Hasta La Gadget!

Owners of Apple’s latest MacBooks won’t feel special for much longer. The multitouch, buttonless trackpad unique to MacBooks will be appearing on Windows notebooks in the near future.

Touchpad manufacturer Synaptics said it plans to make its multitouch trackpad available for various PCs. The company will be providing the trackpad, dubbed the ClickPad, to computer manufacturers in the third quarter of 2009.

“ClickPad is available with an innovative mechanical assembly that will provide optimized performance for notebook PC designs, ranging from sleek netbooks to large desktop replacement portables,” Synaptics said in a press release.

What exactly will you be able to do with the ClickPad? Two-finger scrolling, of course, but moving beyond that the ClickPad will offer two-finger pinching for zoom (similar to the iPhone), two-finger pivoting for rotation (for rotating photos, for example), three-finger flick (to go forward or backward a web page, for example), and three-finger press (with MacBooks, this gesture performs a right-click).

This is great news. I own a unibody MacBook Pro, and my favorite part is the trackpad. I feel extremely productive with it thanks to the multitouch gestures (and Firefox), and I like that the whole pad is one large, clickable button.

The ClickPad sounds especially sweet for netbooks, whose trackpads are generally cramped and tiresome to use over long periods of time. We’re hoping Synaptics makes the ClickPad large enough to perform all these gestures smoothly on netbooks.

See Also:

• Firefox Adds Multitouch Gestures for Macs
• MacBook Pros Get the Multitouch Magic; But Where’s the Redesigned …
• Macworld: MacBook Air is Real and Has Multi Touch
• Laptop Makers Shy Away From Multitouch Technology
• Steve Jobs Unveils Newer, Sexier Aluminum MacBooks
• Original MacBook Air Hacked to Use Four Finger Gestures
• Hands On: Old MacBook Pro vs New MacBook

Press release [via Jkontherun]

Photo: Aaronage/Flickr