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I love using touch with Windows 7 and 8. Especially on Windows 8, the touchscreen finally feels like it's respected just as much as the keyboard and mouse.

So, naturally, I'd want to carry this experience over to the Mac. I've used a Macbook/MBP trackpad, but those aren't the same. They are not nearly as large and usable as a full touchscreen.

So: Does the Mac support touch screens in any way?

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Yes, it does, but it's limited, according to [documentation]. You can access [feature] by doing [gesture] and you can open [xyz] with [gesture]. A full list:

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Why the downvotes? Please, tell me what part of this question is unsatisfactory; I'd like to improve it. – JavaAndCSharp Mar 31 '12 at 13:12
I up voted to compensate. Seems nothing wrong with the question. I have a slightly related one that I will post shortly. – Monster Truck Aug 14 '12 at 15:18

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

The touchpads Apple sells separatly or included in the Macbook are already multitouch and OS X is perfectly able to use them.

I think it's safe to say : yes OS X support multi touch screens.

You can of course use all swipe gestures, navigate and rotate with the trackpads which is more or less all you can do on iOS too. As you said it's just that Apple hasn't decided to include real touchSCREENS in Macs so we are stuck with touchPADS

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up vote 1 down vote

As far as I know, there is currently no native support for touch screens on OS X. I strongly believe this is because Apple wants you to do that on iOS instead, so I don't see touch adoption on OS X in the near future.

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wrong! Actually OS X have native support for touch screen panels, including drivers. Also it does include drivers and native support for active pen digitalizers, it even have native on-screen keyboard, and handwrite recognition. I use since OS X Leopard. But unfortunately there's no multitouch gestures like the magic trackpad. – Vitim.us Feb 18 at 2:17
Please add your comment as an answer. – Randolph West Feb 19 at 22:52
up vote 1 down vote

One way to get something close, is to use your iPad as a secondary display to your Mac. In this way you are able to extend your normal desktop onto the iPad and input using touch.

See this answer on a different question for more details

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