Tomorrow is Tuesday. I wonder if it will come out then. Maybe not because it JUST got approved today.
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Apple's 'Magic Trackpad' Apparently Approved by FCC
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I prefer a good trackpad -- like the ones on Apple notebooks -- to a mouse.
The magic mouse is OK, but the thing I like best about it, the scrolling with momentum, is likely to be even better in an Apple track pad.
Hmmn, that can't happen, it will make its price high.
The guys at Apple must be thinking that desktop Mac's OS already supports gesture, why not use it? A touch screen could be great but aside from finger prints it will make the iMac's price so high.
The solution?! A bluetooth trackpad aka the Magic Trackpad. It will allow gesture controls and touch based character input.
As a touch interface, it would be nice if they allow pen input so we can use basic pen-tablet tasks.
Are you joking?
A good multi-touch trackpad will be the END of the mouse and perhaps for a better world.
It's speculative, and I have my doubts. Maybe they'll surprise me, but Apple's mice have been consistently half-assed products as far as I am concerned. Why no one (including MS) hasn't made a "mouse" as brilliant as the MS Intellipoint Thumbball 5-button input device with scroll wheel confounds me. The moment an Apple magic trackpad can do all functions of the MS Thumbball device, I'm sold.
If the magic trackpad could kill the Wacom tablet, I'd be impressed. Let's be realistic, though: Apple has no precedent for brilliant input devices. Could this break that bone dry streak?
Please see my earlier (page 2) comment. Could also be "universal" screen for MBP, etc. AND the Apple TV. Seems like some rumours are converging. I like the trackpads, but if it's not right below the keyboard, makes sense to have a limited screen as part of the device. And iOS is "cheap" for Apple, as is a stripped down A4 that only has to handle a screen and bluetooth. $150 and a 5 inch touch screen would give Logitech and Monster, etc. a real run for their money. That barrel on the bottom would hold a lot of battery...
A 7 inch with a capacitive stylus would really give Wacom nightmares.
Just a(nother) thought (or two).
This would seem a useful remote for the Apple TV. Perhaps it might be used with an iPad that is on an upright stand also?
I would too... But as a lefty, I know it would end up on the wrong side for me, so I can appreciate this design. I can put it on the left and you can put it wherever it is you want to put it.
Makes it not so useful for a home theater setup -- who wants to keep track of two things. Maybe it comes with a clip or something so you could attach it to a keyboard??? Probably not. Seems too inelegant for Apple. Third parties would do it, though, in any case.
Use of Term "Magic" Wearing Thin
First, I admit I am a "fan boy" of Apple products but lately the adjective "magic" in relation to their new products is well......irritating.
As an engineer I know what is in there and pretty much how it all works. Worse, I know that engineers are just people and make mistakes. So where is this "magic"?
Does Apple think they are selling products to Bushmen or something?
I find the term "magic" used in relation to any technology product to be a bit condescending.
First, I admit I am a "fan boy" of Apple products but lately the adjective "magic" in relation to their new products is well......irritating.
As an engineer I know what is in there and pretty much how it all works. Worse, I know that engineers are just people and make mistakes. So where is this "magic"?
Does Apple think they are selling products to Bushmen or something?
I find the term "magic" used in relation to any technology product to be a bit condescending.
Yes, but a whole lot of us use MBP's connected to external monitors. My MBP is on a stand next to the ACD. While I much prefer to use a trackpad than a mouse, I can't do so using this setup. I'm looking forward to the new trackpad!
Definitly for a new ios apple tv, so with this you don't need a touch screen TV
Also does anyone know how big it is?
Also does anyone know how big it is?
Nice! Why can't we get a PC equivalent?
Your windows' got multitouch? Didn't think so.
Is there a new iMac coming out soon? Some sites say the Magic Trackpad will be used to control a "touch capable" layer on top of OSX running on the new iMacs. And an iPad can be used if you don't have a Trackpad thingy!
iMpoddible.
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First, I admit I am a "fan boy" of Apple products but lately the adjective "magic" in relation to their new products is well......irritating.
As an engineer I know what is in there and pretty much how it all works. Worse, I know that engineers are just people and make mistakes. So where is this "magic"?
Does Apple think they are selling products to Bushmen or something?
I find the term "magic" used in relation to any technology product to be a bit condescending.
I don't think they are suggesting that there is magic involved literally.
I guess it would have been more accurate to call it the Apple multi-touch bluetooth laser mouse. But we'd all fall ... asleep ... before we ... zzz
A quick question
If I may ask, how much time per day a typical user spends on this website. I joined few days back but must admit I am totally addicted
Way to go fanboys!
If I may ask, how much time per day a typical user spends on this website. I joined few days back but must admit I am totally addicted
Way to go fanboys!
agree@ "magic" naming.... Its pretty ridiculous. I love the name "Mighty Mouse," but I think "Magic Mouse" is pretty childish and stupid sounding....
Oh well.
This track pad + iMac = Mega-win.
Oh well.
This track pad + iMac = Mega-win.
i wouldn't mind seeing a trackpad with a mac mini in the living room. using a trackpad in the living room makes since, a mouse just wouldn't work correctly, or feel right. that said i feel like this will be used for several products, including desktops, and the new apple tv that's rumored to run iOS. seems a perfect fit.
I really hope that this is a wireless trackpad that can be compatible with the current iMac. I much prefer the trackpad on my Macbook pro for the small differences between it and the magic mouse. If it works the same as the MBP track pad I will pay for one for sure.
If I may ask, how much time per day a typical user spends on this website. I joined few days back but must admit I am totally addicted
Way to go fanboys!
Macrumors is the gateway drug to actually purchasing apple products, so be careful. It only snowballs from here!
And mice are not as fast as keyboard shortcuts in many apps if you know how to use them. It just depends on the person and what they are used to and what kind of apps they are using. Someone who only uses a laptop will be much more adept to using a trackpad.
That's a gesture-based remote control, and I'd call that the bare minimum approach. i would expect Apple to go beyond.
Honestly, a display-less input device needs a proxy on screen. For a standard trackpad on a single-pointer desktop OS, that proxy is the mouse pointer. For a multitouch OS, that proxy would be a single "pointer" per detected finger, with feedback on position versus click/drag pressures, etc.
A near-field sensor wouldn't be hard to add in, but yes, I wouldn't expect it here either. I suspect that we'll either see a physical "click" to distinguish "hovering" finger positioning from "acting" fingers (but then you only have a single "click" and have to lift off any fingers you don't want to be a part of that gesture, which is annoying) or a pressure sensitive feedback system (perhaps a haptic response directly under the finger when it crosses/uncrosses the "click" pressure boundary, plus an on-screen visible change on the "pointer" for that finger, which is redundant when you only have one pointer to track but critical when you have six to ten).
If I were designing this, I'd give the device a 1:1 proxy model (but ONLY if it is large enough that that gives reasonable precision for finger movements), use positional haptic responses for clicks/drags, and on-screen feedback for all gestures. This would be rather hard to do on a desktop model OS which is designed expecting the mouse pointer to be unobtrusive and singular, but not so difficult for an iOS-style multi-touch OS.
Wacomm-like sensitivity? Nah, I don't think so. It should be sensitive enough to match the rather imprecise multi-finger inputs, but not moreso. A super-sensitive workpad would end up "throwing away" most of its sensitivity so that it doesn't appear hyper-touchy when someone puts their fingers down on it. While at first it might be funny to see your finger-tip pulse register on-screen, it would quickly get old when that pulse is keeping you from dropping the cutout image in the right place in Photoshop.
I don't expect Apple to give a graphics tablet here, but instead to provide a "next step" in UI for the masses.
First, I admit I am a "fan boy" of Apple products but lately the adjective "magic" in relation to their new products is well......irritating.
As an engineer I know what is in there and pretty much how it all works. Worse, I know that engineers are just people and make mistakes. So where is this "magic"?
Does Apple think they are selling products to Bushmen or something?
I find the term "magic" used in relation to any technology product to be a bit condescending.
Yes, from a scientific point of view, sure, you're right. But when normal people use Apple products, they always go like "Oh my god how is that possible?" like the iPod clickwheel, two finger scrolling, the accelerometer, the touchscreen, and now the touch-mouse. Before Apple, no one really saw stuff like this work in a useful way that they could understand.
For example, scrolling with a trackpad has always been around, but it sucked, and still does on Windows. But scrolling with two fingers is just so damn simple, easy and not very different from the original concept.
Now multi-touch is still something that isn't present in most people's everyday lives, so pinching and rotating with your fingers is kind of awesomely cool, thus magical. I like the term "magic" because it sort of means "don't worry about how it works, it just works". Just like with magic, you KNOW that it isn't exactly magic: you know the magician is tricking you into thinking something that isn't real, the same applies to the Magic Mouse: you know there's hardware and software working hard to allow you to scroll like that, but at the same time you just enjoy not thinking about it and just doing it.