Comments on: Hack the MacBook to have multi-touch, win an iPod Touch

By: Alexander

Alexander — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:15:05 +0000

That’s right – if the computer is yours, you can break it into the wall, or tear it open and solder a couple of wires to make it work faster, if you know how. Illegal is to tear it open, see how stuff works and use it somewhere else. Or hack it so that you can use cracked programs (in which case not the hacking itself but the usage of programs you don’t own is the illegal deed).

By: intergrapica

intergrapica — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:21:32 +0000

Hi. Here is a German thread about the same topic, they all hoped that there would be one programmer who is able to do that ... and it looks like random truth is da man ;-)

By: donald

donald — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:32:38 +0000

im sure that someone with enough time could probly use the ipod touch or the iphones screen to connect to the macbook and use the device as a multitouch trackpad but then again no one would really want to carry the device around everywhere they go

By: randomtruth

randomtruth — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:29:44 +0000

You researched all your facts and got them right :)
-randomtruth
randomtruthsblog.synthasite.com

By: Bob White

Bob White — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:06:29 +0000

YESSSS! randomtruth has started a blog. I am eager to find out your progress/results

By: random truth

random truth — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:37:22 +0000

I started a blog where I will be showing my progress here, http://randomtruthsblog.synthasite.com

By: random truth

random truth — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:31:18 +0000

no, I am still working on it though. As I said in the post I dont have a lot of time. I have not come up with anything yet. I am still trying to reverse engineer how mac os x deals with multitouch inputs. It will take a while and might not be even possible.

By: V Rossi

V Rossi — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:10:34 +0000

Is there any good news? Would be please to get this update as soon as possible. :)
greetings

By: BIG HELP to those developers out there trying....

BIG HELP to those developers out there trying.... — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:06:16 +0000

TO the best of my knowledge multi-touch is software based and is a derivative of the programming language developed by ‘Fingerworks’ now appropriated by Apple. Their site is available at ‘http://www.fingerworks.com/’

Hope this helps,
soooo hackers get your brains down into this code…coz it will be VERY useful.

…No problems…lol

By: networkjunky

networkjunky — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:18:42 +0000

me to ,-)

By: Me

Me — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:22:17 +0000

I’d be interesting in hearing your results as well

By: Pitou

Pitou — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:36:17 +0000

So random truth
Did you finish?

By: random truth

random truth — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:03:12 +0000

I am working on a software based solution, but I do not have very much time and I already got an Ipod touch so Ill just shout out my ideas to the world. two finger =scrolling/right click already achieved. So on a trackpad it notices your points as a dot(s) depending on the trackpad. If it is one dot based rotate will not be possible. However zoom will be. When that dot gets smaller it zooms in, and when it gets bigger it zooms out. The three finger swipe is more than easily accomplishable. (doh I just relized i could use that open source linux driver). If it see it as two seperate dots it is will work just like the iphone and just needs to be implamented by software. So the first step is to create a graphical tool to dumping the raw data of the trackpad.

By: dumboi

dumboi — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:17:41 +0000

This was extracted from Synaptics driver:

—————————————————————————-
Version 11.0.0 02/11/2008 (Win2K/WinXP/Vista)
—————————————————————————-
New Features
-Added a hardware lock to prevent advanced gestures, Chiral, Pinch and
Momentum for now, from running on standard TouchPads.

Bug Fixes
-Added a missing parenthesis that caused the release version of the driver
to not have chiral enabled.
-Fixed setting of bounceback.
-Fix for hotkeys for Chiral and Momentum translation in RC

By: killerener99

killerener99 — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:01:37 +0000

drdrew 1 don’t be a pussy 2 it’s not necessarily hacking it’s just making a third party driver which is like making a third party program which is legal

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:43:02 +0000

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!!!

By: Ian Dean

Ian Dean — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:20:31 +0000

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.

By: Leopard

Leopard — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 15:00:37 +0000

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!!!

By: Nabeelco

Nabeelco — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:17:45 +0000

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.

By: Mr. Sweaty Hands

Mr. Sweaty Hands — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:36:05 +0000

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!