Synaptics Making Buttonless, Clickable Trackpads
It's one big button!
One of the major innovations in the latest generation of MacBooks is the large, ‘buttonless’ trackpad that clicks when pressed. The design now appears to be tried and true after Mac users have been swiping and clicking since October of 2008.
PC trackpad maker Synaptics is now set to bring the design to small notebooks and netbooks. At Computex this week Synaptics is now demonstrating its implementation of the technology, which it calls the ClickPad.
Supported gestures include two-finger scrolling, two-finger PinchZoom, two-finger pivot rotate, three-finger flick, and three-finger press. According to Synaptics, users can program applications to launch using three-finger press gestures.
The technology and software behind the ClickPad appears to differ from Apple’s trackpad in that the ones on the latest MacBooks are made of glass and support for four-finger gestures.
Synaptics is also announcing that its entire SGS 9.1-enabled TouchPad family and software driver has passed Microsoft’s Windows 7 Logo testing. Windows 7 also includes native support for multitouch. The ClickPad will available to OEMs for integration into notebook PC platforms beginning in 3Q09.
Oh, and in case you were still wondering, you can right-click by tapping down the ClickPad with two fingers instead of just one.
- Windows 7 to go RTM by Late July
- Ferrari Nettop Looks Fast But Isn't Really
- Corsair Enters Case Market, Launches Obsidian
- Waterproof SDHC Card is Cool, But Pointless
- NEC Launches Hybrid Storage Netbook
- AMD Demonstrates First DirectX 11 GPU
- OCZ Intros New 3.5-inch "Colossus" SSD
- Sony Optiarc: Maneuvering Blu-ray Through the Crisis
- ECS's Android Netbook: Under $500
- Intel: Ion Is Overkill, Don't You Know
- Asus Mars GTX 295 8GB SLI Runs Far Cry 2 2160p
- Scenes From Computex 2009: Intel's Booth
- Lian-Li Launches Economic Line of Cases
- Netbook Sales to Decline, Say Makers
- Super Talent's Shows Its Super Fast PCI-e SSD
- The Best PC Case At Computex, from SilverStone
- Zotac Graphics Cards Pay for Themselves
- Intel SSDs Continue to Gain Popularity
How 1998!
I've been "clicking" my touchpads since my P166 laptop (with a whopping 1.4GB HDD I'll have you know) and two-finger right-clicking since 2002.
Touchpads have been multi-touch and gensture capable for a long, long time but all of a sudden just because Macs do it (10 years late) it's suddenly innovative and everybody has to do it!
All it takes is to write some software that recognises multiple fingers and you're done...sheesh.
No kidding LePhuronn, this isn't new or special, it's just everyone trying to stay relevant.