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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."
well, i dont know about the scrolling capabilities on the mac, but i say buy a mouse
I know it isnt what you are looking for, but even the scrolling drivers that i have for my synaptics pad dont do that great of a job, and end up being more hassle than they are worth
there are a lot of nice mice out there, including mini mice that do a nice job
Kensington pocket pro this mouse has a retracting cord, and it works perfectly
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking - H.L. Mencken
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.....
It's not secondary if you can't remove it.
If it had been a story about the latest point release of an open source software project it would have included the word "drool" and concluded with multiple exclamation points.
And nobody would criticise that.
Seriously, tps12 seems to be implying that Apple is getting some kind of free ride in the slashdot forums...anyone who thinks that should have his head examined. Apple takes tons of abuse (deserved and undeserved) in these forums. It's the Linux / open source camp that gets the free ride.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Uh... I don't know about the laptops ( I suppose I should ask some co-workers ), but I thought I'd throw this out there before too many comments went by :
I have an Adesso "TruForm" keyboard with a built-in trackpad, under OS X, and it has the feature you describe. I threw me off at first, I was a little miffed that I couldn't use the full area of the pad for movement, but now I'm with you- being able to scroll via the right hand side of the trackpad is a great feature!
Note that "It Just Works". There are/were no drivers to install, nothing, just plugged in the USB keyboard and trackpad away...
I've got a G3 (Pismo), and find that the track pad is ok for general use. However, If I'm going to be doing a lot of word processing, spread sheet work, etc. I'll hook up. my Logitech Marble Mouse (Part Number 904360-0403) as I prefer a trackball to the track pad, or to a mouse for that matter.
The nice thing about OS X is that it supports two button mice/trackballs natively, so the second button will function ! right out of the box. I have a G4 Sawtooth at home. I'm using a Kensington Turbo Mouse PRO with it. The software that Kensington makes for it gives it functionality I find quite helpful when dealing with large projects using productivity software. The only reason that I've gone with the Logitech Marble Mouse for my Pismo is that the Turbo Mouse is just two bulky for convenience when transporting a laptop.
To conclude: I prefer a trackball over all other similar input devices. I find that I've no preference when it comes to mice, and track pads.
Your kilometerage may vary.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
I've been seeing you spam discussions here for weeks now and I have only this to say - use your real name. Or are you unwilling to stand behind your comments?
Failing that you should at least endeavor to rise above your current name.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I almost never use the button on my track pad. I either tap the track pad to click or I'm using an external mouse.
What I'd like to see is a way to map the track pad button to a right-click so I don't have to use a finger to hold the control key down when I'm not using my external (two-button, natch) mouse.
I may be wrong but the "scroll area" on the side of the dell is a hardware feature, rather than just software. As such, I doubt it will make it to the powerbook, as it breaks the metaphor, and apple does not like to break metaphors.
However, I do suggest you rent a powerbook for a month. Should cost you a hundred dollars or so. This is a good investment because if you spend $2,000 on your next computer you don't want to get the wrong one (where wrong may be the powerbook or may be another dell.)
I think you'll find after a period of adjustment that the advantages in usability (much of which is from not breaking the metaphor) and other nice things about OS X will far outweight the lack of the "scroll touch pad".
For what its worth, I use an external 3 button mouse (Even though it breaks the metaphor-- I like it for games that don't have the metaphor to be broken) and the scroll wheel works fine.
In Jaguar there's even a new UI for setting the sensitivity of the scroll wheel. Apple totally supports three button and complex mice, but won't ship them for good reasons.
If there isn't a hardware component to the scroll-trackpad, then you could, theoretically, write a kernel extention to add this functionality.
I think,though, you'll find other things compensate for lack of this feature while mobile. (While not mobile, an external trackpad or trackball can be plugged in.)
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
This is funny. A company that doesn't even know what the job title of "Designer" means... and even has managed to make EVERY gui they've released totoally butt ugly is "better" than the products from the one computer company who's influenced global fashions with its computer designs, and consistently beat every other manufacturer on quality comparisons?
Microsoft doesn't make bad hardware-- its one of the few divisions that does good work. The natural keyboard was an excellent product. But its just stupid to claim that Apples hardware is shit-- everyone knows otherwise, even those who hate macs.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
About a month ago I thought about writing a shareware product that would do things like that (scroll area on the side of the pad). After a lot of research, I've concluded that it can't be done...
;)
Unless a lot of secret Apple documentation suddenly falls into my lap... if you have such secret documentation, please don't hesitate to send it to me
A little background:
The Trackpad on apple laptops (as well as the keyboard), are pseudo-ADB devices. Still. Even after ADB was supposted to be dead years ago.
I say pseduo because Apple employees claim that the hardware really isn't ADB, but it acts like one as far as the OS is concerned (at the mouse/trackpad driver level. lower down, the situation may be different).
Because of this, from the level of the ADB Mouse Driver, it looks and behaves exactly like those old Apple Extended mice (except for a few additions, such as tap-click, drag, etc). The standard ADB Extended Mouse Protocol, (as documeneted in the Apple Technote 'Space Aliens Ate My Mouse'), only reports relative movements of the pointer, as a normal mouse would.
There is no mechanism for getting the absolute location of the users finger, rather than the relative movement. Without that, you can't remap part of the trackpad to be a scroll area.
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.
Have a look at the code the reads x and y values from the trackpad. If they values sent from the trackpad are absolute x,y locations then it's trivial to patch the code. If they're relative you may still be able to set the trackpad into absolute mode. (I wrote code to do this for the Versapad under FreeBSD after obtaining details on setting it to absolute mode from the manufacturers - but the Versapad may have been unusual to support absolute mode).
-- SIGFPE
Some people go the other way -- that they don't like single-button trackpads.
I'd say it's reasonable.
May we never see th
Create a holdable pen that can make the trackpad think it's my finger and I can use it in Inkwell next month...
What, you think I'm going to tote my iBook *AND* a graphire? Nope.
I won't even ask for credit for the idea - no way this is an original thought.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
A good substitute for the simulated scroll wheel feature is to hold the Command key and then drag with the mouse/trackpad. In some applications this will allow the cursor to "grab" the page to scroll both vertically and horizontally. I use it quite a bit in IE and the Finder (under OS 9, haven't tried it with OS X). Unfortunately, many applications don't work like this.
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
In case you can ony think in single syllables I'll try a third form: Leave!
No, no! Don't you see, this guy is the best thing that's happened to Mac evangelism in a long, long time. If the PC fanatics argue that Macs are more expensive, or that they have fewer games available, they come off sounding reasonable. You actually have to refute their arguments to get people to see reason.
But guys like this make claims like "Microsoft's hardware is better than Apple's!" That kind of statement is obviously false on its face, even to the most uncritical reader. One glance at that kind of bull leads even the most jaded person to the obvious conclusion: "Hey, maybe I should go check out the Apple store."
> everyone is a fucking idiot.
Nope. It's NOT the result of some random and arbitrary opinion of some miscelaneous yahoo at Apple. It's the result of Jef Raskin's research on human interfaces when he was at Xerox PARC.
You about know Xerox PARC, Right? The place that invented the GUI, and inspired Apple, in the first place. And Raskin's research there showed that even the PARC researchers routinely had difficulty with the original three-button mouse. They regularly made mouse-button errors, causing Raskin to actually do the research, and develop a superior alternative. And remember, we're not talking about "joe blow at CompUSA" here. PARC was filled with computer scientists and PhDs. And even THEY routinely had those mouse button errors.
From the article I linked:
Apple is not ALL smoke and mirrors, contrary to what the MS drones would have you believe. They're one of the VERY few computer companies out there that actually bothers to do human interface research. Try reading the "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" sometime. They're the result of a LOT of research in human factors; rathar than some random programmer deciding on his own how he'd like the interface to work THIS time.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Not what you are directly asking for, but:
The arrow keys on the powerbook are on the lower-right corner of the screen, and pgup/pgdn are the fn modified versions of them.
Because IE supports scrolling the view by just holding down the arrow key, and it's so darned easy to use fn+up/down arrow to page up/down in other applications (or IE for fast 'scrolling') I think you may find that you can live without that mini mini scroll area.
How is a comment about windows mice working with Unix computers "offtopic" when the topic is a trackpad on a mac as compared to dell, and its alternatives?
We got a moderation problem here. Hope someone catches it in metamod.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Some pointing devices can be switched into other modes ("absolute", "pressure", etc.) with non-standard protocols. I somehow doubt this can be done for the Mac, though.
Too bad that Macintosh comes with only one pointing device and a single button. Most people I know would much prefer something else, as well as a three-button mouse. With a desktop, it doesn't matter since people just plug in whatever keyboard and mouse they like (I can't remember the last time I actually have seen anybody use an Apple mouse), but with a laptop, there is no choice.