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Multi-touch MacBooks Coming?

iPhoneBook

I would like to have a shallow recess in place of the trackpad into which I could lay my iPhone and have it function as a trackpad/phone card/system lock/sync port. Of course that would mess you up if you misplaced or (shudder) lost the phone.

That gets me wondering if Apple will allow you to remotely track/deactivate a stolen iPhone. At those prices, stealing an iPhone probably would be a felony in many jurisdictions. I wonder if Apple has the ability to make a stolen iPhone surreptitiously take and transmit pictures? Hmm.
 
Spock said:
Well for the Nintendo fan-boys, the Nintendo DS uses a touchscreen and the DS is NOT a GameBoy and your post really makes no sense to me, last time I checked this was 2007 not 1992.
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Thanks for checking the date, I'd check it too if I knew where to find it on my iBook Pro!
 
I don't use two fingers on the trackpad as it is. The last thing I want is ADDITIONAL functionality requiring multi-touch.

The one good thing about the trackpad is that I can drop down a thumb and use it without removing my fingers from the keyboard. If I had to move my hand back and forth, that would just really slow me down. (personally, my optimal pointing interface is a trackpoint (ala thinkpads))
 
I'm sure that Apple will be testing this extensively to make sure that it improves the experience above and beyond the trackpad even though its hard to imagine, if they don't people simply won't purchase it (or will and be disappointed severely).
 
 
Great recollection of relavant articles brucebrendon, looking at these just brings a smile at how great this could possibly be!
 
Uhuh.

New feature in Leopard. Shall be compatible with all multitouch trackpads.

No multitouchscreen anythings for a few years yet, and almost certainly not made by Apple. There is no market. If you think you want one, chances are, you really don't, you just think you do.
 
hands on

well i'd love a hands on interface, the possibilities within app's like ableton and the like would be great and i'd like to think give far more scope for natural creativity.
yeah you can get plugin controllers and wacoms but these are fixed and additional (clutter, expense...)
i see a hands on interface allowing so much more involvement, experience, and interactivity within games would to me resemble Wii2.0, ha punched screen claims coming right up!
 
brucebrendon said:
well i'd love a hands on interface, the possibilities within app's like ableton and the like would be great and i'd like to think give far more scope for natural creativity.
yeah you can get plugin controllers and wacoms but these are fixed and additional (clutter, expense...)
i see a hands on interface allowing so much more involvement, experience, and interactivity within games would to me resemble Wii2.0, ha punched screen claims coming right up!
Click to expand...

yea ain't happenin... this is apple, not fantasy land
 
While this would be most logically implemented into a laptop, I'd like to use it on my desktops. After using my iPhone for a little while, I'll sit down at my G4 and my hand's first reaction is to want to use multi-touch. I want to pinch, scroll and drag websites and pictures with my fingers. I'm sure there are USB trackpads out there, or even bluetooth. iPhone-like Multi-touch functionality built into these things would be fun. I'm not sure if it would make a good replacement for a mouse just yet, but it would be a nice sidekick, imo.
 
I want to see this touch screen multi-touch stuff in my 11" MacBook Mini. We as Apple fans need to stop dreaming about machines that we wish Apple would make for us, then never buy them because they are too expensive or for the smallest possible reason. We need to urge Apple to make useful technology that people have been asking for for months.

How many 12" PowerBook owners are waiting for a book smaller and lighter with better battery life than the MacBook? I have a couple in my neck of the woods that are still holding on to 1.33 GHz/ 1.5GHz/ 867MHz PowerBooks in hopes that a lighter sleeker machine comes along.

How about that iPod 6G? Where the hell is that? E-Nuff said. :mad:

How many users want that MacPro Mini, with half the specs at half the price? There is about as much of a market for this machine as there is the ultra portable notebooks, but Apple can turn that market into something like they did with the iPod. I am looking for useful tech that can actually change the way we compute... not stagnate it.

Give me my touch-screen tablet Mac, not some expensive 20" iMac with iPhone features, or a notebook I plug my toy iPhone into to make it work, or some crazy fantasy land gadget that is useless. Give me a "REAL" iPhone that doesn't lock you into Cingular.... or anyone for that matter. Let me buy the device and use it like I want to.... that is revolutionary... not statis quo.

And I am still waiting for my real 8 Core Mac Pro along with Multimedia and my quad core 17" MacBook Pro with BlueRay/HD-DVD.

Where is my Apple that gave real updates and real tech improvements? I thought this was 2007... why is apple still trying to improve the 20th century when they could be building the 21st.
 
I have to agree with some of you...this is gonna be a software update...one of the "hidden" features of Leopard for all of us that have a trackpad. This is nothing huge, but it makes it easier to use your computer. zooming in and out will be seemless instead of having to click on a magnifying glass etc...

flicking will work in cover flow which will make finding things easier than clicking the arrows on the menu bar.

can't wait. wish i had that functionality on my laptop today.
 
blindzero said:
I have to agree with some of you...this is gonna be a software update...one of the "hidden" features of Leopard for all of us that have a trackpad. This is nothing huge, but it makes it easier to use your computer. zooming in and out will be seemless instead of having to click on a magnifying glass etc...

flicking will work in cover flow which will make finding things easier than clicking the arrows on the menu bar.

can't wait. wish i had that functionality on my laptop today.
Click to expand...

Actually OS X already features a wonderful zoom feature with the touch pad. Just use your two fingers on the touch pad and press the ctrl key and it allows you to zoom into any part of the screen. You can even move the zoom level around with your fingers and edit items like this post. It's pretty handy in photoshop.

Also, someone mentioned they didn't want an iMac with iPhone touch capabilities. I actually think an iMac with these features would be great so long as it was smaller (15") and could be attached and detached from the stand and used as a tablet. I don't know if tablets have reached the level of maturity that would encourage Apple to take the plunge into the market but I would love to have a Mac tablet.
 
tveric said:
I'm not sure that they're not just using the term "MacBook" to refer to both MBs and MBPs. I remember how everyone seemed to think it was a horrible idea when they changed the names from "iBook" and "PowerBook", and one sense in which it seems the majority was right was the fact that the term "MacBook" seems to be used the way the word "Coke" is used in the deep South.... it can refer to Coke, but it's also used to refer to Sprite, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, etc...

"You want a coke?" "Sure." "What kind, Coke, Sprite, root beer?"

"You buying a macbook?" "Yeah." "Which one?" "MacBook Pro."
Click to expand...

Actually, that's completely the opposite. Coke is specific, where MacBook is not. It's completely stupid to refer to all soda (or pop) as coke. I've heard of people doing this, but never experienced it.

It's like if I walked into a car dealership and said "I want to test drive a Honda Accord V6 with leather seats" and they said "Sure, would you like to try a Civic, Pilot, Odyssey, CRV, or Accord?"

But regardless, I agree with you - they could be referring to all MacBooks.
 
hayesk said:
Actually, that's completely the opposite. Coke is specific, where MacBook is not. It's completely stupid to refer to all soda (or pop) as coke. I've heard of people doing this, but never experienced it.
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It may be stupid to you, but the fact is, there's millions of Americans that do it. And far from being the opposite - how is MacBook not specific? There's two models on the Apple website - the MACBOOK and the MACBOOK PRO. Sounds pretty specific to me. Point being, it doesn't stop people from using it in the generic manner, just like "Coke" doesn't stop people in the South from using Coke to refer to all sodas. "Stupid" is a matter of opinion. You'll find lots of people that agree with you and lots that don't.
 
siurpeeman said:
aren't touch pads already equipped with sensing multi-touch input? we use two fingers for scrolling and double-clicking; it's just a matter of a software update or a new os release (leopard?) that would give us iphone-like multi-touch functionality.
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I'm kind of a Mac newbie. How do you double click using the touchpad? I know how to scroll using it, but call me stupid, I can't figure out how to double-click using it to save my life.
 
hayesk said:
Actually, that's completely the opposite. Coke is specific, where MacBook is not. It's completely stupid to refer to all soda (or pop) as coke. I've heard of people doing this, but never experienced it.

It's like if I walked into a car dealership and said "I want to test drive a Honda Accord V6 with leather seats" and they said "Sure, would you like to try a Civic, Pilot, Odyssey, CRV, or Accord?"

But regardless, I agree with you - they could be referring to all MacBooks.
Click to expand...

haha no... mac's are specific
 
A touch pad which recognised more finger gestures would be great thing it would certainly speed up some tasks, I don't think it would be life changing though. And I don't think we will see any of these other conceptions people have been posting, many of them just are not practical, having a touch screen sounds great but really its uncomfortable and impractical.

Nothing wrong with the keyboard and mouse, perhaps we will only need these input developments as the complexity of the software increases?
 
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