Better Touch Tool: software to customize mouse gestures

If there's one thing that Steve Jobs understands, it's marginal utility. And like all other things Apple, this is a blessing and a curse. iSteve saw the need for a giant trackpad, way ahead of the pack. And yet, he had to make it work well for total idiots, so no customization.

I've raved about the trackpad in other threads. I practically live inside Chrome and what's more time consuming and irritating that tracking your finger all the way up to the BACK button? "But you can hit the DELETE button!" Really? You call that a "shortcut"?

So, iSteve, in all his infinite wisdom spends a lot of money R&Ding a huge trackpad that recognizes multiple inputs. No doubt a costly affair, but he thought it'd be worth it. And he was right. Use 2 fingers to scroll the page up and down. Move 3 fingers to the left and bam, browser goes back. 3 fingers to the right and browser goes forward.

That's great iSteve. Good job. Can I program behavior for, say, a three finger swipe up and down? How about 4 finger swipe? And iSteve says, "This ain't Burger King and you can't have it your way. You can have it my way, only."

And that's what pisses me off about iSteve. He's really good at uncomplicating the most frustrating part about computer ownership (just compare the Genius Bar experience to even the best PC service). And yet, he makes nothing for power users. So, if I drew an analogy to students in a classroom, Microsoft would have idiots, geniuses and average students all in the same class. Apple would have no idiots (bad UI) to tick you off, no geniuses (customization) and a lot of middle people with hoodies and glasses.

Enter " Better Touch Tool."

This little piece of software is the single most important software you can put on your MacBook, besides OS X. It's so important and so good and so productive, I can't believe it's free. Hell, I even donated to the developer (a 24 year old student in Germany). And I never pay for software, ever, let alone freeware.

In Chrome (or whatever you like):
3 finger swipe UP: refreshes the page
3 finger swipe DOWN: creates a new tab page
4 finger swipe LEFT/RIGHT: cycles through tab pages left and right.

How's that CTRL + TAB working out for you?
or CTRL + SHIFT + TAB?

Pressing THREE keys isn't a shortcut. It's hard to remember.

Globally:
3 finger "tap": minimizes an app or closes a tabbed page in a web browser
3 finger "click": completely quits an app

And these are just my own preferences. You can customize the gestures to do anything you want of course. Basically, you're browsing with one hand, with all the speed of two hands and hotkeys.

Now, on the one hand, iSteve should have put this in by default. On the other hand, OS X isn't really a huge ecosystem, so why spend a lot of money there when the future cash cow is in iOS?

Plus, there are zero PC makers with big trackpads. And even though PC makers have been trending toward bigger ones, they still don't have the touch sensitivity and the multi-touch capability of Apple. So, there really is no other choice. If you are buying a notebook, you have to buy a MacBook. No arguments, no discussion. Well, unless somehow you need a notebook, but you don't browse the internets.

 

I also like the window snapping feature that is built into Better Touch Tool, enabling the Windows 7 feature in Mac OS X. Very handy and fixes the issue with the green + button in my opinion.

 

Dude, good call. I've been using RightZoom for that. I'll have to check that out.

 

I think you are forgetting the main selling point of Apple computers and OS X: ease of use. The whole idea is to take the computer out of the box, maybe plug in a wire or two, turn it on, and go. Apple computers aren't like most PCs where you turn them on, let them sit there for an hour as they make a restore partition, let them sit there for another hour as they download software updates, and then go through the ~10 minute setup process getting everything just the way you like it (this doesn't count the 2 hour procedure for uninstalling all of the crapware).

So it is understandable that iSteve (clever, never heard that one before) and Co. set things up so that those types of options aren't enabled. However, they likely should have at least given more advanced users the choice of having more advanced trackpad functionality. Still, given that the majority of Mac users probably wouldn't care, there is no motive for Apple to do something like that. So while it is a shame that they left out large portions of trackpad customization in Snow Leopard, it is also understandable why they did that. It looks like OS X Lion is going to revolve more around the trackpad and some of its features would conflict with your current setup.

 

Yours and OP's discussion about Apple's philosophy aside, you really should give the tool a try though. I'm usually very picky about things I install in OSX as I don't find the need to mess with the status quo much, but BTT really unlocks the potential of the trackpad that Apple has designed.

 

I thought about giving it a go but OS X Lion is going to introduce some more ways that OS X uses the trackpad. I would hate to get used to one thing only for Lion to come in and change crap around. I would rather wait for Lion to come out, see what it has to offer, and then setup BTT. That way I don't get used to one thing (BTT) only to see that I like Lion's implementation better. Then again, it could completely suck. Given that Lion is likely a few months from release (I am guessing it is going to be released during WWDC or around that time), I can wait especially since I am now used to having one hand on the keyboard and the other on the trackpad during normal use (ie outside of AutoCAD where that type of operation is essentially required).