Magic Trackpad and 10.5.8 drivers?

After using it for almost an hour, I have adjusted to the sensitivity of it, but am noticing a problem that when I touch the trackpad Expose activates.

Its buggy but it works, kind of... I can't wait for my copy of 10.6 to show up so I can really take this thing for a test drive!

this sukkkss!!!!!
Apple forcing to use leopard pushing revenue.
I cant use leopard because of other software.

Huh?! Snow Vista what da **** r u talking about? Compare Snow Leopard to Vista, is like copmpare a swan to a cockroach!!

it is the point.

Snow Leopard is not worth using. Wrote Apple an eMail a few Minutes ago which says everything:

"Hello,

I was running Snow Leopard several times now (one install try per huge update: 1.6.0, 1.6.1 ... so on). The newest Version10.6.6 works average.
Im not used to work on an Average System. A well configured Windows Systems works better, because its not average anymore.

The problem because I'm writing you is, that I find I find it really annoying to use a bad Operating System to get a Magic Trackpad to work. Instead of simply running an older OS (Leopard, which was the first Apple OS i came in contact with).

I don't know what's the problem with Snow Leopard, I tried it in 64bit only mode, clean install, upgrade, every possible configuration. Never worked well. Spotlight doesnt work (as used to from Leopard), very often it takes longer to find simple files in the root document folder than open it by finder. Safari very often lags (Google Chrome works better than Safari - :=) at least something). Even Finder opens Slower than on Leopard.

I'm running a Macbook Pro 2008 Series with 6 GB of Ram, a well configured System. I even tried using Maintainence Applications, System Performance stays bad.

Even the newest Version of Snow Leopard (10.6.6) wasn't good, so I decided to downgrade to Leopard once again.

Now I have to choose between using a fast OS in comparision to using a great hardware device. I'm in this situation for 24 hours now. And such a situation makes me even think about the whole Company & Cooperate Idendity.

If Apple isn't able to distribute a well-running OS, at least! there shouldn't be Minimum System Requirements to new Hardware.

Another thing, Leopard is able to send files via Bluetooth to my Android Smartphone, Snow Leopard didn't manage it one time?! What's that?

I really learned to love Leopard, Macs, Apple and the Simplicity behind most of everything. But the current situation makes me doubt everything!
I don't want to stay with a company which makes people "eat or die" even if they don't like something.

And I really have to say: I hate the Situation right now and I'm willing to let go a great peace of hardware to gain satisfaction using my MacBook again.

This is a no-go situation and I wanted to let you know, as fast and easy as you won a new / happy / satisfied customer, as easy is it to loose one due to this facts. I'm not wanting to use a bad OS.

Sincerely,
a un-happy-user,
-"

This situation just *****...

:=/

Message was edited by: omfgUser

After reading this thread I simply searched for a device in my Bluetooth preferences. Pressed the button on the side of Magic Trackpad and while holding the button down the thing ACTUALLY worked. 10.5.8. I CAN NOW USE THE MAGIC TRACKPAD ON MY LEOPARD OSX and don't have to worry about switching to my Snow Leopard OSX on my external FireWire Drive.

Not sure what I did, but it works without using any drivers or pkg installs.

Nice.

I was able to get mine to pair, but only with basic trackpad functions. Does right-click and two-finger scrolling work for you?

Works great with my late 2005 G5 tower running 10.5.8. Had to use a blank paring option after installing bluetooh card and antenna in tower

Does "works great" mean you are able to use Tap to click, Two finger scrolling, and other gestures?

Apple's Magic Trackpad is not the only such device out there. An even more spacious one, usable on just about all Macs:
http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/gestures.php

AppleSince86 wrote:
Apple's Magic Trackpad is not the only such device out there. An even more spacious one, usable on just about all Macs:
http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/gestures.php

In fact I do have the Bamboo. It's a pretty, nice, cheap and precise graphics tablet, and a not-so-nice and all-but-precise trackpad. The resolution when used as a trackpad is plain ridiculous, try drawing a small circle with your finger and you will see the cursor moving in squares. Precise positioning of the cursor is more like gambling and my hand cramps rather quickly.

Short off topic rant about "Snow Vista":

One little detail as an example. They quietly removed a small, tiny, little feature that was for me one of the major defining features of the Mac OS since the beginning, and that's the creator code. Actually they didn't remove the type/creator codes themselves, they just removed their interpretation from the Finder.

Where's the problem? Say I want to show all PNG images in Preview. No problem there. Now there's Fireworks, which saves its documents in a heavily modified PNG format. Still no problem, since Fireworks sets the creator code of its files to "Fireworks", so all normal PNGs open in Preview, or Photoshop or whatever software you saved it with, and all Fireworks docs open in Fireworks.

With 10.6 that doesn't work anymore. Creator codes are ignored by the Finder, all it cares for is the extension, and that's .png, so all files are opened in Preview now.

Only workaround is setting the application in the Info window in the Finder. Manually. Every time I write a new Fireworks file. Excellent. I have better things to do.

And that's the case with .html files, too, I want to open stuff like HTML-documentation or grabbed pages in Safari, but my own HTML-Stuff in BBEdit. No problem with 10.5, complete hassle with 10.6.

Now I already hear the obvious arrogant explanation from Apple: Type/creator codes are old crap and they wanted to clean stuff up a bit with 10.6. Fine. Just that this is complete and utter nonsense. Remember that workaround I mentioned? That setting the application in the Finder thing? When you do that, the Finder writes the *absolute path* of that App into a fixed length data block into the *resource fork* of the file. Yes. Resource fork. That presumably anachronistic thing that Apple declared deprecated and "old crap" once they started thinking about OS X.

To sum it up, Apple replaced a well working old mechanism with a terrible kludge that totally wrecks my workflow.

I'd be completely happy if they had removed it and replaced it with a modern solution, like using HFS extended attributes for new MIME-based creator codes, that stuff is already there and would be rather easy to implement. Since there is no technical reason I guess it was a purely political decision, they just removed it to see if people notice. Many didn't. I did.

And you know why many OS X users didn't notice? Because they are used to Windows that never had that elegant file-app-coupling. Just plain old extensions. And that's why Snow Leopard is OS X Vista for me. The most Windows-like Mac OS ever. Lowest-denominator stuff. I guess it's only downhill from there...

Amen, Brother skab-de.

Although I have not encountered this creator code problem you describe (only my wife's Mac Pro is running 10.6, other 4 Mac in house run 10.5), I definitely see how stupid this is. One of the big advantages the Mac filesystem / application handling had over Windows over the years was precisely this ability to couple applications and files. Even the old data/resource fork stuff from pre-OS X days was a better idea than Windows 3-letter file extension locking you into one application.

I come from a Unix background -- I name my files whatever makes sense to me, and the idea of special names/suffixes is just anathema and stupid.

Back to the original topic:

I'm unfortunately starting to get carpal tunnel-like (repetitive stress injury) troubles from using a mouse. I've used computers with mice for 25 years. My laptops with their trackpads and devices like the iPad with their trackpad like interface and gestures seem like the perfect solution for my troubles; the muscles and motions are vastly different.

But as I just said -- all my Macs run 10.5, including the MacBook Pro supplied by my employer. I'm not about to "upgrade" them to 10.6 just to support Apple's trackpad device unless there is no other solution (i.e no 3rd party trackpads or other pointing devices, and my hand becomes completely crippled).

I would readily accept reduced functionality on the trackpad. I don't need the fancy 2,3,4 finger gestures -- I just need to point like a mouse and have it accept a 2 buttons worth of clicks (I use the right mouse button a lot for context menus).

And since I used to write Unix device drivers for a living, I know this is not rocket science for Apple to provide, given that my 10.5 laptops already support built-in trackpads and a zillion USB devices.