At Apple’s Spring Forward event, they unveiled the new 12-inch Retina MacBook and updated their MacBook Pro and Air models, but what’s significant in these new computers is Apple’s introduction of the Force Touch trackpads. For those who are unfamiliar with these trackpads, they are basically a redesign of the more traditional trackpads which are clickable.
Instead these trackpads do not click but come with haptic feedback underneath it that will simulate clicking. It’s an interesting idea and one that some speculate could make its way into future iOS devices. That being said, other potential uses for the technology are slowly being demonstrated by Apple, like incorporating haptic feedback into their iMovie video editing software.
This was discovered by Final Cut blogger Alex Gollner (via AppleInsider) after the software was updated to version 10.0.7. At the moment the haptic feedback is enabled in three situations – when dragging a video clip to its maximum length, snapping a title to the beginning or end of a video clip, and when snapping alignment guides during the cropping process.
Like we said this will help create new ways of interacting with software and can also potentially guide users when they surf the web or browse PDFs where the haptic feedback will engage when they reach the bottom, and so on. It is unclear as to what other software will be able to take advantage of it, but iMovie appears to be the start.