Gizmodo's round up of Apple touch-pad rumors, here.
I won't go over them all, but it is coming, Apple's bald-faced lies to the contrary, and it will do something, and the consensus seems to be that it's going to be the iPhone on steroids.
An amusing side note: Five years or so ago, Apple gobbled up FingerWorks, a company that produced a multi-touchpad that was way ahead of anything anybody else had going. The iGesture™ was a boffo piece of hardware, with its firmware, and there was also a keyboard -- I bought one of each in 2002. The keyboard was too sensitive for me, but I still use the iGesture pad -- it beats every mouse or trackball or other style pad I've every tried, hands down.
(Editor's Note: If you want that Touch Stream™ keyboard? I'll sell it to you -- it has become a collector's item, apparently, and now goes for about $1500 ...)
Apple shut FingerWorks down, insofar as production, and somebody just parked the website, so you can book it that the iSlate -- if that's what they call it -- is going to have some spiffy multi-touch controls. With my iGesture, I can do all the mouse stuff, plus open and close files like turning a knob, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
Gonna be interesting ...
4 comments:
you are the only other person I've run into who knows about fingerworks. I frequently regret not having bought their keyboard when I had the chance. they looked amazing. of course I doubt they'd work with current operating systems but still.
I got the keyboard because I was having some RSI problems, but it was so sensitive that spilling a drop of water onto it would type a character. I found that I liked the Kinesis much better, but I kept the iGesture pad, which is still hanging in there
The keyboard still works with my current OS, 10.6.2
If the iGesture craps out, the Wacom Bamboo is a fairly good multi-gesture replacement at a reasonable price. Comes with a pen, too, for precision work.
The best keyboard I ever used is unfortunately no longer made: it was made by Kinesis in the mid/late nineties. It's a split keybaord, attached to the arms of my chair (Herman Miller Aeron) with a rod both ends of which have swivel ball joints. It normally came with a touchpad in the left or right. Mine's customized to have a large trackball in the right. Every key programmable, off of the keyboard itself. Awesome.
Only downside it had was that the keyboard was wired. I still need to replace that with one of the wireless wire solutions
http://picasaweb.google.com/edwin.voskamp/DeskchairWithKeyboardAndTrackballBuiltInInTheArmRests#
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