I believe it’s time to give these some better support.
An example is Rhinoceros support for these devices.
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What kind of support would you like to see, that is not yet covered by your operating system’s trackpad support?
Maybe illustrate it with some examples describing step by step the workflow that you imagine.
I would definitely copy what Rhinoceros developers did with their app:
Magic Mouse
right click button → show right click menu
right click button holding+moving → orbit
Magic Trackpad
pinch → zoom
two finger 360° scroll → orbit
P.S. just in case, please, don’t wait for SketchUp 2016 for this.
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With the trackpad, I think the key thing is to be able to zoom, pan and orbit using the trackpad alone, without having to use the keyboard.
At the moment on a trackpad on a Mac:
- two fingers does zoom;
- three fingers + ctrl + command does orbit;
- three fingers + ctrl + command + shift does pan
Clearly it is possible to do much better. One possible approach:
- pinch does zoom
- two fingers does pan
- three fingers does orbit
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This suggestion makes sense. Especially is SketchUp currently designed to use mouse and keyboard events (and the operating system translates all other input events into mouse events).
There are more and more devices and use cases (touch screen) where it is at least incomfortable to require combinations of key presses and touch (=click). Therefore it would be good if SketchUp had an input concept for touch devices. It would then generically support touch events, be it from a touch screen or multi-touch trackpad (whereof the ‘Magic’ one is just a specific example).
I believe that for the moment is better to keep “magic devices” and touch screens separate.
I really would like to see something about this soon 
Magic mouse and trackpad are not just a specific example of a bigger problem, they are the default input devices every Mac comes with.
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On Mac, you can get the orbit & pan without need 3 fingers by clicking (and holding down) on the trackpad (left mouse down)… for the right-handed-digitally-challenged folks out there.
We’ve discussed before, but I’ll refresh things with this discussion, so pipe up if you feel strongly one way or the other.
Yes, I was emphasizing that SketchUp could embrace more classes of input methods, like touchpads/trackpads and touch screens.
These two need of course slightly different handling but are similarly in terms of gestures (touchpads are relative pointing devices, touchscreens absolute; touchscreens have the challenge that fingers occlude the view). They are indeed wide spread and default on about most laptops.
2finger orbiting… 2finger +shift for panning… 2finger pinch for zoom
(none of them requiring a trackpad click)
(three finger panning might be cool but it’s bound to interfere with people’s system wide 3finger gestures)
hmm… i think that’s not accurate
currently:
2finger = zoom
control-cmmd + click&hold(thumb) + 1finger = orbit
control-cmmd + shift + click&hold(thumb) + 1finger = panning (ie- nearly impossible 
)
On my system, both work. I guess that’s because I have the three finger drag option enabled on my trackpad preferences. (I find three-finger drag way easier than hold-with-thumb + 1 finger.)
oh. i see now.
i’ve never used that setup before.
I strongly believe that Rhinoceros approach is the best one (please, try it). It’s really natural and intuitive using orbit with the magic mouse and zoom with the magic trackpad.
Magic mouse: click and holding the right button + moving the mouse → orbit
Magic trackpad: pinch → zoom. Two finger scroll → orbit
+1 for this. I was terribly disappointed to find out 2015 had not addressed this. Both ACAD for mac and Rhino for mac have implemented multitouch (for at least 3 years), and when I switch to sketchup it feels primitive and out of date. I will definitely not upgrade until this is addressed.
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I will definitely not upgrade until this is addressed.
ehehehe good luck, I believe this will be a long wait
that won’t work.
try to get two fingers to orbit the model… i don’t think that’s going to happen via magicPrefs… pretty sure trimble would have to code it into sketchup itself.
Magicprefs doesn’t work properly. I used it for two years, then uninstalled for poor performance with Sketchup.
I’m using Rhino these days: its UI (compact window instead of palettes) and Magic Mouse integration it’s of another level, compared to Sketchup.
just did it. very easy.
i prefer to set 3 fingers for orbit though.
maybe not for you.
absolute statement = not so true. it works exactly as i would hope and expect.