Trackpad Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac 101: Multi-touch Tips

by Cory Bohon (Nov 6th, 2008)

With the introduction of the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros last month, Apple included several ingenious features for the multitouch trackpad. In this Mac 101, I'm going to walk you through a couple of extra-finger tricks. Using Two Fingers Scroll -- If you're in a long document, or webpage, ...

MacBook/Pro trackpad fix coming soon

by Dave Caolo (Nov 5th, 2008)

Several people who own the new, unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros are reporting trouble with the glass trackpads. Specifically, it's been failing to register clicks, seemingly at random. One user even told PC Pro, "I don't even attempt to use this machine unless I'm at a desk using a mouse." One ...

Mac 101: Right-click on a laptop

by Dave Caolo (May 28th, 2008)

Oh, the one-button mouse. You either love it or you hate it. Veteran Mac users adore the elegance and simplicity; switchers bemoan the loss of a second (or third) mouse button. Of course, the problem is easily fixed by either holding down the Control button or -- wait for it -- buying a two-button ...

MacBook Air trackpad settings video included in System Preferences

by Michael Rose (Feb 27th, 2008)

Among the delightful tidbits taking up precious space on the MacBook Air's slender hard drive or SSD, you'll find this very handy video guide to stretching, zooming, scrolling and rotating using the power of human touch. It's tucked away in System Preferences under the Keyboard Trackpad tab. It ...

Mini-Review: Power Support Track Pad Film

by David Chartier (May 25th, 2007)

While attracting dirt and grime is a hazard of owning a notebook, the neat-freak and 'oh my gosh this is expensive computer equipment' portions of my brains have always been bothered by how icky my MacBook Pro can get over time. I've tried a few products that are designed to protect one portion or ...

Ask the readers: PowerBook protection

by Dan Lurie (Sep 27th, 2006)

I'm humble enough to admit when I need some help, and I'm lucky to have an esteemed group of readers such as yourselves comprising my very own hive mind. The issue is this: My trusty PowerBook is getting on a bit in the years, and like all creatures, with age comes imperfection. The telltale signs ...

Origami fix for squishy MacBook trackpads

by Dan Lurie (Jun 30th, 2006)

It seems that a good many MacBook owners are having issues with their trackpads. Instead of the usual crisp "click" that we have all come to know and love from our Apple portables, they are instead greeted by a laggardly squish. These are not the first Apple notebooks to have trackpad issues; my rev ...

10.4.7 enables two finger right-click on 15" MacBook Pros

by David Chartier (Jun 28th, 2006)

Many commenters on our Mac OS X 10.4.7 Update post have noticed that two finger right-clicking has been enabled on 15" MacBook Pros. It seems to work just fine on mine, and this update should evoke a sigh of relief to all those using the trackpad hack we blogged to accomplish the same thing since ...

Dear Apple: stop leaving your early adopters out in the cold

by David Chartier (May 17th, 2006)

Dan Lurie from The Apple Blog pointed me towards an early MacBook review at Macworld in which Jason Snell points out the new MacBook's ability to right-click when you have two fingers on the trackpad. It's a setting you can toggle in the MacBook's System Preferences, and it apparently also exists on ...

Apple needs to fix their PowerBook DL trackpad software

by David Chartier (Jan 14th, 2006)

Ever since I picked up this 15" PowerBook DL (Dual Layer SuperDrive) about a month ago, I have occasionally run into situations where I see the kernel_task in Activity Monitor spiking to about 60% CPU usage, grinding my machine nearly to a halt and making it generally unusable until I ...