After FingerWorks was acquired by Apple, I've always wanted to see how they
would work in the many wonderful ideas FingerWorks had into Apple products.
Over the past few years they've incorporated gestures into the Macbook
trackpad and every single step of the way I've celebrated the move.

What was missing, however, was the gesture-pad peripheral itself.  iMac and
PowerMac users are left out in the cold (which is rare for Apple to do) while
laptop owners blissfully gestured to their heart's content.  With Hoofien's
Snatch applications, they can get a taste of what an external gesture-pad
could bring to the table.

Snatch supports all of the goodies the Macbook Trackpad does:  Point, click,
alternate-click, click-and-drag, scroll, and pinch-and-stretch just as you
would on the Macbook trackpad to the same effect. (Here's hoping the
four-finger gestures will be part of future versions of Snatch)  Plug your
iPhone into your computer and use it instead of a mouse for truly immersive
effect.

Not all is gold, however.  Even though I keep the iPhone plugged into the
computer when I use it, Snatch has the potential to drain your iPhone's
battery during extended wifi use.  For presentations and other small-scale
uses, the iPhone battery provides plenty of usage time, though, so you're not
out in the cold unless you're giving 2-hour presentations or more.  Snatch
also provides an auto-connect feature which allows it to automatically
re-connect if it went idle and fell asleep between gestures.

Snatch's missteps, however, lay in the small things that wouldn't otherwise
get in your way until you miss them.  For example, moving the cursor with
Snatch somehow prevents the usual mouse acceleration curve you set in System
Preferences.app from being applied.  It feels like there is no acceleration
curve at all; the speed at which you gesture on Snatch does not add any
additional distance to where your mouse cursor flies to.  Snatch tries to
compensate with 'inertia' and 'friction' settings, but these continue to move
the mouse cursor even after I had stopped gesturing.  They made me feel like I
wasn't in control and promptly got turned off.

I found the 'scroll' tab and 'keyboard' tab to be useless; the 'scroll' tab
features can be accomplished on the 'tracking' tab to the same effect and the
'keyboard' tab really has no place on a trackpad analogue.  If you need a
keyboard, use the specialized hardware device called a 'keyboard' that does
character entry rather well and doesn't provide often embarrassing suggestions
for words you didn't type.

All in all, Snatch has brought a small dream of mine for an external
gesture-pad peripheral to life, even if it occasionally miss-steps along the
way.  Great great work, Hoofien. I look forward to future versions and will be
sharing Snatch with my friends and family.