After FingerWorks was acquired by Apple, I wanted to see how Fingerworks would merge its many wonderful ideas with 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.  But with Hoofien's new 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. (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 a 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 goes idle and falls asleep between gestures.

Snatch's missteps, however, lie 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 missteps along the way.  Great great work, Hoofien. I look forward to future versions and will be
sharing Snatch with my friends and family.