4 ms·

Apple Magic Trackpad as Multi-Touch Input, and Cross-Platform Multi-Touch

10 points by mgunes 16y ago

wvenable 16y ago
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 http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1068 but I wonder if it will work on a PC with an arbitrary bluetooth adapter.
bradhe 16y ago
Magic? Really?
- Hovertruck 16y ago
  It's the proper product name, to go along with the Magic Mouse
pavlov 16y ago
AFAIK, Wacom has a line of affordable (<$100) pressure-sensitive pen tablets that double as as multi-touch surfaces. That's an interesting alternative.
- mmt 16y ago
  I don't see anything in that price range that's BlueTooth. Am I missing something? (My own needs are for, in effect, a wireless "docking" station for OSX laptops. One's non-Intel, so the 10.6.3 requirement of the Apple product rules it out)
- mgunes 16y ago
  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.
  - wtallis 16y ago
    http://linuxwacom.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=linuxwacom/xf86-input-wacom;a=blob;f=src/wcmTouchFilter.c;h=0c066cb07de0adf0f8b435962e58fcf15f948fc2;hb=HEAD http://linuxwacom.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=linux... Judging by the sourceforge git repo, there's been linux support for a while, though I haven't used it yet. I don't know whether the driver offers applications a way to get absolute touch coordinates, but that shouldn't be hard to do either. It also looks like it should be pretty easy to add support for more gestures. When I get some more spare time, I plan to work on this quite a bit to see if the Bamboo sensor is capable of recognizing gestures as reliably as Apple's touchpads. Certainly, Wacom's drivers aren't very good at it, but I don't know how much of that is due to the inadequacy of the hardware.
  - mmt 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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.

10 points by mgunes 16y ago

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 http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1068 but I wonder if it will work on a PC with an arbitrary bluetooth adapter.

bradhe 16y ago

Magic? Really?

Hovertruck 16y ago
It's the proper product name, to go along with the Magic Mouse

pavlov 16y ago

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

mmt 16y ago
I don't see anything in that price range that's BlueTooth. Am I missing something? (My own needs are for, in effect, a wireless "docking" station for OSX laptops. One's non-Intel, so the 10.6.3 requirement of the Apple product rules it out)
mgunes 16y ago
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.
- wtallis 16y ago
  http://linuxwacom.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=linuxwacom/xf86-input-wacom;a=blob;f=src/wcmTouchFilter.c;h=0c066cb07de0adf0f8b435962e58fcf15f948fc2;hb=HEAD http://linuxwacom.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=linux... Judging by the sourceforge git repo, there's been linux support for a while, though I haven't used it yet. I don't know whether the driver offers applications a way to get absolute touch coordinates, but that shouldn't be hard to do either. It also looks like it should be pretty easy to add support for more gestures. When I get some more spare time, I plan to work on this quite a bit to see if the Bamboo sensor is capable of recognizing gestures as reliably as Apple's touchpads. Certainly, Wacom's drivers aren't very good at it, but I don't know how much of that is due to the inadequacy of the hardware.
- mmt 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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.