Old MBP. Do we get the 4 finger swipe as well???

[michaelb]

I can confirm the four finger gesture is possible on pre-October 2008 laptops, and I currently have four finger Exposé and Application Switching working on my January 2008 MacBook Air.

Here's what I did:

My girlfriend recently bought a new unibody MacBook. Just for kicks, and being insanely jealous of her four finger Exposé ability I installed the system it came with on my 1st gen MacBook Air.

(This required hacking Apple's installer to ignore machine checks to avoid the "Mac OS X cannot be installed" obstacle. The method to do that is here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=371302 )

This got the latest, slightly updated 10.5.5 system (with the energy efficient bulb in the System Preferences) on my first generation Air.

However, I was disappointed it didn't show "Four Finger gestures" in the Trackpad system preference, just the old standard gesture. I had a hunch it was possible though, so...

I then examined the kernel extension "AppleUSBMultitouch.kext" (the one installed with the new 10.5.5 unibody OS X).

This Info.plist of this kext contains several entries for what looks like different makes of trackpads. I noticed that some of them had two keys that the others did not:

<key>TrackpadFourFingerGestures</key>
<true/>
<key>TrackpadSecondaryClickCorners</key>
<true/>

I didn't know which model trackpad my Air has and it didn't really matter, as I copied those keys to all entries.

Once the AppleUSBMultitouch.kext was modified (and permissions restored), I rebooted and, hey presto!, there is the Four Fingers entry in the System Preferences.

Four finger Exposé on my January 2008 MacBook Air now works just as it does on the unibody MacBook.

(Secondary click, where you click the bottom right corner of the trackpad to get a right-click, is also there, but only seem to work in combination with the Air's physical button - haven't worked that one out yet, and don't really care as I am used to soft two finger clicking for right-click.)

I suspect this would work on all later model multitouch trackpads.

[lauph]

Originally Posted by michaelb

I can confirm the four finger gesture is possible on pre-October 2008 laptops, and I currently have four finger Exposé and Application Switching working on my January 2008 MacBook Air.

Here's what I did:

My girlfriend recently bought a new unibody MacBook. Just for kicks, and being insanely jealous of her four finger Exposé ability I installed the system it came with on my 1st gen MacBook Air.

(This required hacking Apple's installer to ignore machine checks to avoid the "Mac OS X cannot be installed" obstacle. The method to do that is here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=371302 )

This got the latest, slightly updated 10.5.5 system (with the energy efficient bulb in the System Preferences) on my first generation Air.

However, I was disappointed it didn't show "Four Finger gestures" in the Trackpad system preference, just the old standard gesture. I had a hunch it was possible though, so...

I then examined the kernel extension "AppleUSBMultitouch.kext" (the one installed with the new 10.5.5 unibody OS X).

This Info.plist of this kext contains several entries for what looks like different makes of trackpads. I noticed that some of them had two keys that the others did not:

<key>TrackpadFourFingerGestures</key>
<true/>
<key>TrackpadSecondaryClickCorners</key>
<true/>

I didn't know which model trackpad my Air has and it didn't really matter, as I copied those keys to all entries.

Once the AppleUSBMultitouch.kext was modified (and permissions restored), I rebooted and, hey presto!, there is the Four Fingers entry in the System Preferences.

Four finger Exposé on my January 2008 MacBook Air now works just as it does on the unibody MacBook.

(Secondary click, where you click the bottom right corner of the trackpad to get a right-click, is also there, but only seem to work in combination with the Air's physical button - haven't worked that one out yet, and don't really care as I am used to soft two finger clicking for right-click.)

I suspect this would work on all later model multitouch trackpads.

can you upload that kext? or must there be many other components for it to work other than just the kext?

[TBi]

Originally Posted by michaelb

<SNIP>
(Secondary click, where you click the bottom right corner of the trackpad to get a right-click, is also there, but only seem to work in combination with the Air's physical button - haven't worked that one out yet, and don't really care as I am used to soft two finger clicking for right-click.)

I suspect this would work on all later model multitouch trackpads.

Good work getting this to work with the older model!

About the right click, remember the whole trackpad on the newer model is a button. So more than likely the right click only happens when the pad is 'clicking', which is why you need to use the button on your laptop.

[fjk]

Originally Posted by michaelb

This Info.plist of this kext contains several entries for what looks like different makes of trackpads. I noticed that some of them had two keys that the others did not:

<key>TrackpadFourFingerGestures</key>
<true/>
<key>TrackpadSecondaryClickCorners</key>
<true/>

I didn't know which model trackpad my Air has and it didn't really matter, as I copied those keys to all entries.

Once the AppleUSBMultitouch.kext was modified (and permissions restored), I rebooted and, hey presto!, there is the Four Fingers entry in the System Preferences.

Just to be clear, this is all you really have to do. The kext in 10.5.6 update already has those entries for what is probably the trackpad in the LATE-2008 MBP. So just add those strings from the LATE-2008 trackpad's entry to the other trackpad entries and voila. Restore permissions and reboot. Done.

BTW I used plistedit in order to copy/paste those strings to the other entries. You do NOT need to download any other kext files, the AppleUSBMultitouch.kext in 10.5.6 has what you need.