Two Finger Scrolling Rocks
Every so often something comes along that completely changes the way I use a computer. My new MacBook Pro has provided one of those: two finger scrolling. The concept is just so simple; to move the mouse you slide one finger across the track pad, to scroll you slide two fingers across the track pad. You can scroll vertically or horizontally so it beats a scroll wheel mouse hands down.
It's particularly interesting that I've taken to using it so heavily, so quickly, because I've never taken to tapping the track pad to click. I've always found it easier to just keep my thumb hovering over the great big single mouse button that Macs have so it wasn't worth the annoyance of accidental clicks that come with enabling the tap to click function. I've always really liked the fact that Mac laptops only have one button because it makes clicking so much easier - the split button on Windows laptops has always annoyed me and made clicking (both left and right) much slower.
For those that want two buttons though, the new Mac trackpads do have another cool track. Place two fingers on the trackpad and click the button and it treats it as a right click. If you like the tap to click function, you can just tap with two fingers to get a right click. I think it's a pretty awesome example of designers knowing better than users and sticking to their guns. For years people have asked for a second mouse button on Apple laptops but the Mac designers wanted the simplicity (and efficiency, since most clicks are actually left clicks and a single big button is much faster for that) of having just a single mouse button. It turns out that you don't really want a real second mouse button, you just want an easily accessible, one handed modifier for your mouse click. The two finger click turns out to provide just that without making single clicking harder.
Course, people will still complain - just watch the comments…
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 am
Love the two finger scroll. Just turned my wife and kids onto it with our new home MacBook. I always get frustrated when I crack open the iBook for something, and I have to ‘manually’ scroll - to me, this is one of those things it will be hard to live without in the future; there’s no going back.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:52 am
I hate the two finger scroll.
Apple bought http://fingerworks.com/ for the technology, the engineers and all their patents, then shut their operation. The Touchstream LP is one of the most innovative keyboards in existance and they now go for over $1000 on ebsy because they’re simply not made anymore - and haven’t been since fingerworks was consumed back in ‘05.
For reference: 1 finger keypress, 2 finger mouse, 3 finger click+drag, 4 finger scroll.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:12 am
See told you they’d complain. :P
Stephen,
It’s always disappointing when good technology gets dumped but making “left-field” keyboards isn’t Apple’s line of business so they were never going to continue along that line and assuming fingerworks had patents Apple didn’t really have a lot of choice but to buy them so they could confidently use the technology (licensing would have put them at risk of having the licensing costs suddenly upped in the future which is worth avoiding if possible).
All that said, I don’t see how that reduces the benefits of two finger scroll. Was there some other aspect of it that you didn’t like? Personally, I can’t see me using 3 and 4 fingers on a track pad or keyboard, it just starts to feel awkward.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Next time you’re at humbug I’ll have to bring it along to show you how it works :p
I’m really not against 2 finger scrolling, I love it. Just angsty over the fingerworks thing.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
heh. Yeah Humbug, that’s that thing I haven’t been to since I got engaged. :)
May 24th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Ditto on loving the two finger scroll. I use a Powerbook at work and a Macbook at home, I get quite confused sitting at work wondering why my windows aren’t scrolling. I’ve even found myself trying to use it on the Windows laptop. It’s a great example of a small effect that has huge value.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
[...] to Pages, to iTunes, many of them incorporate real life, realistic graphics, not to mention a great tactile [...]