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Two-Finger Scrolling For Older Mac Laptops
Michael Stroeck writes "Want that nifty scrolling on your portable but have an older one? No problem, Daniel Becker has written a free alternative driver for older PowerBooks and iBooks that works like a charm. It is based on Apple's AppleADBMouse-209.0.10 driver from Mac OS 10.3.7 that is available as part of the publicly released Darwin source code. As such, the driver is covered by the APSL (Apple Public Source License)."
I only have one finger, you insensitive clod.
For those that didn't RTFA, it's any machine with one of the new 'W Enhanced' touchpads. As far as I can tell from personal experience, all iBook G4s have it, and a variety of AlBooks as well. My friend's AlBook that is a bit over 18 months old doesn't have it, but I suspect his younger sister's does, as her PB is younger than my iBook, which does. It works like a champ. It replaced SideTrack for me. I'd recommend the one that is XY only, as the rotational thing doesn't seem all that useful and just made the XY scrolling jumpy.
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
I came from a Windows laptop that you could scroll using the touchpad. You'd either have your finger on the right edge of the pad (for verticle) or on the bottom edge (for horizontal). That was a VERY nifty feature that I loved and used all the time.
So then I got the Mac. Before Apple announced that feature I was planning to use SideTrack so I could get the scrolling, but when Apple announced it I decided to give their way a try. Here is my review: IT ROCKS!
It is SO easy to do and works flawlessly. You don't need to know where your finger is on the pad. It doesn't matter how far apart the two fingers are, it works great. I've found myself using my index and ring fingers for it (just seems comfortable). It scrolls so easily and naturally it took absolutly no time to get used it. It's a fantastic feature.
My only complaint: on my Windows laptop I could drag to scroll and then lift my finger and it would keep scrolling. I would like that functionality too, but it's no big deal.
So in short, if you've got an Apple laptop I suggest you try this if it does work (I haven't tested it, but I have no doubts as this is a hardware feature not a software feature, I think), I bet you'll love it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Here's a useful trick that works on every trackpad I've tried, Apple or Windows:
For getting the cursor all the way to the other side of the screen (say, from right to left, for a right-handed person): put your middle finger on the right side of the trackpad; then put your index finger on the left side; then remove the middle finger.
Because the track pad only recognizes one point of contact, it interprets this as your finger moving "really fast," and moves the cursor all the way to the other side.
Pete Forsyth
I ran a few tests.
1. I configured the source to build for only XY support.
2. I ensured that my newly built driver and the preconfigured driver each had appropriate permissions. (root:wheel).
3. I wrote a script which unloaded the system version of the driver and loaded either the prebuilt or the newly compiled driver based on an argument.
results:
Each time, the prebuilt dirver would panic the host and require a hard reboot. Note that this was immediate, and did not require me to touch the trackpad to trigger the failure.
Conclusion, since 10.3.8 was so recently released the developer probably did not know to rebuild the pre-compiled distributions.
If you have already installed it, and are running 10.3.7, you may be at risk when upgrade to 10.3.8. Either upgrade from source now, or revert to the stock driver and wait for new binary packages.
The freshly built driver appears to work as advertised.
Test system:
1 GHz Aluminum 17" powerbook with 1GB memory.
OS, stock 10.3.8 with no third party drivers installed.
You're right.
It's just too bad most of the mods around here think that Apple's need for profit=(hand_over_fist) is somehow rightfully tied into purposely crippling capable hardware. But this isn't the first time this debate has come up.
Many Apple iBooks have the ability to run an additional display in spanning-mode just like the more expensive PowerBooks. However, iBooks are purposely "locked" to mirror-only by Apple. It's pretty easy to enable the functionality through a software patch... just like this trackpad functionality can be added via some loving software hackery.
Apple is clearly using this trackpad feature as a nudge for people to upgrade to the new PowerBooks and I can't fault them for that. Still, that doesn't mean Apple should simply ignore users with the hardware ("W Trackpad") that indeed supports this neat software hack just in the name of product differentiation. Hell, they can add it to Tiger and justify it as a feature upgrade included with the price of the update. Imagine that! Apple still makes money and users with old hardware get increased functionality! Cats and dogs, living together!
I remember back when users were adding extras to their original iPods and Apple quickly followed... officially updating them to do new things. Then, when newer iPods came out, users (this one included) asked Apple to support the older iPods and create an update so they could to do the things the newer ones could do... namely playlists-to-go. But the overwhelming majority of people I heard from on
We wouldn't want everyone's favorite little computer company, just barely making ends meet every quarter, throwing a bone out for the users of older hardware.
Give me a break.
firefox, by default, interprets horizontal scrolling as the forward/back buttons. this is very annoying with two-finger scroll, as it will jump pages without warning. after trial and error i figured out how to disable this:
in firefox go to about:config (type it in address field)
change mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0
change mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines to 1