Four-Finger Gesture Hack for Older MacBooks

[AppleChic]

If you own an older MacBook and have been wishing your notebook had the four finger gesture features of the new line you may be in luck. Macrumors has supposedly confirmed a hack that enabled four finger gestures on a 1st generation MacBook Air, that will likely work for most all older MacBooks.

All that is required for the hack is for users to install a disc from a new unibody MacBook and then change the registry a bit. It has only been confirmed to work on a January '08 MacBook Air, but avid hackers think it will work just fine with most other pre-October ’08 models.

Artstechnica describes how the hacker (michaelb) got this to work:

“Basically, he used his girlfriend's new MacBook's software to reinstall Mac OS X on his original Air, but with a hack on the Apple installer that checks against each machine. Once he got the installer to ignore the fact that he was using a different Mac, michaelb installed the OS but couldn't find the four-finger settings in the trackpad System Preferences. Some digging into the kernel extension AppleUSBMultitouch.kext revealed entries related to four-finger gestures, which he copied into all Info.plist entries (just to be safe). A permissions restoration and a reboot later, and the gestures were working.”

While this is method is very hack-ish it does highly suggest that Apple could get the four finger gestures feature working on at least early 2008 MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs with just a software update.

I have a unibody MacBook but do not even use the four finger gestures on a regular basis-I guess I am just not used to it…it is kind of a cool feature to have though.

Source: Mac Rumors: Apple Mac Rumors and News You Care About, http://www.artstechnica.com

[Jgamble317]

so.....what no news on the new installer release or that the new macs have jailbreak blocks? or that the new firmware was confirmed for nov. 21st?...
Seems as though since the name change with apple and all that you guys seem to have left the JB community... sorry to say it but it sorta is true...

[rxmxsh]

so.....what no news on the new installer release or that the new macs have jailbreak blocks? or that the new firmware was confirmed for nov. 21st?...
Seems as though since the name change with apple and all that you guys seem to have left the JB community... sorry to say it but it sorta is true...

They've already covered the Nov 21st rumor. If you only want iPhone info, click on the iPhone tab at the top. Otherwise, quit ********.

Edit: What? We can't curse anymore? Man.

Edit 2: The rumor for firmware was posted on Nov 11.

[Iman07]

omg u rock! great post! thanks so much. i was wondering if this was even possible!

[tattoojack]

so, obviously this chic is the new hire for writing.
great info and all but i would really love to see some submissions from other people like in the ol days.
seems this site has gone the way of all things this era.
commercial

[evercleardoc]

I have a MBP early 2008 and ever since I learned about the 4 finger gestures, i learned about this program called multiclutch jIf that link doesn't work, try this: Everytime I Think About You I Multitouch My Cell « Will Henderson The second link definitely works.
You can really customize it to work "globally" and individually in other programs individually ie... word, firefox and safari for example, they're the programs i use the most... maybe transmission and even what ever you run, it's great! But you're only limited to 3 fingers
you set it to global like 3 fingers up for all windows, down for spaces(or clear screen), or left to clear screen instead and it works all the time no matter what you're running.
then for firefox you set forward, backwards and then the "global settings take over. you can also set zoom in/out, reload, what ever there is a commad-key combination to set something to.
Quick thing I learned was that you should ahem donate (click on it once and reopen it)... and click and see what that's about. Then you can enter the commands easily using the right command button. But before you set anything in multiclutch go to spaces or whatever and empty out the key you want to use (for global) and it won't do the actual function. Then go back and reset the command key to F8 for space F9 for all windows/programs, F10 for desktop... F11 for what ever, you get the idea.
This is defintiely something that has made my MBP alot "easier" to use, getting to spaces is just 3 fingers down, all windows is 3 fingers up, clear destsktop (when not in browser) . And when you're in a browser it does the back, fwd, zoom etc... and up/down work like normal, you just lose the 3 finger left or right function while in a browser... which i think is great anyway... Hope this helps some of you get the most of the multi-touch program and your touchpad.. One draw back is you need to leave system preferences loaded all the time so i just added that preference pane to load on startup and stay hidden.

[Kyle Matthews]

so.....what no news on the new installer release or that the new macs have jailbreak blocks? or that the new firmware was confirmed for nov. 21st?...
Seems as though since the name change with apple and all that you guys seem to have left the JB community... sorry to say it but it sorta is true...

Not at all - we are more than ever involved in the JB community. We post tons of new items to Cydia daily, and post new info as it hits in the JB world. The new firmware story has already been posted days ago. Just because we also hit up other news as well doesn't mean we post any less about iPhone. 95% of our stories are iPhone related.

so, obviously this chic is the new hire for writing.
great info and all but i would really love to see some submissions from other people like in the ol days. seems this site has gone the way of all things this era. commercial

cash7c3 posts just as many stories as she does... I spend a good solid 10-12 hours a day working on updating the site, posting to Cydia (that alone is 4-6 hours a day), fixing stats, and getting stuff improved for you guys. On top of that I have an 11 week old son. If you'd like to find someone to manage a large site like this for free while cash7c3 and I do all the news posting, and they'll do it all for free, 10 hours a day, then by all means let me know. Otherwise recognize that a HUGE amount of work goes into making ModMyi happen, and we could use all the help we get - like more writers who can help catch the news!

[sn0ws]

I don't get why people are so negative on these forums. When I first joined this forum everyone was so friendly and there was alot less of these types of comments, I don't like to waste a post on something like this but I have see so much of it lately that I just can't sit by without saying anything.
As PF said he does an insane amount of work on this site along with the other mods and people like jgamble contribute you nothing but negativity. I check this site everytime I sit down at the computer, and I'm not looking for just iphone news, even though that is what first attracted me to this website, since I've been a member here I have also bought a macbook to go with my iphone and I think this kind of news is just as relivant and entertaining to most members here. If you are just going to complain about the stories being "unrelated" or "copied from another source" then just don't post. I enjoy the content of this site because then I don't have to check all the other websites to get the news, mmi compiles just what I am interested in without having to jump from place to place to get the latest updates.

In closing I want to say sorry for this rant, I just felt like PF and the other mods here don't deserve any critisim for bringing such a great website and community to the internet.

(congrats to PF on the child btw)

[Iman07]

i dont have a multi touch. i bought my mac back when the intel core 2 duo came out. i only have the two finger scroll thing. will this work for me?

[Jgamble317]

oh trust me ive noticed that you guys still are it the JB community.. i didnt mean it like that. i meant that you guys used to post ALOT about it. new releases, new tweaks, even if they were minor you would post them...but i guess with expansion comes less time for stuff like that. i understand but i wish it was like the good ol days lol. Great job anyways though

[Iman07]

can we please stay on topic?

[wannagotopopeyes]

This is great news to hear, I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy this feature but uh.... How the heck do we get it? lol. Some info on hacking ourselves would be nice

[evercleardoc]

It seems that the multi touch feature is a new type of trackpad and not the old usual PC one. I'm not sure... but it just seems so because the software won't work on anyhthing earlier than early 08 on the MBP at least...

[dale1v]

Iman, did you buy it in 2008?

[Cody Overcash]

oh trust me ive noticed that you guys still are it the JB community.. i didnt mean it like that. i meant that you guys used to post ALOT about it. new releases, new tweaks, even if they were minor you would post them...but i guess with expansion comes less time for stuff like that. i understand but i wish it was like the good ol days lol. Great job anyways though

press the tip button and tell us if you see something you think we should write about for news.

[SuperJoker]

AppleChic rules, great stuff, keep it up.