[Speakers] Apple PowerBook WAS: Shorts

[Greg Mason]

> For the _new_ USB based trackpad?  My [limited] understand is Apple 
> just
> changed something in the hardware on the powerbooks in the last month 
> or
> so, switching the builtin trackpad interface from PS2 to USB, and there
> is a bug in the Linux kernel code that prevents it from working.

It was ADB before, along with the keyboard. I was unaware that they 
went to USB. Probably to get rid of unnecessary ADB hardware. Aren't 
there USB-based trackpads in PCs? or are they still all PS2? A while 
ago I was reading up on the touchpads in Apple laptops, and they are 
manufactured by the same company (the name escapes me right now...) 
that makes most or all of the PC laptop touchpads, so making drivers 
for them *should* be pretty simple...
>
> Some people on the YDL mailing list have powerbooks as new as one-month
> old where the trackpads work fine.  The very latest (like mine) are
> different and don't work in Linux.

I'll have to look into that. Since mine is over a year old, it's still 
got the ADB keyboard/mouse.
>
> Speaking of scrolling (with the trackpad or a wheel mouse) in OS X,
> any idea why the scrolling is really difficult to control in 
> Thunderbird
> and Firefox (jumps around, scroll way too fast), but works fine in
> native OS X applications?  Or better yet, any idea how to fix it?  :-)
> (I've already adjusted down the Scrolling Speed in System Preferences)

Is this scrolling with the scroll bar, two-finger scrolling on 
trackpad, or with a mouse's scroll wheel? I've installed a 
smooth-scrolling plugin for Firefox called SmoothWheel, and it actually 
scrolls nicer than Safari does. Not quite sure why I haven't switched 
entirely over to Firefox yet...
I haven't really used Thunderbird on OS X yet, I use Apple's Mail.app 
instead. It's handled everything I've needed so far, even though it's 
got its shortcomings.
If you've installed iScroll (if your PowerBook is pre-2005) to get 
two-finger scrolling, it may be jumpy if you're trying to use circular 
scrolling. I've just disabled it on my machine, as it tends to be quite 
jumpy on mine in all apps if it's on.
>
> I'm not sure a kernel patch exists for the latest [USB] trackpads.
>
> I might try gentoo, but I tried it on x86 awhile ago and it left a bad
> taste in my mouth, which is why I've avoided it since.

I hear ya there... I'm trying it, but if one thing does compile, 
another won't (my current stumbling block is ncurses...who needs 
text-based UIs anyways??). My brother, who's more heavily into Gentoo 
than I am, said that the recent (2005.0) release of Gentoo has had some 
problems. Apparently somebody accidentally deleted a file, and they 
can't figure out which file that was, just that stuff doesn't work (or 
at least that's what I was told). Since I really would like a Gentoo 
box, and my brother likes Gentoo, I've left it with him to tinker with 
:)

-Greg