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Teaching the Trackpad New Tricks?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm seriously considering buying a PowerBook. The design is gorgeous and OS X will give me a Unix-based operating system without having to sacrifice main-stream comercial applications. What's holding me back? The trackpad. I'm a fan of the ThinkPad-style joystick, but my Dell laptop came with touchpad drivers that provide useful features like the ability to scroll by sliding your finger along the edge of the pad. That was enough to make me switch to the touchpad on the Dell, but, I can't find anything similar for the PowerBook. I found references to Overdrive, but it appears to only work with USB devices. Are there any other drivers out there that add more functionality to the trackpad? If not, is that because no one has done it yet, or is it because the APIs do not exist to do such a thing? Thanks."
Lemme get this straight...you're decision to spend $2,500 is based on Apple's choice of a secondary peripheral?
Whatever happened to the track ball? (or atari trak ball). I remember laptops used to have an actual ball built in you could spin around to move the cursors with a button on either side. This was beautiful it allowed perfect control without adding a lot of space or forcing me to carry a real mouse around with my laptop. The mid keyboard "foam nubs" and the touch pads I find horrible. I can't control the mouse cursor with great accuracy at all. If it isn't sensitive and accurate enough to play a round of quake then it isn't much of a mouse or mouse replacement. Anyone know a modern laptop that still has the ball?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I'd have to concur. Microsoft makes decent mice products. I've been using the microsoft optical mouse for about a year now on my g4(running os X) and it works beautifully and it comfortable to use. Also not terribly expensive. hmm.interesting the mouse market is fairly competitive(but not cut throat) and microsoft makes a decent product.....
Which is why my Microsoft mouse has never failed me on my Powerbook, or under linux (or both!) but under windows 98 frequently requires me to restart mswheel.exe to get the scrolling working again, and occationally gives me a blue screen if I connect it to the USB bus while my scanner is connected. Windows 98: Worst USB support ever.
Thank you for the clarification.
... So if you want a Mac laptop, you are fucked. You are FORCED by apple's opinion that everyone is a fucking idiot. As the owner of a titanium G4 mac, and a couple g4 desktop's, I'm offended. Of course I was forced to buy new mice, but the built-in trackpad on the laptop is not replaceable.
I can probably find a study that says that alphabetically organized keyboards are faster too, but it doesn't make it true for people who know how to use qwerty. The fact is that a person experienced in multi-button use is going to be more efficient using one compared to a single button mouse.
Thinking of the simple "cut and paste" in X-windows, I don't see how the heck a "mouse highlight" command-c two-step three-key/button operation on the mac is faster than X's one-step operation.
Back in the days of the original PC keyboard layout, I explained to a one-armed co-worker that you needed to do a ctrl-alt-delete to reboot - A task that required him to use a pencil in his mouth for the final button. He was not pleased. Four letter words were heard throughout the office whenever the PC locked up. He would NOT enjoy using a system with a single mouse button.
My Sony vaio had a touchpad with the scrolling feature, and that would be nice to have on my g4 mac. If only apple didn't know more about what I want / need than I myself do, things would be better.