

Apple Magic Trackpad as Multi-Touch Input, and Cross-Platform Multi-Touch - mgunes
http://createdigitalmotion.com/2010/07/apple-magic-trackpad-as-multi-touch-input-and-cross-platform-multi-touch/

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wvenable
This might actually be useful for a PC project I'm working on. I looked into
touch-screen monitors but they are way too expensive. A $100 wireless trackpad
might even be more useful since it could operated at a distance from the
monitor.

It'll run in Windows on a Mac with an update
<http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1068> but I wonder if it will work on a PC with
an arbitrary bluetooth adapter.

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pavlov
AFAIK, Wacom has a line of affordable (<$100) pressure-sensitive pen tablets
that double as as multi-touch surfaces. That's an interesting alternative.

~~~
mgunes
The article notes, though, that their driver doesn't support getting discrete
touch events that would be needed for any marginally interesting application;
the gestures are hard-coded.

There's also no Linux support yet, though I expect the Linux Wacom project to
take care of that soon.

~~~
mmt
For me, marginally (and fully) interesting has always been about 2-finger
scroll, vertical and horizontal.

I actually find the other gestures to be a tremendous annoyance when activated
accidentally.

I'm looking through Wacom's docs now, but a subjective report on the usability
of this feature (if it exists) would be appreciated, as well.

~~~
wtallis
The Bamboo's scrolling under Windows is pretty poor. It can't do horizontal
and vertical at the same time, and you have to drag your fingers too far
before it starts scrolling.

Under OS X, the scrolling is a proper 360 degrees, so once you've gotten the
speed adjusted to your liking, the only annoyance is that you can't turn off
the inertia (which is not smooth). You just have to learn to stop your fingers
before you lift them off the pad.

All the multitouch gestures can be turned off, so if there are ones you don't
like (or just wish did something more useful) you can get rid of them.

The zoom and rotate gestures aren't as smooth as Apple's, but I think that
probably has more to do with the fact that the Wacom drivers only send
keystrokes to applications, rather than the full gesture information in real-
time.

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bradhe
Magic? Really?

~~~
Hovertruck
It's the proper product name, to go along with the Magic Mouse

