Apple Magic Trackpad now available
By Dean • Jul 28th, 2010 • Category: Mobile Computing Accessory News
- Photo: Apple
To be fair to Apple, it’s impossible for the company to keep any secrets with so many people watching their every move. Here’s the Apple Magic Trackpad, which is essentially a giant multi-touch surface for any Apple computers.
What is it?
The Magic Trackpad brings the multi-touch functionality Macbook users have become accustomed to to Apple’s desktop machines. With 80 per cent more surface area than that found on the Macbook Pro’s touchpad, it’s also the largest multi-touch trackpad on the market (for now). Like its Macbook Pro counterparts, the entire touchpad is clickable, too, meaning it’s designed to replace your mouse completely.
Pricing and availability
The Apple Magic Trackpad is priced at (a fairly steep) $69 (£44) and is only available for Apple computers that have Snow Leopard (ver. 10.6.4 at the least) installed. Though this splinters the Mac userbase, this requirement is presumably down to gesture-types introduced alongside Snow Leopard.
Multi-touch now a standard
What the Apple Magic Trackpad confirms is that multi-touch computing is no longer a novelty, but quickly becoming a standard. Smartphones – most notably the iPhone – were first responsible for introducing this form of input to users, before being adopted by computer touchpads. So much so that we haven’t reviewed a single computer in the last four months that doesn’t have some limited form of touch input.
And if we’re wrong about our assertion that all of computing is moving this way, it’s at least a certainty that Apple is moving this way, with the iPhone, iPad, iPod, Macbooks, the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad.
Priced at the same $69 (£44) mark as the Magic Mouse isn’t exactly priced to go, but we imagine Apple will sell a few, if for no reason other than curious buyers.
Does this device interest you at all and what do you make of the move towards touch computing?
Tags for this article: Apple Magic TrackPad, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, multi touch, touchpads
