Four finger gestures coming to older MacBooks via Snow Leopard

Chauncey Dupree
|
January 19, 2009
|
Share

According to one of our readers, older MacBooks and MacBook Pros are going to be able to use the four finger gestures.  Who said no new features in Snow Leopard?!  Oh, and a special version (64-bit?) of Flash according to Mr. Five finger discount.

 

Comments (20)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 10:03am

Is this even possible from a hardware standpoint? This seems impossible for non-multitouch touchpads.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 10:57am

Yes it is.
I am working on a program that enables it. Check my blog at randomtruthsblog.synthasite.com

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 10:13am

I think what they mean is on Early '08 MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs. They had multitouch. The previous MacBooks didn't have multitouch whatsoever (Except for the scrolling, but that's a given)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 10:20am

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 12:22pm

really?
come on

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 10:34am

given that on the old Powerbooks scrolling with 2 fingers was possible I asume this is multitouch, right?
besides does anybody of you use the 4-finger touch?
I personally don't and think it's unnecessary.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 11:07am

I use it very often on my new MBP. Four fingers swipe down brings forth Exposé and swipe up, clears all the open windows from the desktop. Very neat.

DaddyMak (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 11:33am

I use it all the time on my new MBP.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 11:41am

I use it constantly on my Macbook. It's extremely practical and convenient IMO.

Daniel (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 12:18pm

The scrolling/right click ability from the PowerBooks and older MacBooks isn't really multitouch the way we mean when using that term. The pad detects two fingers, but can't track them individually.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 10:48am

on older macbooks multitouch only works with two fingers and it cannot detect where both fingers are seperately. So you can't do a rotating movement on them for instance.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 11:24am

One finger gesture coming from older Powerbook user.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 12:02pm

Yup, the one finger gesture requires no new hardware or software and can be deployed in a split second.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 12:10pm

My question is whether or not multi-"touch" gestures will show up on the highway.
Will Mac users gestures be more useful and creative than Windows users who are unfortunately limited to a single digit gesture?
What effect might this have on road rage?

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 12:16pm

if you go back a whaile it was asked it was a hardware or software issue dealing with the 3 finger gestures on the early 08 models of the mbp.... everyone wanted it on thier old stuff.... turned out it was a hardware issue...

thnk the mb air and the early 08 mbp use the same hardware for trackpad as the new models. so they could get the 4 finger swipe.

everyone else is out of luck... just scroll and tap's

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 4:55pm

The post Says that the 4 finger swipe will be available, not the pinching like on the iphone or new MBP. The 4 finger swipe does not need to track all 4 fingers individually, the same way the 2 finger scrolling doesn't track both fingers. So i believe that it is totally plausible.

Dave (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 7:27pm

How about Video playback acceleration. This is something that really could improve user experience.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 20, 2009 - 6:23am

I don't know 100% sure, but i think it does use hardware acceleration. I just checked and my cpu was a lot lower when playing a movie then in leopard

Neil Anderson (not verified) | January 19, 2009 - 9:52pm

Looking forward to a new and improved Flash.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | January 20, 2009 - 6:10am

It works fine for macbook pro early 2008. plus you can hack it in leopard, (http://www.super-poultry.com/2008/12/4-finger-multi-touch-for-older-mbps/). 3 finger doesn't work in finder, but does work in safari