4

Are non-unibody MacBook Pros (Late 2006 ~ Early 2008) capable of Lion's 3 and 4 finger multi-touch gestures?

Improve this question

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
3

No - that era of hardware is a solid-state trackpad, not a multitouch trackpad and can only track one motion. Although it can guess fairly well if it's one finger or two that is moving in two dimensions (left-right and up-down), but that's all the hardware can tell.

Put another way, yours tracks the center of all touch points combined, not several touches individually at the same time with their own motion.

Improve this answer
4
  • Thanks for the quick answer. I figured as much. Now, I notice the MB466 (2008, aluminum, "non-Pro") MacBooks have glass touchpads that resemble those on newer MBP's. Are these multitouch actually enabled, or do they share the same hardware restrictions as the non-unibody MBP's?
    – mlhope
    Dec 19, 2011 at 23:56
  • All of the glass trackpads have multitouch. All of the ones with the lower wide physical button do not*. (* The only "unibody" mac I can recall having a physical button and multi touch is the first generation Air.)
    – bmike ♦
    Dec 20, 2011 at 0:09
  • Actually this is not completely right, as my old MBP (early 2008, last non-unibody) does support all kinds of of multi-touch gestures, at least when using bettertouchtool ( blog.boastr.net ) and it does have a distinct button.
    – iolsmit
    Dec 21, 2011 at 14:40
  • Even without BetterTouchTool, my MBP 17" (Early 2008) supports the same gestures in Lion as the unibody MBPs. However, with the smaller trackpad surface and the physical button in the way, the 3-finger + thumb pinch/spread gestures are cumbersome.
    – joelseph
    Dec 21, 2011 at 17:12
2

Yes - but only the very late ones, like 2008ish - at least my early 2008 MBP (last non-uniboby) supported all kinds of multi-touch gestures using bettertouchtool - didn't try Lion on it but in the last Snowleopard versions all the OS X multi-touch gestures also worked.

Improve this answer
1

No

Also notice the following:

  • the trackpad is smaller
  • scrolling with inertia is not enabled!

Fix

When connecting the external multitouch trackpad by Apple, all those features get enabled. They do run smooth.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .