While I’m still relatively new to the Mac world, and haven’t fully embraced the hype surrounding an unquestioning allegiance to everything Apple, I absolutely adore my MacBook’s trackpad.
The multitouch glass trackpad could school any of its contemporaries on how to do it right. The big and beautiful button allows me to use my digit dextarity in ways I never thought possible. Sweeping windows away, pulling them back, pinching things smaller, spreading things wider… it’s simply awesome. So it was with a bit of excitement that I read the new version of OS X, 10.6 Snow Leopard–expected out this summer–will have multitouch trackpad support for writing Chinese built right in.
No longer will a tablet be necessary to scribble out the strokes of Chinese characters.
Check it out in action here (bear with the music):
While I can’t imagine it being a very practical replacement for current pinyin-based IMEs, for students of Chinese like myself, it will be fantastic. It is also bound to open up doors to some cool Mac apps for Mandarin learning.
See more Snow Leopard features at Apple Insider. (h/t Colin Jacobs)
