Hack the MacBook to have multi-touch, win an iPod Touch
- February 28th, 2008
- Read 269 times
- 11 Comments
My first impressions have been positive with the Penryn MacBook Pro, but I wonder about the trackpad and why it isn’t bigger. Why does the craptastic MacBook Air have the ginormous trackpad when the workhorse of the line is left with the same trackpad its had for years? And why can’t they make the rest of the line multi-touch. We first believed it was software but then we found that the main board used a special touchscreen chip, the same one found in the Touch and the iPhone. We’d like to recreate the behavior on older MacBooks. The thing is, with John’s delirium tremens and Doug’s hatred of Apple, the only two guys who could possibly try to do this are out of the running.
We think CG readers are smart enough to figure this out. We definitely aren’t. Help the world make the trackpad on all MacBooks more Air-like, and we’ll give you an iPod Touch. Read on to see how.
We challenge you to make a pre-Penryn MacBook trackpad gesture-based. For your troubles (if you make this happen) we’ll give you, the lucky winner, an iPod Touch. Sound good? Yeah, I thought so.
The rules are simple: the first reader to submit a software fix/patch/application/hardware hack that will make a pre-Penryn MacBook — we’d prefer you didn’t do it to an MBP because it will be too easy to fake — use multi-touch will get an iPod Touch. This means we should be able to zoom in and out of images in any OS X application and swipe through images, files, and what have you using one finger a la the iPhone. This has to be your own work and not a pre-existing software solution unless you wrote said solution AFTER hearing about this contest and should include instructions. If it is a software solution, you retain all rights and we simply need to see proof that it works and you can go and sell it as shareware or whatever down the line. If it is a hardware solution, pictures are necessary but you own rights to the process.
You must offer confirmation of your work and we’re not responsible for you blowing up your MacBook. We know the Air and MBP uses Broadcom’s BCM5974 chip so we’re thinking you MIGHT be able to swap chips. Email us at contest @ crunchgear.com if you’re up to the challenge. First one wins, so hack fast, nerds! This might be completely impossible as well, so tell us why in the comments and we might be able to dig up a few consolation prizes.
But hacking is illegal. And the exchanging of goods for illegal services is illegal too! Does that make the hackers whores?!
that’s a dumbass comment … you really miss adam carolla, don’t you?
only as “spanky ham”, why did i miss something? like the way you missed sarcasm?
Um… Hacking is NOT illegal. You own the hardware, your not stealing anything, it’s all your own work. How is that illegal?
Cracking on the other hand, Cracking being: breaking into computer systems or using code that does not belong to you, is in fact illegal.
There is not a single law against hacking.
Everybody knows that. They hack and somebody else gets the money.
Ask big companies how much money they’re making with Linux and the hackers that write the code and rev eng Win and Mac get $0.
why would someone make this so they can make millions off of it… for a louzy ipod touch, they couldnt even bump it up to an iphone, go suk a dik.
Hey, don’t make the trackpad bigger!
My hands get hot because Apple doesn’t run the fan fast enough, and the system doesn’t sleep/wake properly if I use Fan Control.
A bigger trackpad means my giant, overheated, sweaty hands will be accidentally in contact with the trackpad that much more.
Hey my last powerbook had a smaller trackpad than my macbook pro. This is big enough, dammit!
I dont care, I just want Multi Touch!!!!. Apple bein an a** by not making the MBP track pad as big as the MBA and by not brining down the MTouch to MB. Damn.
And Im still amazed that there is no magnetic latch for the MBP.
Comon, someone please make a software that will enable Merom MacBook users to use multi touch!!!
There are people using Linux on Intel Macbooks. They have a driver for the touchpad that recognizes three finger touches, and they use it as a middle click. This means there is certainly more capability in the touchpad for existing models, via software alone. Whether the touchpad can understand the movement of individual finger movements (ie, Zoom, and rotate) is another question altogether. This maybe where the chip comes in. Alternatively maybe it’s possible without the chip, but apple wanted to preserve CPU processing power so decided to do it via hardware. You can read more about it here, ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook#head-b0c1214684daee45c97d31d9113d7719accdf060 ), just click the link on the right that say’s “RIGHT/MIDDLE CLICKING”, to take you to the area.
Personally, i’d be happy just to get a middle click. There is a driver hack for this, from Sidekick ( http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/index.html ) where you assign corners of the trackpad into alternative buttons, which is quite useful for expose and dashboard too. But this obviously isn’t a multi-touch action and the driver also looses the 2 finger right click as well as the 2 finger scrolling and puts it to the edge of the pad, which I really don’t like. The pad also becomes very very unresponsive and doesn’t seem to work in the same way at all. Infact, the pro’s don’t touch the con’s so I wouldn’t go near sidekick with a barge pole, unless they fix its many many problems. I’d actually advice them to start again. Why oh why did they change it completely… We want it unehanced… not demoted to a sluggish PC trackpad!
Anyway, where is the hacking community, I thought someone would have at least half solved this via software alone by now? Although I think an iPod touch is a bit pathetic for the amount of work involved.
Personally, I can do without the pinching and pulling for zooming in and out. I imagine that would be more difficult to create a hack for those functions. HOWEVER, I do think that there must be a way to create a hack that would enable swiping… it doesn’t even have to be a 3 finger swipe. For example, one might try doing a “double tap” using two fingers, but the second tap would be in a sweep left or right motion. The mac trackpad allows you to scroll left and right using two fingers on the trackpad already, so theoretically it should be possible to program the macbook to recognize a two-finger swipe to go backwards and forwards in programs like Safari or iPhoto.
C’mon hackers! Get on it!!!