just a wild idea

[phuong]

i love taking notes with my mbp, but whenever the profs. draw graphs & charts or write complex formulas, i really don't know what to do.
so i was thinking, i wish my screen was touch sensitive so that i can draw directly onto it.
then i realized there are such things as tablet PCs.
i also realized that the mouse pad is touch sensitive.

anyways, those thinking finally led me to this idea, where i wish the mouse pad has a mode where it can be turned into something like a Wacom tablet (i.e., each point on its surface is mapped to a point or area on the screen) so that whenever i need to enter complex drawings or when i need to quickly entering fomulas, i can just use a pen or whatever thingy that's equivalent to the Wacom pen, to do it.

is this idea too wild? is it ever gonna happen? why or why not? discuss!

 

[mkrishnan]

There's been discussion of this here before, related to some patents Apple has filed. Let me see if I can find it for you... like this.

I think the big limiting factor is that a Wacom tablet has a much higher resolution than a trackpad does, AFAIK. But something like that is probably designable for more pedestrian uses....