Apple's New Trackpad?

jamesoutlaw writes, "I came across this article on Go2Mac.com today. It has some interesting information on a trackpad that might make its appearance in the next PowerBook. Among its features are 'hot spots' and the use of a stylus for handwriting input. When the Newton was discontinued, Apple stated that they were not licensing the NewtonOS or opening the source for the OS, and that they were going to integrate some of the Newton technology into a future product. It looks like this trackpad may be a part of that." Of course, this would make a cool external device for desktop machines (Macs, PCs or newfangled Web pads) as well, if the handwriting recognition software were available. Apple?

Re:I think Apple..

We've been through this holy war before... (sigh)

M$ Windows isn't entirely consistent about what they use the two buttons for. The average Windows users I know rarely use the second button -- or when they do, it gets them into unexpected trouble. The way X uses the mouse buttons seems even more unintuitive and inconsistant. What good are all of those extra buttons when you have to learn what they do all over again for each application or window manager?

Some research that I read about (and wish I'd kept track of a reference to) demonstrated that more mouse buttons means more RSI. This is partially due to sharing the load among the tendons, but it has more to do with the way one holds a mouse when one can use any finger to press the button, versus the way one holds a mouse when they have to use different fingers to press different buttons.

Apple, with clear logical thought and good reason, originally considered developing around a two or three button mouse, and wisely rejected that idea after watching a statistically significant number of novice users become confused by them. Macintosh "Power" users can buy aftermarket pointing devices with a wide number of button configurations -- and they get to define what those extra buttons do.

Windows 3.1 really didn't make use of the second button. But the MacOS had context-sensitive menus (available by a holding the "Control" key on the keyboard while pressing the mouse button) for some time before Microsoft standardized on what their second button did. Some Mac "power" users, who may be ignorant of the RSI ramifications, set their second button to duplicate that operation.

Sorry, that's not new.

Touchpad hot spots are already a feature of many touchpads in the PC market.

While not in common use in the US, touchpads of various sizes that work with stylii are being sold with Chinese character recognition.

As an example, Synaptics [synaptics.com] both has a touchpad-based Chinese character recognition system and a touchpad whose standard driver includes configurable hot spots.

-j

Finally they get something out of the investment..

The Newton was truly an amazing device. Before anyone bashes it on the stereotypes that people had against it, realize that in the later versions the handwriting recognition was excellent, it had a 200mhz processor on a HANDHELD, was able to record sound, accept TWO PCMCIA cards, get on the internet, fax, print, infared connection between two Newtons, wireless printing, play sound, and many more things right out of the box.

Now also realize that the Newton 2100 (the last version) came out over 3 years ago. The main reason it wasn't successful was because of its large size and high price, but the thing was WAAAY ahead of its time, I can't see how anyone can deny that.

Aside from that, Apple just canned it when Jobs came on board, supposedly because Jobs just didn't like them. I'm not bitter about it, it was probably the right decision. Some people on here asked why Apple doesn't revive it, well the story goes that much of the design information for the newton OS and hardware is lost/scattered throughout the apple campus. Plus, the handwriting recognition is about the only thing that is transferrable to another product.

I don't really see why someone would want to write on the trackpad when they have a keyboard right there; except just to draw on the screen easily, but that is not handwriting recognition. It certainly adds to the coolness factor though.

Apple can't. Re:Reinstate the Newton ?

Jobs killed it because of his Ego.

Jobs managed to drive away most of the Newton engineers. They left in-mass for Palm Computing.

When Jobs stood up at WWDC and said:
"Apple Makes Computers Right?"
"Computers have keyboards, Right?"
Jobs then help up a Newton and then said:
"So what is this then?"
This caused a few Newton Engineers to leave. When the spinoff was cancelled, thats when most left.

And, as I have heard it in the Newton newsgroups, the code was rather crufty, and convoluted. The only people who have a CHANCE of groking its fullness are now at Palm.

handwriting recognition

I spent a summer working on the Newton way back when that was still a real platform. The group I was working with at SAIC had a little challenge, which was to get the device to recognize the handwritten phrase "Four score and seven years ago." After about 2 months of "Flour snakes bend kevlar coors" I finally got it to work.

I'm sure they've done a lot of work on the handwriting heuristic, but it was the generally clunky nature of having to wait for the device to process each word that eventually led to the development of Graffiti, which of course is now so popular on PalmOS.

Unless they've had a really dramatic breakthrough, this technology is not really good for data entry, period. However, I think that it's _real_ utility could be in applications like digital signature recognition. Imagine that instead of having to remember you secret PGP key you just sign on your trackpad.... That would be cool.

Anyone know what kinds of apps they've got planned?

Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?

I think Apple..

..should "invent" the 2-button mouse first.. :)