First Macbook Air multi-touch control panel screenshot
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Jan 15th 2008 6:48PM
posted Jan 15th 2008 6:48PM
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The day that I'm on Survivor and I'm only allowed to bring things that only fit in a manila folder I'll think about this piece of crap. I like my Dell a lot more.
i work for company that sells a ton of apple products and my knowledghe of it is as follows when you mass produce something it is going to have a lot of glitches,apple has always been on top because they demand top quality for there customers if you think touch pad control is not working for you you have an option buy a mouse external and use it.
stop cryin and bitchin apples got it together and its there turn to shine so be it like it or lump it have you ever heard of a apple pc or laptop with a virus i have never had that complaint so u tell me who the big dog on the block is
Screen zoom is one of my favorite things about OS X. Glad they're building it into the touchpad.
It's already built in. All you need to do is press Ctrl and use the two-finger scroll. Used it quite a bit already on my MacBook Pro.
@Larry - Holy crap, that works on my G4 Powerbook, too. Nice!
It works on my iBook G4, too!
Thanks for the tip, Larry!
The only Mac I've ever used was my friends Macbook and I was just wondering what makes these Macbook Air laptops worth $1800?
duh, they're sexy.
i mean, jesus, did you think that's what the components cost?
it's 3/4 of an inch thick! That's why it's so expensive. TBH it's about in range with most other ultra portables.
I've been looking for something like this for some time, I may have found exactly what I wanted. It'd be my first mac, but for this hardware, it may be worth it. Then again, the change in personality that comes with it may not be.
I believe it's entirely useless on the touchpad. Cmd-+ is so much easier than pinching on a mouse pad. I see the only real use is that it will impress the person next to you on the bus/train/plane, while they struggle to get Vista to read a CD.
I wish there was someway to turn my MacBook touchpad (bought the thing two months ago) into a Multi-Touchpad. I know the hardware isn't there but maybe someone will somehow develop some software that can do it for me.
Sigh, just like someone might be able to right some software to give my iPod Touch bluetooth..?
Was it ever confirmed whether or not the Touch even had a bluetooth chip in it?
Why isn't the hardware there? It supports two fingers at the same time, and this is just a different use of that capability. The three-finger support may or may not work, but it looks like there's only one feature that uses it.
The three-finger tapping does work on the current trackpad of my MacBook since that's the right click on Ubuntu. I'm 100% sure these new features of the "multi-touch trackpad" of the MacBook Air is possible to achieve on the current MacBooks through software.
The disections I've seen show the same basic control chip in the iPhone and iTouch - which can be ordered with or without onboard Bluetooth. The exact chip is written down at home... so you don't get to find out what it is today.
That said - the iPhone contains an a/b/g WiFi chip *without* the bluetooth on board. BT is handled by a seperate daughter chip.
Unfortunately, the absense of a BT daughter chip on the iTouch makes it highly unlikely that the WiFi chip has the on-board feature. I mean... why order a different varient for the Touch if you aren't going to use it? Manufacturing just doesn't work like that.
So, sadly, the only band you aren't getting on your iTouch... is likely WiFi A.
so this does mean you can use a mouse like with a regular notebook/laptop?
Yes - note the checkbox stating "Ignore trackpad when mouse is present"
10.5.2?
Are we so sure that the old Macbook/Pro won't be getting this? I mean, I know my MBP can detect when I'm using two fingers. Hell, I'm using the two finger scroll gesture right now.
Exactly. My MacBook has the same thing. Hopefully someone will figure it out.
there is a hardware diference between knowing two seperate touch points and knowing things like their location and more than 2 touch positions im afraid, maybe next rev.
wrong finger... seriously engadget... are we doomed to a plethora of "first looks" from this piece of dog pile for days on end now?
First look at the cursor...
first look at the spinning beachball...
first look at the error message saying you can't connect to your network...
first look at someone throwing it across the room...
i think it's time to set gizmodo as my home page... wait they're just as mac-slappy today too... geez.. there's got to be other news today!
yes there is other news, and guess what its even posted!!! OMG dude get over it CES had like a billion differnt HD TV's most of which i skipped right over. and yes there were some pretty kick ass things from CES. But now its MacWorld time. if you dont like it dont read it
Fuma has a point. Spare us the lame posts by compiling them in a full review or something.
The headline is about as lame as posting "First!" to a blog or news article.
what a fool, not only did you read an article you werent interested in, you spent time commenting on it and then confirming your comment to post it....saaad.
fuma - Were you bitching when Engadget was reporting dozens upon dozens of pages worth of CES stories without a single Apple story in sight? "Gee, there's got to be other news besides CES today!" Yeah, I didn't think so. Cry me a river.
Zak (and other Apple suckups),
The difference is we weren't presented with pictures of the latest Bravia's menus, articles (sic) about Samsung's store coming down for an update, 11 posts in half a day on the same product....etc etc.
As for the usual whine of "if you don't like it don't read it/go elsewhere", well, I have one thing to say in answer to that:
Say that to Engadgets sponsors and see what they think of that.
well , the servers got overloaded with people hitting them for info today, so guess what? I think AOL probably wants them doing stories about macworld. duh.
@DelSource
Tough titties. We can't always get what we want. Suck it up for a day or so. Hahahaha.
I banking on this as an driver for macbooks. Could be wrong though as I can only seem to move one finger at a time on mine (for scrolling and such).
I'm pretty sure it's not possible to do it as a driver upgrade, though if it is I'm sure they'll happily be charging $20 for it!
hey, no trackpad shortcuts. So no multi-touch customizing?
What is this, apple.com?
every single article on the front page is about something mac...
Gee, I wonder why?
Thats because today is the keynote for Macworld 2008.
Hhhhmmmm, it almost looks like some big apple event was today...oh wait it was.
Apple news gets engadget tons of hits hence 20 articles when 2 or 3 would do. If more linux people came to engadget maybe they would have mentioned that KDE4 was released but no this is apple territory.
oo oo let me make a fourth comment about there being macworld! :D
dude MacWorld just started today. did you see people complaining when CES started and THATS all there was? no get over it man
That went right over your head didn't it...
A post by Ian, followed by a post by Curtis.
Oh loooove, love will tear us aparrrt, tonight. :D
Are apple planning a PRICE CUT on the iPod touches??
Ive just visited the UK site and in the compare section it says 8GB £186 and the 16GB £256!!
Im hoping this is just a miss type. Because costly updates and price slashes all in one day!! A early ipod touch buyer cant take much more!
http://store.apple.com/Apple/WebObjects/ukstore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=browse&mco=7B723644&node=home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_touch
so it can tell if your giving the bird to it?
Sad Sad Mac users....getting so excited over the DUMBEST CRAP EVER!!!!!
To all the haters:
You're missing the point of this post. Multi-touch has never been used in notebook hardware. So, the author just wanted to show everyone what the settings look like, what can be controlled/modified, etc.
And shut up about "nomg 2 much aple!" When a company's products are revolutionary and are dominating a market, they damn well deserve some topics.
I have never seen the Aero interface on notepad yet either. Make an article for that too!
So what's revolutionary about this aside from requiring factory maintenance every couple years?
And what computer market is Apple dominating, exactly? Just because they dominate the PMP market doesn't mean they dominate all consumer electronics.
My brain combined
"Three fingers
Swipe to navigate"
into
"Three finger salute"
at first glance.
Yep... knew I should have stayed away from Engadget today. I figured it would be bad, but when 43 out of the last 45 articles posted are about Apple I call that somewhat excessive.
However, that's a great made up statistic. And most of the posts have one or two lines after them, they're just for showing hands-on pictures of the brand spanking new products. I hear a freaking wahmbulance. shut up.
So do you go to political blogs on election day and complain that all they're talking about are the candidates and the elections?
Do me a favor: Use the $25 you saved buying a PC and buy yourself a clue.
Crap...just give me a mouse.
Lame articles based on First posts deserved to be ranked low. I dig Apple news, but stupid interface pics and articles that are equivalent to "First!" posts are as lame as the first ever "First!" post.
You know, to be honest, I'm kinda let down by today's announcement. I was really banking on a MacBook Touch with a multi-touch screen. You would not believe how much fun and useful that would be.
My mouse Logitech VX Revolution can do pretty much everything this touchpad can do and even more.
The multi-touch will probably work. Most of you use the two-finger gesture to scroll up and down, try this, also use two fingers, instead of moving both fingers in the same direction, move one up and the other one down in different speed, they would cancel each others speed out, and what's left is what you see on the screen. (easier to use one finger from each hand), try it out, you will see what i mean.
So I mean at least anything involves 2 fingers will work.
Note: i am using a 2G MacBook.
I want to know how to get the remaining battery info after I shut it!!
Not sure about the Air but all current MacBook models (as well as the Powerbook and iBooks) had a button on the bottom of the case that you press and 5 lights light up depending on how much battery you have remaining. I'm sure that Apple would have included this in the Air (Though I haven't seen it due to me not looking closely at the pics for them)
Now that i finally have a decent mouse, I think I'll stick with it, even though there are no 1st party drivers for it on Mac. Guess it will be fun to try out at least.
Does Multi-Touch Pad work when MBA is used on Windows xp/Vista via BootCamp? If I buy this, I'll be using Windows for work, and Mac for personal.
I highly doubt it would. It's not a feature built in to Windows, so why would it work? I expect to see a Leopard upgrade being pushed out in two weeks to add support for the multi-touch
Well I seem to remember that it did. I had boot camp going a month or so ago but then got rid of it due to lack of use. I think Bootcamp comes with all the drivers needed for windows and it would seem unlikely that the driver for the touch pad would not include full use of two finger scrolling.
I think thats the most useless notebook that was ever introduced from Apple. It is cool looking and it is thin, but what else can it do for you? I guess everything that a MacBook does but with limitations and for almost double the price.
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/
for all those people (including myself) wondering how to add MBA Multi-touch to current MacBook line up
shame - i was hoping it would have similar gesture functionality to ink.
would have thought it would be fairly simple to translate stylus-tablet gestures straight to the multi-touch trackpad.
My thought on this...
Someone should make an app that makes use of the iphone or itouch as a trackpad for current macs.
I can't code at all... So, pass the idea to your coding ninja friends.
Cheers,
Shawin.