Looks like Apple is at its money making tricks, yet again. The all new MacBooks feature a large glass trackpad, capable of understanding upto 4-finger guestures, set for Exposé and App switching. While everyone thought that it was the glass that is conducive to this behaviour, a MacRumours forum member proved that the same functionality is available on the previous generation multi-touch trackpads.

Forum member “Michaelb” has detailed all the steps taken for getting this working. After circumventing the protection that prevents the OS from being installed on a machine other than the type it was bought with, he managed to get the MacBook Air up and running with the OS designed for the new Macs. However, only after a little editing of the plist files, did he finally manage to get the 4-finger gestures working. 

Four finger Exposé on my January 2008 MacBook Air now works just as it does on the unibody MacBook. (Secondary click, where you click the bottom right corner of the trackpad to get a right-click, is also there, but only seem to work in combination with the Air’s physical button – haven’t worked that one out yet, and don’t really care as I am used to soft two finger clicking for right-click.)

I suspect this would work on all later model multitouch trackpads (which includes the previous generation MacBook Pro)

So, Apple caught denying features to previous customers for no technical reason whatsoever. I suppose they wanted to highlight this as one of the features of the all new glass trackpad, and providing a software update would take away its luster. Your take?