New Macbook - dual-boot- glass trackpad Q

Hi there,

This new no-button glass trackpad intrigues me.

Will dual-booters (win or linux) be able to reconfigure portions of the trackpad to act as the typical two mouse button setup found in ordinary laptops?

If possible that would be very attractive to non-mac users who like the hardware.

Cheers

 

hmm interesting question, i dont have an answer and dont think you'll get a solid answer for a while, but also going a bit off track..

when i first saw they were doing this i first thought to myself do you reckon it is because they couldn't get the 2 finger tap to work under windows?? im not saying its the only reason, maybe just something that helped along the idea?

 

it certainly seems like a good way to boost the compatibility with windows, which must be considered important given the creation of bootcamp.

a single hardware mouse button is a big hurdle to jump, it simply is just one button, whereas the new software mouse button configuration theoretically allows any manner of mouse button arrangement.

i am not saying it is why they did the glass trackpad, merely a fringe benefit, but something i'd expect them to support if they are serious about bootcamp.

 

I hope they add this feature in the Windows drivers. I think that will fix my only complaint with the new MBP..

 

i guess it is one to keep an eye on, i almost wish this topic could get stickied so people would see it and test the idea of customising the trackpad for windows buttons.

or in linux in my case.

 

this is a good thread never realised this track pad could cause a big stir for bootcamp (

 

has anyone tried bootcamp on a new macbook/pro yet?

 

it works fine in parallels on xp in case anyone is interested in going that route.

 

One of my friends installed Vista 64 on his new MBP. He said the drivers for the pad are horrible at the moment, since you can't disable the roll-to-click. That means movements emulate a click fairly often.

If the driver is that far behind, I doubt you can partition the pad for 2-button emulation at the moment.

 

Everyone here has stated that with Windows installed the three finger movement or two finger and click works fine in windows.... Linux I haven't read anything...

 

really? two-three fingers do good under Vista? at my MBP(last gen) the 2 finger scroll is the worst scroll EVER no matter what sensibility settings are used.

Anyone able to use right click with just the trackpad (no CTRL or other buttons used)???

Basically, regular click, right click and scroll is ALL we need under Vista. More is great of course. But not having those 3 BASIC functions is a shame, for APPLE in this case, since they just need some better drivers !!!

 

Right click with click on the bottom right corner of the trackpad did not work in Win XP as I have tried....the boot camp manager in XP allows you to configure secondary click (right click in XP)....but a click on the bottom right corner of the trackpad as a right click in XP is not an option yet....hope they will update the bootcamp manager for this new option as it makes life extremely easier on XP....for now, I use a mouse or two finger and a click.

 

that is what we need to hear......................

 

The new trackpad is HORRIBLE and especially horrible under Vista. Things you could do easily before with the previous MBP are nearly impossible with this one. I do a lot of cutting and pasting and it is very, very frustrating on the new trackpad. So much so that the machine is nearly worthless to me without a mouse attached. Hopefully this is something they can fix with software but I think it was awfully arrogant of them to switch to this obviously untested mess.

 

to each his own. most people on here love the new trackpad.

and its not a mess just because YOU are having issues with it. if you want a laptop designed for vista, then get a pc.

 

The two finger scroll is about the only thing that appears to be improved about the current glasspad. Everything else sucks. I'm hoping these are just faulty drivers but basically the trackpad in unusable under Vista for anything but simple web browsing. That's a shame because my old MBP worked perfectly for this despite the one-button trackpad.

No, this does not work under Windows. There's no setting for it in the Boot Camp control panel under Windows either.

Unfortunately what doesn't work properly is selecting text. Often the click doesn't engage with the text and very often it drops the click (i.e. acts like you took your finger off the button) so you lose your selection in the middle. When you try to drag and drop (say between two Explorer windows) you're (a) lucky if the drop gets complete and (b) supremely lucky if you dropped where you expected it to drop!

YIKES! These are things that worked fine on the previous MBP. I'm really sorry I bought the new one.

So my gripes are:

1. Horrible trackpad. Basically unusable and removing the button was a huge, ignorant, step backward. Hopefully they fix this with new drivers.

2. Super shiny screen (even more so than the past glossy screens on MacBook Pro) that is pretty much unusable in bright backlight conditions that didn't even slightly phase my previous matte-screen MBP. Maybe Steve Jobs can pick whatever office layout he likes to combat this but I can't

3. Mini displayport adapter is proprietary and there aren't mini-displayport to displayport adapters (at all) and the mini displayport to dual link DVI adapter is a giant long cable that doesn't ship until next month and costs $100!!! I could plug my 30" monitor directly into my old MBP and now I have to pay $100, and deal with an extra cable, for the pleasure of doing so this time. I don't see ANY benefit to that. They claim the benefit was a smaller connector but in fact the new MBP is noticeably LARGER than the old one.

4. Both USB connectors are on the left side of the machine so there are now a lot more wires bunched up in one area.

5. They moved the audio controls to F10, F11, and F12 so you can no longer reach the FN key and the audio keys with one hand.

6. They removed the button to turn off keyboard illumination and setting it to the lowest setting doesn't seem to actually turn it off. So That's really lame if you're on a plane trying to lie back and watch a movie - especially when you're watching the keyboard reflect in the glass screen.

In addition they brought out a really nice new Cinema display and the only that requires mini-display port. Are they so arrogant that they'll only sell the new monitor to customers who buy new machines from them? I suspect they'll eventually have an adapter that lets you plug it into a DVI or VGA interface but imagine the arrogance of not including that with the display. Sad Apple, very sad. I'm a very loyal Apple customer and my confidence in them has been severely shaken with this new machine.

The good points?

1. Faster GPU - it will be better for Windows games but the trade off is that Windows seems to only work with the more-battery-hungry 9600 and not the 9400.

2. Easily replaceable hard drive but every other Windows laptop I've owned in the last few years has had that feature already and it came at the expense of having a pretty flimsy battery cover.

3. It's gorgeous. So much more stylish. It feels beautiful to hold and very solid. I like that it is thinner but I also wish it were a little smaller from side to side.

4. As screwed up as the new trackpad is the new gestures work really well in Mac OS X. Unfortunately I have to use Windows most of the time and play games on the machine so I'm in Boot Camp more than OS X.

5. The glossiness of the screen can be problematic at times but when it isn't a problem the screen is quite beautiful. It seems like the answer would have been a low reflectivity glass.

6. I like having the dual GPUs but unfortunately they're only useful in Mac OS X. I'm hoping they rectify that with a driver or firmware upgrade and also allow Nvidia's GeForce Boost Hybrid SLI function for when I'm playing games on it. Battery life in Windows is significantly lower than OS X but that appears to be Microsoft's fault, not Apples.

 

The problems aren't only under Vista, they're just worse under Vista.

 

Doh that just rained on my parade.

I bought a MacBook since I thought it would have right click now in Windows. If the trackpad does not even work right then ***. It has the capability to do exactly that but Apple is not writing the driver for it...

 

I don't understand why you bought a macbook then. If the trackpad is so horrible, return the mbp and get yourself a lenovo business model. It's not like apple is going to be changing the style or the function of the trackpad anytime soon, seeing as how it just came out.

 

The Mac has right click - you touch two fingers on the trackpad and then press down on the button. That works in Windows as well but the trackpad is wonky in Windows. I expect they'll fit it in a driver upgrade.

 

With the exception of this one issue, on this latest model, the MacBook Pro is a way better Windows machine than most dedicated Windows laptops. I think that stems from the fact that you install a plain vanilla copy of Windows (in my case Vista) and Apple installs just the drivers you need without tons of additional shovelware. My last MBP was a perfect Windows machine and I expect they'll fix the trackpad driver on this one and it will fall in line as well. In the mean time I attach a mouse and everything is great.

For those of us who want the best of both worlds (to run Mac OS X and Windows) the MBP is a great machine.

 

BTW, I did some more test and discovered that two of my gripes were specific to using the MacBook Pro under Windows:

1. The Trackpad works flawlessly under OS X. All of the things that are wonky in Windows work perfectly in OS X. So they should be able to fix this with a new driver.

2. In OS X when you turn keyboard illumination down all the way it turns off completely. No idea why they didn't allow that in Windows but I'm sure it's a bug they can eradicate with a new driver.

I feel better now about my purchase now

 

The new MBP have the WinXP drivers that is automatically installed as part of Windows-Boot-Camp installation. Afterwards, there is a BootCamp applications running in WinXP taskbar. Clicking this bring the menu and under "Trackpad" I can select "Two finger" for right click.

HOWEVER, even when selected, right click with two-finger does NOT work in WinXP under Boot Camp. It does work under VMWare

Can anyone help?

 

When 2 fingers dont work, you should always use more fingers.

Yes 3 fingers works.

 

Hmm, are you using 2 fingers to tap, or 2 fingers then click? Tap doesn't work under Windows.

I'm using the early 2008 MBPs and I'm quite fine with the touchpad under Windows XP. It tracks well, scrolling is smooth and I don't have any problems right-clicking. The only thing that could be improved is allowing us to tap the touchpad or allow more multi-gestures than just scrolling.

 

I have the late 2008 MBP and tap-to-click works in WinXP under BootCamp, including 2 fingers scrolling. It's the right-click using two-fingers that does NOT work.

 

threeeeee....

 

just click the trackpad with your 3 fingers