Got a new Macbook or Macbook Pro? Try gestures in CS4!
So, let’s get the shocking part out of the way first…I bought my first Mac. It’s a brand spankin’ new 13″ aluminum Macbook and it’s absolutely beautiful. I’ve owned quite a few laptops but the engineering and design that went into this puppy is quite amazing.
Now I get to write my first Mac only post. Not just Mac only but Macbook and Macbook Pro only. One of the things I really like about the Macbooks is the trackpad. While I’m a devoted mouser the gestures feature (if you don’t know what they are, just watch an iPhone commercial) is enough to at least make me think about letting go of the sucker. Adobe has cleverly added support for these gestures in CS4. Gestures allows you to simply swipe the trackpad to navigate from page to page, pinch to zoom in and zoom out and rotate to either rotate selected objects or with nothing selected to rotate the spread.
As a side note: spread rotation is one of my favorite new features. Not because I use it a lot because vertical spreads has been such a frequently requested feature I’ve found myself writing up workarounds many times. Now I can just type “upgrade to CS4.” 
Gestures are really cool and may even prevent one or two cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. They’re only supported on the newest Macbooks but were introduced with the last round of Macbook Pros. If find yourself working with one of these machines and aren’t taking advantage of this give it try….you may find yourself wishing you could design a calendar.
Congratulations on the new laptop, Bob! After all these years of being “the Windows guy” (as well as theindesignguy.com, of course), it’s kind of staggering that you bought a Mac. It’s almost a wild as my Republican family members voting for Obama (which also happened).
I envy you, though, as I still have an older macbook pro and haven’t yet experienced the gesture features in InDesign. Sounds cool.
Of course, you can still rotate spreads and things without gesture control (in case anyone was worried about that).
Welcome to the dark side (gloss non-optional)!
I just tried some of the gestures on the MBP I’m setting up for the boss. Interesting stuff. I like pinch zoom and 3-finger paging. I think rotate has a potential to aggravate carpal more than not, lol…
Not that staggering….I needed a new laptop and quite frankly the hardware is about as good as it gets. Next up is definitely an install of Windows and voila…I have two laptops in one.
The gestures are fun, I’ve tried them. I’ve heard there are hidden “Easter Egg” gestures, have you found them?
For example, if you use a rude gesture, it reboots into Bootcamp … like that.
My new MacBook will arrive tomorrow, the last thing I needed right now was a post to get me even more excited … I just wish it had a better (and non-glossy) screen, but hey, you can’t have everything. OS X alone makes it worth it, I still can’t believe that I’ll no longer have to use Windows.
But it’s awesome to have that kind of support in CS4, I guess it is a bit of an effort from Adobe to do something for the Mac community after they had to postpone the 64-Bit version of Photoshop for OS X.
And more good news, gestures also work in Photoshop CS4! Use them to instantly zoom in or zoom out, or to use the new Rotate View feature.
@Anne-Marie, we’re going to grill Mr. Ninness about those potential CS4 easter eggs at the ID conference next Tuesday here in Seattle!
Just for the record, I have no intention of giving up Windows. I’ll get around to installing it soon. I even upgrade the harddrive to 320 gigs so there would be enough room to spare.
But I do agree about the glossy screen. I’d prefer matte but it’s really not as bad as many make it out to be.
Off to Photoshop to zoom in and out
Bob, I have a 17 inch laptop and it has a glossy screen. I quite like it and it’s not bad at all, sure matte is fine too, but there’s very little difference. The only thing is, I actually prefer the glossy screen, it’s nice.
And I guess it’s safe to assume that the very same features are available when using the Macbook Airs trackpad? I think the trackpads are the same, but the new Macbooks support four finger gestures, which the Air doesn’t. Hopefully that will be remedied in a soon-to-come software update.
Update: Now that I have been using my new macbook pro for a month or two, I’d like to report that I hate the gesture support in InDesign with a passion. Actually, I like the scrolling, but I am constantly rotating or zooming when I don’t want to. I dearly wish I could find a way to disable those gestures.
The problem for me is that the trackpad is so dang large, I’m forever resting the corner of my hand on it… I guess the mac thinks it’s one finger in a two finger gesture. Grr.
Interesting. I’m just using a MacBook (I suppose it’s the amateur version ) and while I admit that it’s not my primary machine I’ve not experienced anything like that.
David, you are not alone. The gestures feature is terrible, useless, and potentially dangerous. I also end up rotating or zooming when I don’t intend to. Normally I see what’s happening, swear and undo, but now and again I just rotate something a half degree and don’t notice – until it’s too late. The result is that I avoid using InDesign on my new MBP. Sad.
However, I think this is more of Apples problem. There should be a way to disable gestures on a systemwide basis. Using Safari is just as bad, and i have to implement painful working methods in order to use the darn thing. I’ve never liked using a mouse with my laptop, but will have to now.
Does anyone know if there is a way to disable pinch-zoom and rotate already? This is really a big big problem for me
I had thought that Snow Leopard contained a choice to disable certain apps from the rotation trackpad gestures.
But I just upgraded to Snow and can’t find that preference at all.
I found a plug-in for Photoshop that disables the gestures for rotation, but haven’t found something similar for ID.
I’m tired of text frames suddenly rotating to new positions on the page.
Does anyone know if there is a way to disable this feature?
Bruce asked the question Sept. 10, 2009, but I wonder if this posting is too old for anyone to notice.
Hey Sandee,
Try disabling all of the two finger gestures except for scrolling and see if that doesn’t help you out.
Hi Bob,
That’s the problem, you can’t disable the 2 fingers gestures. At least not in the preference pane…
I don’t know about Leopard but it can be done in Snow Leopard.