We Review: Apple’s Magic Trackpad

Not content with revolutionising the digital-music industry, reinventing the mobile phone and turning a niche tablet computing market into a sales phenomenon, Apple has turned its attention to bumping off the humble mouse.

In many ways, the Magic Trackpad ($119 from apple.com/nz) is just a natural extension of the pointing devices Apple has been building into its notebooks. And it’s by no means the first company to adapt the touchpad idea to desktop PCs. However, the introduction of multi-touch gestures (where, for example, you can slide two fingers up and down to scroll) has made trackpads a genuine alternative to using a conventional mouse.

Anyone who’s used a MacBook Pro with a multi-touch trackpad can attest that going back to clutching a mouse and dragging it around a desktop often feels clunky.

The Magic Trackpad takes that trackpad’s convenience and untethers it from the computer by using Bluetooth wireless technology.

The pairing process to connect it to the Mac is pretty painless once the computer has been given the latest updates (OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4 is required).

The large surface area means it is even more user-friendly than its notebook-bound cousins. The trackpad is raised at an angle thanks to its battery compartment, which takes two AAs.

The mouse “button” is built into the rubber feet on the underside, so when you push to click, the whole pad is depressed. It takes more pressure than perhaps is regarded as ergonomic but there’s always the option to configure the trackpad to register light taps as clicks, through the configuration settings.

Zooming, scrolling, rotating and flipping through pages in a browser with simple movements of your fingers soon becomes second-nature.

So, can the Magic Trackpad replace the mouse altogether?

For most everyday office computing tasks, it has every bit the potential to do so. Those looking for a precision-pointer, however, will still be reaching out for something to hold.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz

More problems for iPhone 4 users!

Apple iPhone 4 users are reporting another issue with the smartphone: photos obscured by an annoying coloured tinge.

*Above – Slightly Blue/Green tinge when photo was taken of a white background.

Fan forums have been littered with users who say their photos are being tainted by blue, yellow and green splotches.

Apple has already had to address user concern over an antenna issue with the device, which, if held a certain way, degrades the iPhone 4’s network performance when connecting to mobile towers.

To address that issue, dubbed “Antennagate”, the company decided it would give its users free cases, which it predicted could cost the company US$175 million (NZ$245m) in revenue. The free case, or “bumper”, fixes the issue.

Just weeks after the Antennagate controversy, Mark Papermaster, the Apple executive in charge of iPhone engineering, left the company.

Australian tech blog Techau.tv today reports that the image issue appears to only occur when taking images with the rear-facing camera under fluorescent indoor lighting conditions.

It says the problem causes photos to “have a blue tint that appears as a circle from the centre of the photo”.

“The tint is so bad it renders photos under these conditions effectively useless,” it says.

The issue also appears to affect the front-facing camera, although not as severely.

A Google search reveals that the issue is widespread, with many forum users revealing they too have the issue.

Apple’s official support forum shows users complaining of an image issue too, where whole images are tinged yellow.

After the issue was first raised in the 27-page Apple forum thread, many other issues affecting the camera have been reported by iPhone 4 users.

Anthony Agius, who runs the MacTalk.com.au forum website, said that the issue affected his iPhone 4. He said the problem was “certainly legit”, but that he didn’t know what caused it.

MacTalk’s forum users have been reporting the issue since the start of this month, but international forums caught on earlier when the iPhone 4 was released in the US, with Macrumors.com users posting about it in various threads.

Users of the Samsung Omnia II are also reporting issues.

Apple Australia is yet to respond to a request for comment.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz