Customizable 4-Finger Gestures Planned by Apple

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/13/customizable-4-finger-gestures-planned-by-apple/)


http://images.macrumors.com/article/2009/02/13/141016-four finger gestures_425.png

MyAppleGuide discovered (http://www.myappleguide.com/news/2140/customizable-4-finger-gestures-snow-leopard) an unused preference pane in the version of Mac OS X Leopard that ships with Apple's new unibody MacBook Pros. The preference pane shows that Apple was planning on offering customers a way to assign different functions to the 4-finger swipe gestures found in their new laptops.

At present, the 4-finger gestures only allow you to switch applications (swipe left/right) or invoke Exposé (swipe up/down). This preference pane would potentially allow you to instead assign these swipes to other functions, such as switching between Spaces, showing your Desktop, loading Dashboard and more.

The site speculates that this functionality may find its way into Snow Leopard though it has not yet been spotted in the developer builds. Meanwhile, owners of previous generation multi-touch MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs are hoping to get four-finger gestures enabled on their machines with a future software update.


Article Link: Customizable 4-Finger Gestures Planned by Apple (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/13/customizable-4-finger-gestures-planned-by-apple/)

[rockinrocker]

sweet, can't wait for this when I upgrade my portable.

[Wie Gehts]

Hey, what a coincidence. Many folks have some finger gestures planned for Apple as well!

[sukanas]

yay, this will be awesome

[iOrlando]

is there any way to use 2 finger gesture to go back a page in safari?

[Sky Blue]

Hey, what a coincidence. Many folks have some finger gestures planned for Apple as well!

haha, nice one.

The title of this article is a little misleading, as it actually seems that Apple don't plan to let the user see this panel, only they were thinking about it.

[asdavis10]

We're getting close to being able to fully customize the way we use the trackpad. Nice.

[kastenbrust]

just need a biometric finger scanner now and we're all set.

[elppa]

haha, nice one.

The title of this article is a little misleading, as it actually seems that Apple don't plan to let the user see this panel, only they were thinking about it.

Furthermore, the fact the nib file made it through to the OS suggests to me they got pretty far along with implementing it and pulled it late (otherwise the nib and other traces would have probably been cleaned out).

You are right though, that doesn't necessarily mean this functionality will be added in the future as the article implies.

[jlocalled]

If this is going to become included in Mac OS X 10.6 SL, I am so buying it.

[KCMichaelB]

I would like a wireless trackpad so I can place on the floor and use my bare feet for invoking expose´ and switching between apps. It's really a workout hitting the F11 key all day long.

[nevrozel]

Related to the news, there is a way to enable 4 finger gestures on any 2008 MacBook Airs/Pros.

Have a look here
http://www.super-poultry.com/2008/12/4-finger-multi-touch-for-older-mbps/

[kastenbrust]

I would like a wireless trackpad so I can place on the floor and use my bare feet for invoking expose´ and switching between apps. It's really a workout hitting the F11 key all day long.

Too much information

[macoazm]

My 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro support multi-touch gestures, albeit not allowed by Apple to work.

Everyone can test this:

1- Tap your Trackpad with 1-finger: it clicks
2- Tap your Trackpad with 2-fingers: it right-click
3- Tap your Trackpad with 3-fingers: It does absolutely nothing. This means it detects it as not being 1-finger ou 2-finger click, but something else....

Proofed, right?

[peterdevries]

I have a unibody MBP and was already wondering why the 4 finger gestures were not customizable.

The fact that this screen has been discovered makes me wonder even more why they didn't enable it from the get-go.. What could possibly be the reason?

[peterdevries]

3- Tap your Trackpad with 3-fingers: It does absolutely nothing. This means it detects it as not being 1-finger ou 2-finger click, but something else....

Proofed, right?

Not really.. Number three can also mean that it detects nonsense that it can't resolve and thus decides to do nothing.

If the controller is only able to resolve two points of contact than there will be no way that it will be able to work with more than two finger gestures..

[8CoreWhore]

I would like a wireless trackpad so I can place on the floor and use my bare feet for invoking expose´ and switching between apps. It's really a workout hitting the F11 key all day long.

http://www.stealthswitch.com/

[11800506]

So I'm assuming changing the preference panel doesn't do anything?

[tingly]

I'm glad I haven't lost any fingers.

[risenphoenixkai]

Wrong. Any multitouch gestures beyond two-finger right-clicking and scrolling require an additional multitouch controller chip on the trackpad. This is the same chip driving the multitouch behaviour in the iPhone and iPod touch.

Without that chip, the trackpad is completely incapable of three- or four-finger gestures. Period.

The only Macs that have this chip in the trackpad are as follows:

MacBook Air
Early 2008 MacBook Pro (with Penryn CPU)
Unibody MacBook
Unibody MacBook Pro

No other model of PowerBook, MacBook, or MacBook Pro supports advanced multitouch gestures, and they never will. This includes your MacBook Pro.



My 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro support multi-touch gestures, albeit not allowed by Apple to work.

Everyone can test this:

1- Tap your Trackpad with 1-finger: it clicks
2- Tap your Trackpad with 2-fingers: it right-click
3- Tap your Trackpad with 3-fingers: It does absolutely nothing. This means it detects it as not being 1-finger ou 2-finger click, but something else....

Proofed, right?

[KCMichaelB]

http://www.stealthswitch.com/

That is freaking awesome! Thanks.

[rumplestiltskin]

Maybe I can drag my...no, never mind...that's too scary. :eek:

[roland.g]

Check out Multi-Clutch

http://wcrawford.org/2008/02/28/everytime-i-think-about-you-i-touch-my-cell/

you can assign swiping gestures for any application or globally. I set mine so that 3 finger swipe left and right switch safari tabs and swipe up closes the current tab and swipe down opens a new one.

in mail, i use 3 finger swipe up to mark mail as unread, etc.

[Stridder44]

Here's to hoping this is included in Snow Leopard. This and Boot Camp 3.0.

[ztigerpaw]

All this stuff about Snow Leopard makes me want it sooo badly by the day! I'm already getting use to Leopard on my MacBook so this is really nice.

[ppdix]

Back in 1984 my mom came to the US, I used to live in Argentina then and she bought me a Casio PF-8000 Pocket Calculator for high school.

The great about this thing is that it had a huge zone-based touch-sensitive film on it that allowed you not only to type numbers and letters but also had handwrite recognition with "gestures" for backspace/delete, just like the iPhone has 27 years later!
I can't believe that technology hasn't really evolved much. Multi-Touch existed 2 decades ago and now everybody seems to have forgotten it was there...

Instead of stupid 4 finger commands, why not let the trackpad learn your own gestures... For example, writing your signature to be used as a password to wake up the computer... Or write the letter S to launch Safari or or P for Photoshop, etc... More commands could be learnt for individual users and stored on a database so u can have as many as u want at your disposal...

This little Casio saved my a$$ many times in school. I could type formulas, text, numbers or anything into it, save them to a memory and then the text would scroll on the LCD display... The best thing about it is teachers didn't realize it was a "computer" so I was free to have it on my desk and have all the answers to my tests... :p
Yeah, I used to cheat, so? :rolleyes:

So what's new, pussycat?

Read more here: http://www.voidware.com/calcs/pf8000.htm

[flipperanubi]

a

[pcorajr]

I find this absolutely useless, I don't use a track pad and find it stupid that I have to swipe 4 Fingers to do what I can do with a keyboard shortcut. I like Multi touch usefull in devices like the Iphone of a tablet PC but on a normal laptop? Bleh

[CANEHDN]

I would love this feature. Just think of the possibilities. Think......

[pcorajr]

Back in 1984 my mom came to the US, I used to live in Argentina then and she bought me a Casio PF-8000 Pocket Calculator for high school.

The great about this thing is that it had a huge zone-based touch-sensitive film on it that allowed you not only to type numbers and letters but also had handwrite recognition with "gestures" for backspace/delete, just like the iPhone has 27 years later!
I can't believe that technology hasn't really evolved much. Multi-Touch existed 2 decades ago and now everybody seems to have forgotten it was there...

Instead of stupid 4 finger commands, why not let the trackpad learn your own gestures... For example, writing your signature to be used as a password to wake up the computer... Or write the letter S to launch Safari or or P for Photoshop, etc... More commands could be learnt for individual users and stored on a database so u can have as many as u want at your disposal...

This little Casio saved my a$$ many times in school. I could type formulas, text, numbers or anything into it, save them to a memory and then the text would scroll on the LCD display... The best thing about it is teachers didn't realize it was a "computer" so I was free to have it on my desk and have all the answers to my tests... :p
Yeah, I used to cheat, so? :rolleyes:

So what's new, pussycat?

Read more here: http://www.voidware.com/calcs/pf8000.htm

Now this is what multitouch should be. This is the kind of technology that we should be seeing not the mediocre crap we call Gestures. Sort of a Multitouch version of Quicksilver.

[ppdix]

Now this is what multitouch should be. This is the kind of technology that we should be seeing not the mediocre crap we call Gestures. Sort of a Multitouch version of Quicksilver.

Excuse my ignorance... What is Quicksilver?

[mkrishnan]

Four finger swipes seem awfully cumbersome to me. Three finger taps work okay with good software to tell when you're doing that and not something else. But it would seem to me that developing more dynamic gestures (like additional variations on the swiping motion itself, pinching, twisting, etc) rather than just more swipes with more fingers would be better.

Also this direction is the exact opposite of the relatively intuitive nature of multitouch gestures on the iPhone -- there, the gestures are related to the action and hardly require training. Here the gesture is purely arbitrary.

[mrkgoo]

Four finger swipes seem awfully cumbersome to me. Three finger taps work okay with good software to tell when you're doing that and not something else. But it would seem to me that developing more dynamic gestures (like additional variations on the swiping motion itself, pinching, twisting, etc) rather than just more swipes with more fingers would be better.

Also this direction is the exact opposite of the relatively intuitive nature of multitouch gestures on the iPhone -- there, the gestures are related to the action and hardly require training. Here the gesture is purely arbitrary.

Unless you have tried it, no, it's no more cumbersome than any of the other number fingers. It works just as well. You just need a slightly larger trackpad to fit all four fingers. I'm on an early MBP, and the 4-fingers is a wonderful addition.

[chr1s60]

Related to the news, there is a way to enable 4 finger gestures on any 2008 MacBook Airs/Pros.

Have a look here
http://www.super-poultry.com/2008/12/4-finger-multi-touch-for-older-mbps/

Interesting. I may have to give that a try and see how it works.

[likemyorbs]

only thing im confused about is on the main article where it says 4 finger swipe up/down activated expose. on mine, 4 finger swipe down activates expose and 4 finger swipe up shows the desktop. is that just a typo or is my macbook weird?

"At present, the 4-finger gestures only allow you to switch applications (swipe left/right) or invoke Exposé (swipe up/down). This preference pane would potentially allow you to instead assign these swipes to other functions, such as switching between Spaces, showing your Desktop, loading Dashboard and more."

[roland.g]

Back in 1984 my mom came to the US, I used to live in Argentina then and she bought me a Casio PF-8000 Pocket Calculator for high school.

The great about this thing is that it had a huge zone-based touch-sensitive film on it that allowed you not only to type numbers and letters but also had handwrite recognition with "gestures" for backspace/delete, just like the iPhone has 27 years later!
I can't believe that technology hasn't really evolved much. Multi-Touch existed 2 decades ago and now everybody seems to have forgotten it was there...

Instead of stupid 4 finger commands, why not let the trackpad learn your own gestures... For example, writing your signature to be used as a password to wake up the computer... Or write the letter S to launch Safari or or P for Photoshop, etc... More commands could be learnt for individual users and stored on a database so u can have as many as u want at your disposal...

This little Casio saved my a$$ many times in school. I could type formulas, text, numbers or anything into it, save them to a memory and then the text would scroll on the LCD display... The best thing about it is teachers didn't realize it was a "computer" so I was free to have it on my desk and have all the answers to my tests... :p
Yeah, I used to cheat, so? :rolleyes:

So what's new, pussycat?

Read more here: http://www.voidware.com/calcs/pf8000.htm

So your point is that you didn't have to learn the stuff since you could cheat.

[Furrybeagle]

Back in 1984 my mom came to the US, I used to live in Argentina then and she bought me a Casio PF-8000 Pocket Calculator for high school.

The great about this thing is that it had a huge zone-based touch-sensitive film on it that allowed you not only to type numbers and letters but also had handwrite recognition with "gestures" for backspace/delete, just like the iPhone has 27 years later!
I can't believe that technology hasn't really evolved much. Multi-Touch existed 2 decades ago and now everybody seems to have forgotten it was there...

Instead of stupid 4 finger commands, why not let the trackpad learn your own gestures... For example, writing your signature to be used as a password to wake up the computer... Or write the letter S to launch Safari or or P for Photoshop, etc... More commands could be learnt for individual users and stored on a database so u can have as many as u want at your disposal...

This little Casio saved my a$$ many times in school. I could type formulas, text, numbers or anything into it, save them to a memory and then the text would scroll on the LCD display... The best thing about it is teachers didn't realize it was a "computer" so I was free to have it on my desk and have all the answers to my tests... :p
Yeah, I used to cheat, so? :rolleyes:

So what's new, pussycat?

Read more here: http://www.voidware.com/calcs/pf8000.htm

This is nothing like what the iPhone does; it’s not multitouch. This is just a plain old touch sensitivity. Multitouch allows you to touch the screen in multiple areas (at least 12 in Apple’s implementation) while still allowing the hardware to track each individual finger. This allows for more sensible gestures, like pinching and rotating, as opposed to drawing a squiggly line to zoom in or something like that. It also allows you to do something like hold multiple "keys" down on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard (like holding "Shift" + "A" at the same time, instead of tapping "Shift" and then tapping "A").

As for using your trackpad for gestures, see something like http://www.flyingmeat.com/flygesture/ or the Abracadabra plugin for QuickSilver. Personally, though, I prefer using multiple finger swipes to do things as they require far less accuracy. Swiping down with three or four fingers is a lot easier than drawing a loop-de-loop or whatever with my mouse, only to have the computer not recognize the gesture anyways.

only thing im confused about is on the main article where it says 4 finger swipe up/down activated expose. on mine, 4 finger swipe down activates expose and 4 finger swipe up shows the desktop. is that just a typo or is my macbook weird?

"At present, the 4-finger gestures only allow you to switch applications (swipe left/right) or invoke Exposé (swipe up/down). This preference pane would potentially allow you to instead assign these swipes to other functions, such as switching between Spaces, showing your Desktop, loading Dashboard and more."

Show Desktop is an Exposé feature. Your Mac is normal. :) When they introduced Exposé in 10.3 you had F9 - All App Windows, F10 - Current App Windows, F11 - Show Desktop.

Excuse my ignorance... What is Quicksilver?

It’s most commonly used as an application launcher. You hit a hotkey (default Control-Space), and a small little window pops up that lets you type in a couple of letters of an application, and then you can launch it. It’s faster than Spotlight, though, and for keyboard junkies it’s a lot faster than using the Dock.

They’ve expanded it to do many other things, though. Through plugins you can do stuff like using hotkeys or gestures instead of typing it out. You can add files and folders, iTunes music, contacts, bookmarks, etc. to its “Index” of items, and you can do more than just open these items (there’s “actions” for tagging files, rating music, copying stuff, revealing things in Finder, displaying text in large type, math functions, etc. etc. etc.).

An alternative app is called LaunchBar (it’s not free though).

[Bengt77]

Who, in his right mind, would vote negative on this story? What is not to like about custom, user-defined four finger gestures?

I find this absolutely useless, I don't use a track pad and find it stupid that I have to swipe 4 Fingers to do what I can do with a keyboard shortcut. I like Multi touch usefull in devices like the Iphone of a tablet PC but on a normal laptop? Bleh
Motioning my hand to the trackpad to do a four finger swipe is, for me, a lot faster than reaching with both hands to two separate keys (the fn and F9/F10/F11 keys). The trackpad is so much larger then the keys, it's way easier to find and reach for as well.

[TJMeier]

is there any way to use 2 finger gesture to go back a page in safari?

3 fingers should let you go back or forward a page.

[SugaredJuggler]

Related to the news, there is a way to enable 4 finger gestures on any 2008 MacBook Airs/Pros.

Have a look here
http://www.super-poultry.com/2008/12/4-finger-multi-touch-for-older-mbps/

Dude! That is awesome, I have been thinking about trying to get the four finger gestures on my MBP for a while but never looked into it. Has anyone here actually tried that and does it work? I am a little nervous deleting some things that it asks for but I might just backup and give it a go, so worth the four finger multi touch!

[T-Will]

Please Apple, when will you enable the 10 finger gesture?????/////

[ppdix]

So your point is that you didn't have to learn the stuff since you could cheat.

Oh no, I learnt a lot. The Casio was just a helping tool... Just like people can't spell right now thanx to word processors with spell checkers...
;)

[mkrishnan]

Unless you have tried it, no, it's no more cumbersome than any of the other number fingers. It works just as well. You just need a slightly larger trackpad to fit all four fingers. I'm on an early MBP, and the 4-fingers is a wonderful addition.

Thanks for the insight -- I guess it still seems quite cumbersome to me, and perhaps I am a bit on the clumsy side also. :o But I hold to my point that it isn't particularly ergonomically sensible in the way that (most) iPhone gestures are -- there's nothing about a four finger swipe that particularly relates it to what is being done.

[chr1s60]

Dude! That is awesome, I have been thinking about trying to get the four finger gestures on my MBP for a while but never looked into it. Has anyone here actually tried that and does it work? I am a little nervous deleting some things that it asks for but I might just backup and give it a go, so worth the four finger multi touch!

I just did this and it works great! I recommend it to any MBP owners out there that really want the 4 finger gestures.

[mrkgoo]

Dude! That is awesome, I have been thinking about trying to get the four finger gestures on my MBP for a while but never looked into it. Has anyone here actually tried that and does it work? I am a little nervous deleting some things that it asks for but I might just backup and give it a go, so worth the four finger multi touch!

I don't know what that site says, but I've been using 4-finger on my MBP (early '08) since 10.5.6 showed up. I didn't down load the files, but edited my own - it's actually bigger hassle, because OSX caches the files and it requires some cache deleting and reboots. Downloading the files should work, assuming they've changed the appropriate things.

[ppdix]

This is nothing like what the iPhone does; it’s not multitouch. This is just a plain old touch sensitivity.

I was referring to the swipe left gesture that the iphone has. It was done like that 25 years ago. The Casio, just like the iPhone, had Zones on its screen. Of course the iPhone has more but the purpose is the same. Moving from one zone to the other the screen recognizes the sequence and draws the right character or command.
It should be super simple to implement. Just wait and see. A third party will think of it and they will make a bundle.

[macswitcha2]

Apple bugs at times. Why not in the new unibody macbooks?

[mrkgoo]

I was referring to the swipe left gesture that the iphone has. It was done like that 25 years ago. The Casio, just like the iPhone, had Zones on its screen. Of course the iPhone has more but the purpose is the same. Moving from one zone to the other the screen recognizes the sequence and draws the right character or command.
It should be super simple to implement. Just wait and see. A third party will think of it and they will make a bundle.

That's gesture recognition, not multitouch.

Anyway, it's much harder to implement in a standard touchpad, because the pad is used for normal navigation of a pointer around the screen - how do you separate that from an actual gesture? THAT is not easy. It was easy on the calculator, because it didn't need to interpret normal touches as anything else.

[Sweetfeld28]

The site speculates that this functionality may find its way into Snow Leopard though it has not yet been spotted in the developer builds. Meanwhile, owners of previous generation multi-touch MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs are hoping to get four-finger gestures enabled on their machines with a future software update.

One could only hope this would happen, i still wonder why they haven't enabled it for all the MacBook Pros, and MacBooks.

[xDYLANx]

I, for some reason, have had no recent constructive comments on anything cool. So may I just say...Hell Yeah! Of course, I will have no opportunity to take advantage of these...my plastic MB is jealous

[rdowns]

is there any way to use 2 finger gesture to go back a page in safari?

3 fingers left to go back a page in Safari.

3 fingers right to go forward.

[Digitalclips]

"customizable-4-finger-gestures-snow-leopard"
And the lawyers are already preparing the lawsuits for three fingered people claiming discrimination by Apple.

[rockosmodurnlif]

Pfft ... I'll be impressed when I can type from the trackpad.

[Kilamite]

is there any way to use 2 finger gesture to go back a page in safari?

That wouldn't be good if someone hacked it to do that - what if you have a full 2D scrolling window in Safari (horizontal and vertical)? Two fingers currently scrolls in that. Making it go back would disable that functionality..

[briansolomon]

Apple needs to release a USB trackpad that takes advantage of things like this!

Unlikely, yes. But how cool would it be if you could add this functionality to MacBooks, iMacs, MacPros for say $100

Who's with me?!

[mikeinternet]

looking forward to this.

the up and down commands are great. but i don't really switch between apps with the this.

[Mackan]

Who, in his right mind, would vote negative on this story? What is not to like about custom, user-defined four finger gestures?

It's not about that Einstein. It's the fact that you most likely have to buy new hardware to use this new gestures, even if old hardware (current Unibody MacBooks) also supports it via a simple software update. That's how Apple does it business... Very greedy.

[andylo]

Apple should just bundle the mighty mouse with the Macbooks.... Much Much Much better that way.

[Jayomat]

nice! however, this should have been implemented ever since ;)

[twoodcc]

i think this would be great. i just need it on my 1st gen macbook air though

[iMaggot]

I don't think i need it, but hey why not :cool:

[danbirchall]

So I guess in a couple years we'll have MacBooks with trackpads that can sense gestures given using six fingMY NAME IS INIGO MONTOYA. YOU KILLED MY FATHER. PREPARE TO DIE.

[MacMuttonchops]

It's not about that Einstein. It's the fact that you most likely have to buy new hardware to use this new gestures, even if old hardware (current Unibody MacBooks) also supports it via a simple software update. That's how Apple does it business... Very greedy.

And how else do you expect them to support the new HARDWARE-DRIVEN features without the new hardware? Have the fairies that upgrade systems skip my apartment every night?

[DB2k]

I find this absolutely useless, I don't use a track pad and find it stupid that I have to swipe 4 Fingers to do what I can do with a keyboard shortcut. I like Multi touch usefull in devices like the Iphone of a tablet PC but on a normal laptop? Bleh

what? you don't and indeed CAN'T use it and you think its rubbish? well you're hardly best placed to talk are you!! In fact its easier and quicker to use the touchpad to do things like that. you dont need to look for the key and a lot of the time the hand is on the trackpad anyway.
multi touch gestures are imo very useful now I have a macbook as well as the imac.


Also why does the original article mention it would be possible to show the desktop? my macbook shipped with a 4 finger gesture that does that - swipe up.

[JackSYi]

This is great. Hate how users have to wait.

[mrklaw]

why leave it out? seems arbitrary to allow customising of other gestures but not 4-fingers? Maybe there is a practical reason.


I love the new trackpad, but I'm not completely sold on it. the 'twist to refresh pages' that firefox uses isn't completely reliable. I tend to rest my thumb at the bottom of the trackpad ready to click, and when I move my pointer down, that sometimes registers as a twist and the page refreshes. Very annoying. If my thumb isn't moving, ignore the damn thing.

I also tend to get the four finger swipe wrong every time - I naturally swipe up for expose (no idea why) so end up having to undo it, then do it properly. So I'd like to be able to customise up & down to both do expose.

[A Pittarelli]

this is going to be great for a new app i want to develop!

[ingenious]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Now this is what multitouch should be. This is the kind of technology that we should be seeing not the mediocre crap we call Gestures. Sort of a Multitouch version of Quicksilver.

Excuse my ignorance... What is Quicksilver?

Uh oh, someone just asked what the revered QuickSilver is... Not that I use it anyway! :)

By any means, I find the 4-fingure gestures to be VERY useful on my unibody MacBook Pro. It would be nice to be able to assign new ones, too, for going into spaces, switching to a specific app, or whatever.

[ingenious]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

The only weakness I see with the "show desktop" swipe right now is with dragging be dropping. If I swipe to view desktop and grab something, I have to stetch with the other hand to hit fn+f11 to get back where I was. It's a bit cumbersome.

[Ploki]

anyone enabled it yet?

ingenius: drag and drop what, icons? its easy?

[flottenheimer]

I enjoy the swipes just the way they have been assigned. They are incredibly useful. The ability to customize them would be great though. Especially if it was application specific (for any app).

[ingenious]

anyone enabled it yet?

ingenius: drag and drop what, icons? its easy?

Files, clippings, anything- it's difficult to get it all to work together.

Say you're working in safari but need the .jpg on your desktop, so you do the four-fingered swipe, select it, and beginto drag. How to you get back to safari?! Only by KEEPING the button down while pressing fn+f11! How ridiculous.. And how lucky for me my hands are huge!

[yegon]

Multiclutch is ace, unbelievable that the equivalent isn't bundled default.

As for the supposed uselessness of all these gestures, pfft, for browsing purposes I'd actually prefer using the glass pad for browsing these days, it's far more efficient than using mouse and shortcuts as I barely have to move my hands.

In Firefox I have 3 up/down for back/forward, 3 left/right to switch tabs. It's ace, I never thought I'd actually prefer a trackpad to mouse/keyb for general browsing.

[Primejimbo]

Can I just get the iSight camera to recognize a certain one-finger gesture?

LMAO!!! No kidding!!

This whole new track pad is just awesome and I hope they do all of this.

[parapup]

This looks like it is going to be excellent fodder for the Onion News Network guys! :D

I can foresee another 'news item' coming -

Apple's new revolutionary MultiTouchBook (C)
02.14.09
Cupertino, CA —Apple today unveiled the latest innovation in notebook computers - a 'touch anywhere' computer that can respond differently based on where and how it is touched.

Business users however were left wondering if the computer was smart enough not to embarrass them by making naughty gestures when accidentally pinched at the bottom. MORE»

Happy Valentine's Day Folks!

[lars666]

To be honest, I don't really understand why this isn't already possible right now - even for 3-finger and 2-finger-gestures. I'd really like to program the multi touch gestures the way I like which would also include a gesture to open the dashboard. Anyway, there a little program called "MultiClutch" (think it wasn't mentioned before) which lets you individually program the 3-finger-gestures. As I had problems to configure it the way I like (I think it was a problem for me to program the "F"-keys, if I remember correctly), I don't use it, but mabye it is useful for some folks out there ...

[alexbates]

This sounds great! I wish they could have it on the old Macs also.

[flottenheimer]

Apple should just bundle the mighty mouse with the Macbooks.... Much Much Much better that way.
The Mighty Mouse is crap, imo. Apple sucks at designing mice.

[Sehnsucht]

Apple needs to release a USB trackpad that takes advantage of things like this!

It should be a FireWire trackpad. Ohhh, no I just didn't!! :D :D

[MacFly123]

I would like a wireless trackpad so I can place on the floor and use my bare feet for invoking expose´ and switching between apps. It's really a workout hitting the F11 key all day long.

I don't know a single person who actually uses the F-Keys to use expose etc. Haven't you ever seen the hot corners in expose??? I can't live without them :D

P.S. I just got my new 15" MacBook Pro and I LOVE the multi-touch trackpad and can't wait for more :)

The Mighty Mouse is crap, imo. Apple sucks at designing mice.

I honestly use to HATE the mighty mouse, but after I tried to be a little open minded and just give it a shot I would never go back now. I do wish the scroll ball was a little bigger or something, but I can't live without the 360 scroll and middle button for spaces. I love the left and right click sensing in one, and it just looks nice and simple. Now when I look at other mouse designs like Logitech and Microsoft they look so ridiculous and ugly to me.

[WardC]

More ways to accidentally totally interrupt your programs and be splashed to some dashboard deal or widget central because you accidentally brushed by your trackpad in the wrong way.

Sick and tired of the mighty mouse defaulting all these features, I always have to turn them off.

I am all for back-in the day PowerBook 5300 style trackpads again...

WITH A REAL DAMN BUTTON!!!!!!!!! (not a pad/button all-in-one)

Sorry for being so grr-ish on Valentine's Day, but this issue is a major pet peave of mine.

In other words...I don't give a *** about any of this Expose or Dashboard crap, it's extra overhead and it gets in the way. (in my kind opinion) I never, never use it, I find it utterly useless. I option-click and hide apps in the background, I minimize windows, I do anything you could have done in Mac OS 7 - yes. Everything on one screen, in one desktop environment. As a matter of fact I actually think that Mac OS X has cut down on the speed of the hardware, basically referring to using the Finder, I feel sometimes that a G3 running Classic would be much snappier than a Core2 Duo ~4GB RAM running 10.5.6.

eh.

[RTiii320]

well i can't really see how this being an option can really be a bad thing.. people always complain about not having enough personalization. Well for all of you, here you are.:p

[rneglia]

borr-ing!

wake me up when there's some real news.

i'll be playing Lexulous!

[aznguyen316]

well i can't really see how this being an option can really be a bad thing.. people always complain about not having enough personalization. Well for all of you, here you are.:p

I agree, although I def use the expose 4 finger gesture and I have expose binded to a mouse key as well.

[begoo]

Been following this story..can't wait to try on my mac

[vinaymenon]

is there any way to use 2 finger gesture to go back a page in safari?

I've just found that a 3-finger swipe can take you back and forward in Safari! In Mail, it seems to go up and down the list of messages.

Vinay Menon

[koobcamuk]

I honestly use to HATE the mighty mouse, but after I tried to be a little open minded and just give it a shot I would never go back now. I do wish the scroll ball was a little bigger or something, but I can't live without the 360 scroll and middle button for spaces. I love the left and right click sensing in one, and it just looks nice and simple. Now when I look at other mouse designs like Logitech and Microsoft they look so ridiculous and ugly to me.

I've got a bluetooth logitech mouse and won't turn back. Sure the Mighty Mouse looks good, but I want a mouse that actually works properly...

[Gunga Din]

Whats next ? 5 finger gestures? We gonna end up with 10 finger gestures? lol

Maybe I can use my toes too.

[Andreios]

I really like the multi-touch gestures on my MacBook Pro. Can't wait to have some more. :)

[jazz4ivo]

Are these gestures available on older MBPros via a software update?

[vanka74]

I seriously hope that apple enables this feature for existing macbook pros with multi-touch touchpad hardware. When I invested in this macbook pro 4 months ago, Apple advertised this "hardware" feature as being something other software developers could expand on and take advantage of and never implied that the current scroll, pinch, zoom, and rotate features were all we'd ever get out of it. Lets hope not! So far, most of the existing features are the least bit impressive other than the scroll features which even my older mac laptop did. So, if they go and specifically block these new and more useful features, that would certainly be a questionable and shady maneuver. One shouldn't have to purchase a new laptop for a few new multi-touch features when they already own the capable hardware they promoted as being expandable. Especially when the existing features have hardly helped the multi-touch trackpad live up to expectations.

[SactoGuy18]

The Mighty Mouse is crap, imo. Apple sucks at designing mice.

I've actually tried using the Logitech MX400 USB mouse under MacOS X 10.5 and it works quite well--you can scroll sideways in addition to up and down and "heft" of the MX400 makes it easier to do really precise mouse pointing. I also like the fact the MX400 fits my hand very comfortably like the MX500 mouse I'm using right now. :)

[BTW]

If you could tie-in to automater that would definitely be cool. :D It is too bad they haven't enabled this yet.

[MacFly123]

Are these gestures available on older MBPros via a software update?

Even though it was implied in the article, I ABSOLUTELY PROMISE you that when Apple implements more multi-touch and customization etc. they will NOT update older MacBook Pros or any other of their computers with those functions. Only the hardware that currently has multi-touch namely: MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air will be able to do it all. That is just the way it works people. Apple has to sell new computers. They will probably make some new mouse or trackpad for the desktops when Snow Leopard comes out too. Can't wait :D I LOVE my new MacBook Pro :D

[ZiRo]

Apple announces 5-Finger gestures patch beta, codenamed 'fisting'

[Llaird]

So Apple will next patent the 5-finger-exploding-Laptop technique...

[gcortega]

Don't understand why this option wasn't implemented when 4 finger swipe came out..

[Prom1]

Funny I recall S60 had an app store - although CRAPPY - long before the iPhone (Download!) as it was called.

Woops wrong thread!

[docmars]

Hmm... Snow Leopard doesn't seem to have the 4-finger customizable gestures as promised (or rumored, I should say)...

I was really hoping for it, unless I'm blind.

[Sweetfeld28]

Yes, i was saddened by learning the same. I'm disappointed to say the least.

[celtikmind]

Even though it was implied in the article, I ABSOLUTELY PROMISE you that when Apple implements more multi-touch and customization etc. they will NOT update older MacBook Pros or any other of their computers with those functions. Only the hardware that currently has multi-touch namely: MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air will be able to do it all. That is just the way it works people. Apple has to sell new computers. They will probably make some new mouse or trackpad for the desktops when Snow Leopard comes out too. Can't wait :D I LOVE my new MacBook Pro :D

I'm confused, shouldn't Apple support their users/customers instead of the other way around?

Either way - as time passes, all things grow older... :p

[officepet]

I really like the multi-touch gestures on my MacBook Pro. Can't wait to have some more. :)

Love it too. But are you running snow leopard? my four-finger always swipes with a "glitch" when the first time I swipe it in snow leopard. it goes smooth afterwards, anyone else's experiencing this? :confused: