“New, slimmer MacBooks [are] coming in October… made from new materials [along with] iPhone’s multi-touch technology,” Josh Goldman reports for CrunchGear.
“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,” Goldman repots.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: After using iPhone so much, we’ve already pinched our MacBook Pro touchpad looking to zoom in and out. It’d sure be nice if it worked!
I don’t get it?..
@iMat
Multi-touch on the MacBooks trac-pad.
That’s because you are a moron
that would be freakin awesome… holy crap, every company would be jealous of apple lmao! rock on apple!
what about macbook pros??
Has anybody else noticed that scrolling on iPhone is the opposite direction as on your Mac? On iPhone, you scroll up for the screen to move up. On a Mac, you move the slider down for the screen to go up.
my guess would be they’d debut on the pros.
which is perfect since that’s when i’m targeting to save up to get a MBP.
magic word: couple; as in multi-touch and leopard, sweet.
na lies here, also:>
to make some inroads in NZ and Australia,
they need to sell macs at Dick Smiths and Harvery Norman
and number two – fire half the mangers that run local HQ
and finally pay me to help.
Cheers
Alec,
That’s because on the iPhone, you’re moving the image, and on the Mac you’re moving a pointer to indicate what part of the image you want to see. If you grab the image on the Mac in an app like Photoshop or Google Earth, you’re doing the same as on the iPhone, and the behavior is the same.
@Alec
“Has anybody else noticed that scrolling on iPhone is the opposite direction as on your Mac? On iPhone, you scroll up for the screen to move up. On a Mac, you move the slider down for the screen to go up.”
On the iPhone there are no scroll bars. I guess you could liken it to using the grab tool on a computer where you click and hold a page and move it up in the direction the mouse or track pad is going.
So the iPhone basically does dynamic velocity enabled grabing.
a multitouch trackpad is not nearly as great as a multitouch screen, no direct manipulation, but still nice.
trackpads are already multitouch, so, why can’t this be a simple software upgrade ?
Why wouldn’t MBP’s get this also?
@Martin:
Notebook trackpads are not multitouch. They can sense multiple touch points on the surface but they can’t track the movement of each one separately. This is needed for pinch functionality.
the reason why multi touch works on the iphone is because you are actually touching the things you are controlling.
using a touch pad to manipulate something on a screen you are looking at is going to be VERY limiting.
we need a tablet mac with mulitouch, that is going to be the next step.
Hey, sounds cool.
But, I don’t see something like this appearing on a low-end Mac before it shows up on the MacBook Pro.
There was, however, a rumor of an Apple branded touch pad that could replace the mouse. That would make sense. Something that could work with the ENTIRE Macintosh lineup.
FINALLY ! ! !
Mac news on MACDailyNews.
Does anyone recall if the author knows the difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro? Or if he might be using the term collectively? It does seem strange they would add this to the low end and ignore the top end.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod-Cast
You think it might be possible to introduce a tablet-type MacBook? Kind of like a really big iPhone, only a full-out Mac.
You can’t do away with a keyboard obviously, but I can totally see waving my hand in front of a tablet screen and making everything go.
Isn’t that going to be the way of the future for personal computers anyway?
Steve Jobs told the Apple employees that the Macs in the pipeline were “off the charts.”
MW: himself
Pinching could be used just for zooming in apps like Preview, Photoshop, Google Earth… I don t think that would be so difficult to implement for Cupertino
Multi-touch on the track pad in an iPhone way would be awesome. Move the arrow to the picture and simply use 2 fingers on the track pad to manipulate it. AWESOME!
I am guessing… big guess… but big surprise… those who have the latest MacBookPro… already have multi-touch trackpads in them.
When Leapard comes… they have the hardware to work this.
Hence the reason this could seeminly appear in low-end MacBook.
Personally, I am not delighted to have a trackpad multi-touch device. Lets get rid of the keyboard altogether… yes a MacTablet 17″ multi-touch laptop running 10.5. Hurray… push the envelope Apple. It just makes better sense not a trackpad.
Last time I pinched my touchpad my girlfriend got jealous……
Ahhhh, multi-touch. Sounds like my Saturday night with those 3 ladies……
And, Cubert doesn’t lie.
I agree with Douglas.
But it’s Leopard man… Leopard is 10.5.
And to remove a keyboard and go virtual as in iPhone… give a overall better form factor. Apple has to get this out first… otherwise others will be offering it when Apple has a trackpad. Ouch! not very good – huh. So to me… makes nonsense – eh.
Multitouch on MacBooks and MacBook Pros? Heck, why not just add the software and hardware to enable them as big cell phones too?
Interesting thought Geo. At the extreem there is a convergence with full functionality in all sizes. The question becomes, how big a screen do you want? Then there can also be virtual screens you where like sunglasses.