MacBook hacked to add “right-click” in Windows
I’m always amazed at how much extra space seems to be inside the black and white MacBooks, given Apple’s obsession with slimming things down. First someone was able to add a second LCD screen behind the MacBook’s main one, and now InsanelyMac forum member jboy21 has crammed a usb mouse inside his black MacBook to add right click functionality.
“Basically ive taken a standard logitech usb mouse, hacked it down to its very bare essentials, inserted inside the case along with a usb hub.
Ive tapped into the usb connection between the motherboard and bluetooth module, attached the hub and rerouted the cable for the bluetooth module to the hub.
Ive placed a small piece of metal (which is attached and insulated on the L-bracket) underneath the right mouse button to make the contact.
All the boards are located in a spare ram module slot, ive already got the maximum amount of ram on one stick so i didnt need it anyway.”
An impressive feat of engineering. Of course, this hack would have been totally unnecessary if he hadn’t first ruined his Mac by installing Windows on it…
well, now you can’t say that macs don’t have right-click. at least one does
Talk about wasting a whole lot of time for nothing; if you install the Boot Camp driver disks, you could do right click by putting a second finger down on the trackpad and clicking, just like under Mac OS X.
It’s a clever hack, technically, but not really necessary if you even have a tiny hint of knowledge about what you’re doing. 🙂
talk about going to new york by way of china!
seriously, man. it ain’t that difficult: @zorin “if you install the Boot Camp driver disks, you could do right click by putting a second finger down on the trackpad and clicking, just like under Mac OS X.”
people never educate themselves anymore.
Cant say the pcb on the lap is a very good solution 🙂
Some ppl like to tear stuff apart and mess around…looks like fun, I would never do it cause the only thing I use this mac for is for mac….I dont want the buttstink of windows near this machine..
@ Zorin,
This guy just modified a macbook successfully to give it an extra button, how can he not know what he is doing? The point is, he wanted a two button trackpad, so why not? Why does Apple have to stick with one button trackpads? No matter how easy the alternatives may be, there is no reason to avoid such a basic feature, especially seeing as the mac desktop lines have a four button mouse included.
@mo Mussa,
4 buttons? there are two one the sides that work in sync and a left and right on the top…instead of cluttering the space with 2 different buttons and programming that in..it’s easier to just click with 2 fingers on a laptop
unibody macbooks have right click. you can set up the lower right side of the track pad to register as a right click. however, jboy21, sweet mod! i like taking things apart too.
AJ,
the actual scroll ball is a button, too.
Also, AJ, how hard can it be to add an extra button? Even if its not physically another button, it’d still be nice. This is coming from the company thats designed a good touch screen phone, I’m sure they’re capable of adding another button to the laptop.
The whole of a “right-click menu” was flawed from the start. It’s always been a “contextual” menu on the Mac. Call it what you will… right-click, control-click, two-finger click…. the fact that it brings up a contextual menu doesn’t change (and shouldn’t). I’m glad Apple doesn’t give into the right-click crown. It seriously adds to the complexity of the user interface. How many people have to ask me when I say to click on something… “is that a left click or a right click?”… grrr… learn the difference between a “normal” and a “contextual” click and then it doesn’t matter how you activate them.