Adam Turner
Friday, 17 October 2008 14:55
Opinion and Analysis
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I never thought I'd see the day, but Apple has finally introduced a
right-click button on its latest range of MacBooks, MacBook Pros and the MacBook Air.
With all the talk of the upgraded multi-touch trackpad on the new Mac notebooks, little attention has been paid to one of the most fundamental changes in Mac hardware and Mac philosophy ever. The right-click button, long scorned by Apple worshippers as the mark of the devil, has finally appeared on a Mac.
Some might say it's one of the signs of the apocalypse, but Apple has managed to sneak in a right-click button in a way so as not to infuriate the Mac faithful. The boffins at Cupertino have actually removed the button from the trackpad completely. The entire trackpad is now one big button, similar to the Apple Mighty Mouse.
This sounds like fewer buttons, not more, but there's method in Apple's madness. By default the bottom third of the new trackpad is designated as a virtual button, so you can easily click and drag objects as you would with the previous trackpad/button combo. The introduction of a virtual button sounds like a bad idea but, within a few minutes, you don't even notice because you're still touching the computer exactly the same place to achieve the same result.
The new trackpads introduce a few new gestures. Sweeping four fingers up scatters the open windows to reveal the desktop, sweeping four fingers down shows all the open windows on the current desktop and sweeping four fingers right calls up a the Application Switcher.
The ability to access Expose features via these four-fingered gestures is a welcome addition as it reduces your reliance on Active Corners. It's easy to accidentally activate Active Corners when moving towards the Trash or the Spotlight search bar, and unfortunately there's no way to adjust the sensitivity.
The introduction of extra gestures and a virtual button are nothing too radical, but there's some extra goodness to be found in the new Trackpad preference panel. There are the existing options of tap to click plus tap to drag, features which are also available to many Windows and Linux users. You can also adjust the tracking, double-click and scrolling speed.
So how does removing the trackpad button actually add a right-click button to the Mac?
CONTINUED
