Two-Finger-Scrolling with pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks
What's this all about?
This is a hack to activate two-finger scrolling on supported pre-2005 PowerBooks and iBooks (i.e. those with a "W-Enhanced" trackpad, including most AlBooks and recent iBooks) on OS X 10.3 (tested on 10.3.7 and 10.3.8).
It is based on Apple's AppleADBMouse-209.0.10 driver from 10.3.7 that is available as part of the publicly released Darwin source code.
Modified by Daniel Becker, Feb. 2005.
Can my trackpad do this?
To check if your trackpad can support two-finger scrolling, use the following command:
ioreg -l | grep "W Enhanced Trackpad"
If this prints out a line containing "W Enhanced Trackpad" = 1, your trackpad is "W-Enhanced" (and can thus be used for two-finger scrolling); if it doesn't print out anything at all, it's not.
So where's the download?
AppleADBMouseWScroll.zip (source, ~73k)
AppleADBMouse.kext.SCROLL_ALL.zip (binary, all scroll modes enabled, ~68k)
AppleADBMouse.kext.SCROLL_XY.zip (binary, only X/Y scrolling, ~67k)
AppleADBMouse.kext.SCROLL_ROT.zip (binary, only rotational scrolling, ~67k)
OK, so how do I install this driver thing?
To install from source, open the project file in xCode and build it, then open the terminal, go to the "build" directory inside the project folder and do this:
sudo chown -R root:wheel ./AppleADBMouse.kext
sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleADBMouse.kext && sudo kextload ./AppleADBMouse.kext
And that should be it. The driver stays loaded either until you manually unload it (reverse above procedure), or until the next system restart occurs.
WARNING:In case the driver should for any reason fail to load, do not touch the trackpad before you have reloaded the original driver or your machine will crash! It's OK to use the keyboard, though.
If you prefer to just install one of the precompiled binaries, just unzip the downloaded archive, open a Terminal, go to the directory you just unzipped to and use the same commands given above.
Scrolling seems to jump sometimes, what's up with that?
This usually happens when the driver mixes up X/Y and rotational scrolling. Enabling just one of the two at a time should help.
Also, several people suggested they get better results if they turn "Use smooth scrolling" off under "Appearance" in System Preferences.
Comments & feedback
Let me know if you encounter any bugs or have any suggestions (other than "add some documentation", "create an installer" or "this needs a pref pane" - working on those). To reach me via email, send to user razzfazz at the provider named web de.
Version history
2.0.10-dub-2 (Feb. 10, 2005):
- code cleanup
- #defines moved to AppleADBMouse.h
- changed rotational scrolling direction to match iPod behavior
2.0.10-dub (Feb. 7, 2005):
- initial release
JA ES IST SUPER!
