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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Powerbook Trackpad Senses Pressure

Powerbook Trackpad Senses Pressure
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hadocon
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Mar 8, 2004, 03:14 PM
 
Apparently, many semi-recent Powerbooks and iBooks have trackpads that are capable of reporting X, Y, and Z (pressure) information. A new driver that lets you glean this data as MIDI can be found here.
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Basilisk
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Mar 8, 2004, 05:03 PM
 
Boy this is spreading fast...

Its not pressure, its area covered. Nevertheless FingaMIDI is an interesting hack.

More info:
http://macslash.org/comments.pl?sid=4375&cid=68790

Bas
     
fizzlemynizzle
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Mar 8, 2004, 05:12 PM
 
you mean pressure as in how you can tap the pad to simulate mouse clicks? i didn't know this was a recent thing w/ Powerbooks..
     
Basilisk
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Mar 8, 2004, 05:36 PM
 
you mean pressure as in how you can tap the pad to simulate mouse clicks? i didn't know this was a recent thing w/ Powerbooks.
Its not, that's not what's meant by pressure. Tap-to-click has been a feature of PowerBooks since the very beginning.

Pressure refers to measuring how hard the fingber is pressed on the pad. Someone misinterpreted how it works and has been posting that misinformation far and wide.

Bas
     
hadocon  (op)
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Mar 8, 2004, 07:34 PM
 
Originally posted by Basilisk:
Its not, that's not what's meant by pressure. Tap-to-click has been a feature of PowerBooks since the very beginning.

Pressure refers to measuring how hard the fingber is pressed on the pad. Someone misinterpreted how it works and has been posting that misinformation far and wide.

Bas
The blog where I found this has been updated with your info. Although misinformation spreads far and wide, so do corrections and amendments

P.S. thanx 4 SideTrack!
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tooki
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Mar 9, 2004, 12:17 AM
 
Originally posted by Basilisk:
Tap-to-click has been a feature of PowerBooks since the very beginning.
No, actually it hasn't. I forget the model where that feature made its debut, but I am pretty sure it was a PowerPC model, definitely not the "blackbird" PowerBook 500 series (68LC040-based) that were the first to have trackpads. I'm thinking maybe the 1400 or 3400.

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fizzlemynizzle
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Mar 9, 2004, 12:29 AM
 
Tap to click exists on pretty much every notebook w/ a touchpad these days yet I'm always finding people who are stunned to see it, they never knew about it. And many of them own notebooks w/ this feature.
     
Basilisk
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Mar 9, 2004, 01:23 AM
 
The blog where I found this has been updated with your info. Although misinformation spreads far and wide, so do corrections and amendments
True enough, and I'm so pleased he updated. I was a little worried this would become one of those little bits of Mac lore that spreads forever even when its not entirely true (like "debug code" and the trillions of things once attributed to to redoing OS X prebinding).

No, actually it hasn't. I forget the model where that feature made its debut, but I am pretty sure it was a PowerPC model, definitely not the "blackbird" PowerBook 500 series (68LC040-based) that were the first to have trackpads. I'm thinking maybe the 1400 or 3400.
You're right, I overstated the case to the extent that Apple didn't do the feature first. Blackbirds did support the feature, Apple didn't enable it. You had to buy ClickPad (http://home.mindspring.com/~danwr/do...ickpad-ii.html).

I don't recall when Apple made the feature standard in the OS but I believe it was shortly thereafter.


Bas
     
tooki
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Mar 10, 2004, 01:28 PM
 
Well, obviously it can't be a hard thing to implement if a shareware developer without access to Apple's source code was able to do it quickly!

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