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I love the Apple trackpad with its multi-touch gestures. I want to buy a MacBook Pro primarily because of this. I am a student though and it seems to be very expensive for me. Hence I was wondering if any other company except for Apple provides a trackpad, or is it only available on Apple devices?

Also if this is the case then is there a software that can be used to mimic the Apple trackpad on an ordinary laptop? I am using Synaptic but is not the same. I know that software support and hardware support (which Apple provides) provides different user experience with the latter being more adroit, but what is the best I can get?

i want a hardware and software package. Are there any drivers in windows that will understand the trackpad movements?

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  • I have yet to see another laptop that has a trackpad that supports multi-touch. It may be patented/proprietary in that sense, but if you think about some of the non-Apple tablets out there, most of them support multi-touch. Short answer: I think you have to get an Apple laptop for multi-touch. But I'm not really sure.
    – Harv
    Oct 12, 2011 at 17:39
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    Alternately: You could buy the Apple trackpad itself (store.apple.com/us/product/MC380LL/…). That would take care of the hardware, then you'd just need to find software to interpret the multi-touch gestures.
    – Harv
    Oct 12, 2011 at 18:27
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    I think this is a question of Apple-product–like hardware, not Apple–hardware, plus the intention seems to be to use it on Windows so I'd vote for this to be migrated to Super User.
    – Jari Keinänen
    Dec 1, 2011 at 10:54

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Yes. Bamboo tablets made by Wacom are an option: they allow multi-touch and stylus input on a pretty large surface, but are more expensive than a magic trackpad: the cheapest I believe costs $75 USD. Wacom is a company that builds touch devices for graphic designers and consumers. Perhaps you want to give a look to their website:

http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Bamboo/BambooTablets.aspx

In case though, you want to use the Magic Trackpad, Windows drivers for Apple devices are downloadable in the form of Bootcamp Updates from the Apple Support page. Alhtough the trackpad is supposed to be Mac-only, after a bit of googleing I found a couple tutorials explaining how to use it with Windows.

Here is a blogpost I found, and a webpage with instructions:

http://www.mannis-world.de/blog/?p=15

http://www.labnol.org/software/apple-magic-trackpad-with-windows/14158/

About using multitouch with any other laptop: I don't think this is possible, for it requires hardware features not present on most laptops.

Hope it helps!

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