Filed under: Hardware, Hacks, Macbook Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, Snow Leopard
Multi-touch coming to older MacBooks? Not so fast.
Mac Life and Gizmodo are both reporting that Snow Leopard will add multi-touch gestures to all older MacBooks and MacBook Pros. This has gotten a lot of people's hopes up that three- and four-finger multi-touch gestures will be back-ported to all Apple portables that previously did not have them.Unfortunately, this is incorrect. Apples own information on Snow Leopard's enhancements reads, "All Mac notebooks with Multi-Touch trackpads now support three- and four-finger gestures." (emphasis added)
This raises the question, what's the difference between a multi-touch trackpad and a regular one, and which models have it?
The multi-touch trackpad was introduced with the first MacBook Air in early 2008. Not only does it allow two-finger scrolling like older models, it also allows advanced three-finger gestures like swiping to go back in Safari.
One month later, the early 2008 MacBook Pro received the same trackpad, with the same gestures. The multi-touch trackpad gains this new functionality because it has an embedded controller chip, identical to the one in the iPhone and iPod Touch, which allows advanced input from more than two fingers at once.
Later, the unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros debuted with multi-touch trackpads, but also introduced new four-finger gestures, which will not be officially supported in the older MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros until Snow Leopard's release.
The original MacBook Air and early 2008 MacBook Pro are the only machines which will gain additional gestures via Snow Leopard. The only reason these notebook models are able to gain these gestures via software updates, while earlier MacBook Pros and all plastic MacBooks are not, is because they possess the multi-touch controller chip in their trackpads.
Just to break it down, this is a list of the only, and I mean only, notebooks that support multi-touch gestures, either now or after Snow Leopard:
MacBook Air (all models)
Early 2008 MacBook Pro
Late 2008 17" MacBook Pro
Unibody MacBook (all models)
Unibody MacBook Pro (all models)
If you have a MacBook Pro manufactured before early 2008 or any plastic MacBook, then Snow Leopard or not, multi-touch isn't coming your way...
...But if you're like me and you do have one of the earlier multi-touch enabled machines, you don't have to wait for Snow Leopard to use the newer multi-touch gestures. Since 10.5.6 was released, it's been possible to do some creative hacking to enable four-finger gestures on original MacBook Airs and early 2008 MacBook Pros.
The procedure, found in the MacRumors forums and courtesy of MacRumors forum member fjk, is surprisingly simple. Standard disclaimer: if the contents of your System folder frighten and confuse you, or if when you hear the word "kext" you reach for your Browning, you should proceed at your own risk.
First, download a modified AppleUSBMultitouch.kext file. Navigate to System/Library/Extensions, and remove the old AppleUSBMultitouch.kext (you will need to type in your admin password).
Move the modified AppleUSBMultitouch.kext into System/Library/Extensions. You'll most likely have to type in your password again.
This next step is critical: repair disk permissions using Disk Utility. If you don't, after you restart your trackpad will not function.
Once permissions are repaired, restart. Success!
I can vouch for this technique, as it's worked perfectly for months on my early 2008 MacBook Pro. Note that you will have to repeat this procedure for every OS X dot-update -- if 10.5.8 comes out before Snow Leopard, you'll have to do the above hack again to re-enable four-finger gestures on your machine.
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Erik said 9:11AM on 6-15-2009
Thanks for clarifying the software situation that apple seeks to remedy, but to state that older macbooks can not (due to hardware) perform multi-touch gestures is erroneous. My black 2008 macbook does multi-touch pretty well in Linux and with some patience, a MacOS X driver should soon be finished. You can read more at this guy's blog:
http://www.randomtruth.110mb.com/blog/index.php
To those with older macbooks looking for multi-touch I would help this blogger as much as possible.
Reply
JC said 9:36AM on 6-15-2009
Hmm... Are you sure?
My Early 09 Macbook white (plastic, with 9400M) has 2 finger scrolling...
Reply
mabhatter said 1:56PM on 6-15-2009
two finger is not "multitouch"
Apple "Multitouch" is the ability to do things like "pinch" to zoom, and "turn" to rotate (like the iphone) that started with the Macbook Air.
I have one of these too... it's to bad we won't get that feature but it wasn't really advertised whereas the early Air were and are being brought to parity with newer releases.
Ethan said 9:20AM on 6-15-2009
Thankfully, the most useful one is two-finger scrolling, and we get that.
Reply
Maxwell Ash said 2:41PM on 6-15-2009
Four finger exposé is also pretty handy. Other than that, the gestures aren't that good. Two finger rotating is just awful, as is zooming in most programs.
Adam Schoales said 9:28AM on 6-15-2009
Funnilly enough, the latest OS update added the ability to two finger right click on my old POWERBOOK (you know, hold two fingers on the pad, hit the button to right click).
As far as I remember it NEVER had that feature before...
Reply
Shunnabunich said 11:40AM on 6-15-2009
For PowerBooks, I find iScroll2 to be pretty handy. I can use two-finger scrolling (even a nifty circular variant reminiscent of the motion used on an iPod's click wheel) on my late-2004 PowerBook, with the caveats that the fingers need to be side-by-side (it can't distinguish between two fingers if they're aligned on the Y-axis) and that, in my experience, the settings needed tweaking before they'd settle down into a non-spaz level of responsiveness. Hard to go wrong with free, though.
jonathan ober said 9:41AM on 6-15-2009
Im still holding out for the three-finger, one-elbow, nose-click gesture to be added in to the OS. I really need that one...not sure what it would do, it would just be fun :)
But alas...two-finger gestures is all I can do. I will just have to settle for command+back arrow(forward arrow) to swing around the intertubes.
Reply
mntpls said 9:52AM on 6-15-2009
Well, what i noticed is that my 2006 MacBook Pro actually IS capable of a three finger gesture input. You can try it yourself, start scrolling with two fingers, then add another finger to the touchpad. it immediatly recognizes it as another ("false") input and stops scrolling.
technically it would make zero sense to believe it then couldn't recognize the movement of the two other fingers. and even then, if you add another finger, i still believe at least a three finger swipe or whatever gesture would be possible with older "two-finger-touch" capable touchpads.
Reply
Disconnect said 11:47AM on 6-16-2009
Thats not "invalid 3 finger input" that is "its no longer 2 fingers moving, its some funky mess instead and I can't parse anything reasonable out of it".
Try it on a standard touchscreen some time - you get expected pointer behavior with supported touches (eg 1) and unexpected behavior with unsupported touches (eg 2, if its not at all MT). In your example 'unexpected' happens to be 'I can't see motion'.
Webappuniverse said 10:29AM on 6-15-2009
I never use those features anyhow...
[Link Removed]
Reply
Tired_ said 11:21AM on 6-15-2009
Fortunately, a one-finger gesture is all I need.
Reply
Tim said 11:58AM on 6-15-2009
My mid-09 macbook white does support 2 finger scrolling, so why isn't this one on the list?
I tried the hack, but it doesn't seem to work. I was thinking about upgrading to snow leopard, but not getting the three- and four-finger gestures would make me reconsider buying snow leopard.
Reply
Glenn Rempe said 1:51PM on 6-15-2009
You make some pretty strong assertions of fact here about an as yet unreleased OS update.
Unfortunately, you provide neither sources nor evidence that you have actually tested this with Snow Leopard on older hardware. Are we to just take your word for it? Perhaps you can state your sources for such strong proclamations?
This is basic journalism folks. Just because you are writing for a blog does not exempt you from the basics of reporting.
Reply
Maxwell Ash said 2:50PM on 6-15-2009
Try clicking the source link at the bottom. And being a blog does exempt them from the basics of reporting, they can write whatever they like.
Glenn Rempe said 3:38PM on 6-15-2009
@Maxwell Ash
The 'source' you refer to is a maclife article which states:
"1. Multi-touch Gestures: Even the older MacBooks upgrading to Snow Leopard will now have three- and four-finger touchpad abilities, which will make one-hand computer usage totally possible."
Sorry, but this is not a 'source', and it in no way substantiates the assertion by Chris Rawson in this TUAW article multi-touch will *not* apply to older Macbooks.
I don't know either way if it will or not. But the author owes us more than opinion, unless this is an 'opinion' piece.
And yes, if TUAW wants to keep any of its readers it, and the other blogs, *do* owe its readers some journalistic integrity. Otherwise they can spout off to themselves as often as they want. I won't be there to see it happen.
As a reader, why would you be an apologist for anything less?
Reply
Chris Rawson said 3:43PM on 6-15-2009
I did provide a link in the article to Apple's own page describing Snow Leopard's features. They stated that the added gestures will only be coming to notebooks with multi-touch trackpads.
The only computers with multi-touch trackpads are the MacBook Air, old-style MacBook Pros released in 2008, and the unibody notebooks. That is not opinion. It is fact.
Richard said 5:32PM on 6-15-2009
Anyone know if this same thing applies to the new Chinese character input method associated with the Multi-Touch trackpads? I have an early 2008 MBP and hope I can use its trackpad for the new character input feature.
Reply
Andrew Jacobson said 12:58AM on 8-30-2009
Yes, I can confirm that multi-touch trackpad gestures and East Asian language handwriting recognition unfortunately were not made available via the officially released version of Snow Leopard for my Intel Core Duo MacBookPro1,1, so I'll have to wait until my 3.5-year-old MacBook Pro finally dies and requires a replacement before I can enjoy that feature.
Reply