magic trackpad Archives - The Real Mac Genius

The Magic Trackpad is a new and totally awesome device by Apple. The Trackpad takes over and lets your fingers do all the work. It does away with a mouse and lets the user have a more hands on experience. You can do all the same features with the Trackpad as you can with a mouse. You can still scroll, swipe, and click but without a mouse there. The Magic Trackpad makes your Mac desktop experience the same as if you had a MacBook Pro with you. The Magic Trackpad gives the user a feeling as if theyhad a full set of devices in their hands on one device. When swiping through a page, it feels as if you are flipping through a book. The Magic Trackpad is completely wireless and is powered by Bluetooth technology. The Magic Trackpad has the same features as the MacBook Pro but with 80% more area. It gives the user more space to work with and freedom. You may be thinking that it doesn’t fit with the keyboard though. There is an upside to it, the Trackpad is exactly the same length as the keyboard and side by side, they fit perfectly. The battery life is amazing on the Trackpad. It has an on and off switch so that you can not just days, but months of battery life. It works up to 33 feet away from your desktop.

Wow, the Magic Trackpad definitely has blown me away. How Apple ever invents these devices completely bewilders me. This device does away with your mouse and gives the user a lot more freedom. This doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of your mouse, but it gives you more options. Apple also lets you change the types of scrolling you want. Apple lets you change the features they have set for you. It makes the user feel as if they are free to do what they want without being held back. I definitely think that the Magic Trackpad is a complete upgrade over anything Apple has come out with in awhile. Sure they may have their many devices with the new iTouch, iPhone, MacBook Air, and on and on, but the Magic Trackpad is a whole different story.

Apple finally got the trackpad right when they made it glass, multi-touch, and entirely clickable; but it gets even magic-er with a little customization courtesy of Better Touch Tool.

Apple natively offers some (limited) customization of trackpad gestures, but the free application BetterTouchTool deserves credit for making the hardware as useful as it is. BTT allows you to assign commands to 50+ gestures – from ‘5 finger swipe down’ to ‘3 finger tip-tap left’ – and better yet, assign unique gestures to unique applications. BTT also implements the pretty useful ‘Snap’ feature found in Windows 7, used to view two windows side by side (which I find very useful when comparing or transcribing data).

My favorite implementation of BTT is in Chrome; where four finger swipes left and right move me between tabs and three finger swipes up and down create and close tabs. I also use it to control Spaces (five finger tap to view all, ‘tip finger swipe’ to switch between) which allowed me to actually enjoy the benefits spaces without having to wait for OSX Lion. Other cool features are ‘Live View’; a window that shows you’re finger motions on a virtual trackpad and the command that is recognized (so you can practice your ‘tip-taps’ and ‘tip swipes’), and you can easily toggle BTT on and off from the taskbar in case you have to share your mac with your clumsy fingered roomate.

The trackpad has come quite a long way (and has definitely destroyed its portable-input-device competition) and while it may not yet be ideal for gaming, graphic design, and other involved processes, it adds significant value over the mouse in everyday tasks; like web, editing documents, and viewing media, and may even beat out the mouse and become the input method of choice for the everyday user. I mean IBM definitely never created a desktop version of their ThinkPad’s little red dot…

For more details head to the Better Touch Tool site, or if you’ve heard enough download it now.