Experience with Touch-screen monitors for Mac

Hi All,

Looking to add a touch screen to my Mac Yosemite setup. I see a few commercial options that claim Mac compatibility:

http://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-TD2220- ... onitor+mac

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-FT220HQL-bmj ... onitor+mac

Any experience with these or other solutions?

Thanks!

Brad

Hi Brad,

I too have been looking at the same monitors, as I am in the process in selecting bilateral touch screen stop jamb monitors. May I expand your inquiry?

There is a frustrating lack of clarity regarding compatibility of specific touch screen monitors with the Mac OS (Yosemite) in manufacturers' websites; and the Hauptwerk user manual is vague in this regard (does that imply most just work via software drivers packaged within Hauptwerk or sample sets, so that this is a non-issue?). There seems unlikely to be any incompatibility in terms of the display function; only the compatibility of the touch function is hard to ascertain even after moderate web research. It is difficult when reviewing manufacturers' websites to determine whether the Windows-only drivers they supply relate only to tweaking the video display, or also play an essential role in enabling the touch features, thus leaving the functionality of touch selection on the Mac OS uncertain. Some forum entries and web discussions conclude that for touch selection within Hauptwerk to be implemented on Mac OS, third-party drivers must be purchased for as much as $160 (e.g. DAWKeys through Touch-Base http://touch-base.com/add/dawkeys.asp). Also unclear is whether any particular third-party driver is essential to basic touch function, needed only to expand the range of touch functions, specific to any model of monitor, or more broadly to any class of monitor technologies (e.g. capacitive, resistive...).

I pose these questions for other Hauptwerk users, developers, technologists and implementors:

1) Which specific monitor models have you personally found to provide touch screen functionality (or absolutely not to work) with Hauptwerk 4 and Mac OS X Yosemite?

2) Do the touch screen features function natively in Hauptwerk 4 on the MAC OS Yosemite (with any manufacturer-supplied drivers), or must a third-party driver (name?) be employed?

I am grateful for any concrete guidance in the selection of touchscreen monitors that our esteemed users and developers may provide.

Thank you,

MOrgen

[mdyde]

Hello MOrgen,

Touch-sreen drivers conventionally emulate mouse-clicks to the operating system. Hauptwerk simply handles 'mouse click' events from the operating system; it has no direct knowledge of whether any given 'mouse click' event originated from a real computer mouse, a touch-screen, or any other input device (such as touch-pad or graphics tablet pen).

Hence whether any given touch-screen monitor works with Hauptwerk should just depend on whether it has (reliable) touch-screen drivers for the version of OS X that you're using, and perhaps also whether the touch-screen driver supports using more than one touch-screen (apparently some do, but many don't), if that ability would be important to you. There aren't any additional Hauptwerk-specific requirements.

Unfortunately it isn't feasible for us to test, or list, lots of different makes/models of computer hardware components, but as above any such compatibility would be determined by the driver and operating system, rather than Hauptwerk. I don't have first-hand experience with using touch-screens, but they're popular amongst Hauptwerk users, so hopefully other users might be able to make recommendations.

From reading previous forum posts regarding touch-screens on the Mac platform (a forum search for something like 'Mac touch' will probably find quite a few), I understand that the third-party TouchBase drivers ( http://www.touch-base.com/ ) are popular for providing reliable touch-screen support, including multiple screen support, for many models of touch-screens that wouldn't otherwise provide it on the Mac platform: However, I don't have any first-hand experience myself to report.

I hope that helps, at least to some extent.

Dear Martin,

Thank you for your gracious attention and informative response to my query.

Cheers,

MOrgen

Just to follow up for posterity, I got the Acer

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-FT220HQL-bmj ... onitor+mac

plugged it in to my Mac OS-X Yosemite MacBook Pro, and it just simply worked. No third party drivers, no configuration.

Does the touchscreen data come through the HDMI port or is there a USB port also?
The spec sheets do not describe the touchscreen portion explicitly just that it is a touchscreen, so I was curious.

Thomas

You have to connect both HDMI and USB -- it appears that the "touch" data is on the USB interface as the monitor works fine without the USB plugged in, just without touch.

I have experienced once or twice the "touch" not working after my laptop starts up from sleep. Turning the monitor off and on fixes this. Might not be a problem at all with non-laptop CPUs.

Thanks Ranks! That is exactly the type of information that Posterity and I had been fishing for. The Acer is a good buy from many vendors now. A commentator on the Amazon site notes that, without special driver, the monitor exhibits single touch features on Yosemite. That is likely sufficient for me. If more touch functionality were needed, Touch-Base does list an available Mac OS driver for gestures. The Acer website and manual are mute on the topic of compatibility with the Mac OS.

Yes, I have only tried single touch, and to be honest for any work more complicated than selecting stops on HW I switch back to the mouse -- the touch screen isn't very responsive on the Mac and it can be quite a drag (heh heh) to even get to the menus. But for a dedicated HW monitor it works fine and is cheap.