Saying they "won't run" x64 is just as wrong as saying they "won't run" Linux.
It's pretty pointless, though, since no MacBook for the foreseeable future will accept more than 4 GB RAM.
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It does. Did you try "Zoom while holding..." option?
Since Leopard is resolution independent [apple.com] and iPhone runs Leopard, there is not really any reason to think MacBooks (even the current models) do not support Multi-touch in the iPhone sense. At the least, when you zoomed in the current method, characters and vector graphics should not get blurred in Leopard,
Re:getting thin (Score:2)
The bottom case of the macbook is about 2.5mm thick. The bottom case of the tibook was 0.5 mm thick. Clearly they can do better than 2mm. That case can be beaten with a hammer without breaking it, it's insanely st
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Unless they start using solid state hard drives (which are still pretty thick)
Solid state hard drives are thick because they are built to be the same form factor as existing drives. You can get 16GB USB flash drives that are smaller than half the size of a 1.8" disk (the form factor used in iPods). Take these apart, and see how small the flash chips actually are. You could quite easily throw away the hard drive completely and simply solder 32 or 48GB of flash directly onto the motherboard. If the machine didn't have an optical drive, it could be very thin.
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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A second idea, hinted at in a recent patent filing [engadget.com], is to make the access door on the bottom. If you eliminate the need for a side-mounted, slot loading drive, you free up a lot of precious real estate both in terms of thickness and what else you can now put on the side. Flipping over your laptop to change a CD suc
higher pixel density (Score:2)
British humour (Score:5, Funny)
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Wouldn't surprise me (Score:2)
Or maybe just a Leopard feature. (Score:3, Interesting)
Lenovo has had a multitouch touch pad (Score:2)
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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.
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it seems that the ipods of the future will not be simple music players. they will do video et al from itunes.
an interesting question, is will all ipods in the future be more like the iphone, running os x and wifi? i guess it comes down to how much they can pack into one for the price -- also, the backwards-thinking cell companies would prev
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?
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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?
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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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On a Macbook, you just use two fingers, anywhere and it works with ALL apps. Much, mu
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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...
LCD Track Pad (Score:2)
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Still a touchpad (Score:2)
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Trackpads today are useable (though still not my preference), but when they first started replacing working pointing interfaces -- like the nub mouse -- with those worthless first and second gen trackpads I would have given anything for the nub mouse.
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Why have only one trackpoint? (Score:2)
With two, you could track the "upper-left corner" with the first and the "lower-right corner" with the second.
Of course you're then limited to only those points.
A true multi-touch interface is not (but then again, the "two corner" is better than nothing.
Steve Jobs' attachment to one button mice was not a question of $ but it was one of philosophical functionality.
Now that he's doing multi-touch, look for it to be done right.
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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.
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They did. To replace the HD in a MacBook, you take out the battery, remove a panel and the HD slides out. I wish they'd done that on the Pro too...
Re:ease of service, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hopefully they'll grow out of this mindset sometime soon... their sales in the working wo
"Apples aren't designed for the enterprise" (Score:2)
Apple could give two fu
Start screaming at Dell to make their systems more usable and leave Apple alone.
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In my experience, the most unreliable part of the powerbook is the cd/dvd drive and the screen. This is an imporvement over the older Apple laptops when the most unreliable parts were the power input, which was practically guaranteed to fail in 2 or 3 years.
I have not had a harddrive fail, thank god, on any ma
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-Ted
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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)
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Already does to a point (Score:2)
I would imagine the current limitation is that it can't detection multiple positions, just that there is something else on the pad.
Touch screens, poor ergonomics (Score:4, Interesting)
text entry needs work (Score:3, Interesting)
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Not Just Apple (Score:2)
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)
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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.
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A New Screen of Death for Mac OS X [osxbook.com]
Re:Stop it. Stop it. Just stop it. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stop it. Stop it. Just stop it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
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In case you haven't noticed, this isn't a Mac specific problem. Take your typical office cow who claims she can't lose weight. Well now she's got a vested interest in not losing weight, or she proves herself wrong; cue a million failed diet "attempts" as her "evidence" for not being able to lose weight.
Witness a billion Christians with no proof one
Get one yourself and let her see you use it (Score:2)
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It is the LED backlight screen (Score:2)
I am betting that the main factor reducing the thickness would be the LED-backlit LCD screens. Sony has had them in their VAIO TX and SZ lines for about a year now and they rock(that was one of the reason I bought a Sony instead of an Apply laptop). The screen is just about 3mm thick and it makes a considerably brighter screen and lighter laptop.
A comparison review of MacBook Pro and Sony VAIO SZ (with lots of pics) [notebookreview.com] Note: This is different from the amazingly awesome superthin and superbright(and su
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