14 DAY TRIAL // Apple launched the Touch Bar with much fanfare on the latest-generation MacBook Pro, and now it looks like Windows 10 users will soon receive similar functionality if they purchase a high-end ASUS PC.
ASUS might be working on a new feature for its top laptops that could come down to a Touch Bar-like implementation allowing users to perform certain tasks faster straight from the touch pad.
While at this point details aren’t very clear, WBI has come across several extensions in the Microsoft Store for a feature called ScreenPad that appears to be used on an unreleased high-end ASUS laptop.
With such a feature, users would be able to turn the touchpad into a launcher or do certain things faster, such as controlling music playback in apps that support the ScreenPad. Judging from the screenshots of these extensions, which cannot be installed for the time being since they’ll be exclusively aimed at the said devices, Microsoft’s Office suite will support the ScreenPad as well.
This means users will be able to run certain tools within documents using this touch-based input, though it remains to be seen how advanced this implementation is going to be.
Hardware requirements
The cited source has discovered several hardware requirements that the upcoming ASUS device could meet in order to support the ScreenPad, and these include a precision touchpad with ASUS PTP driver and touchscreen, dGPU with NVIDIA GTX970 graphics card and direct mode support, Toshiba TC358870XBG Video Bridge IC and ITE8225 MCU.
By the looks of things, while this feature appears to be similar to Apple’s Touch Bar, it’s substantially more advanced, mostly because it could allow third-party app support. This means that developers will be able to build apps to support it, so ScreenPad could end up doing pretty much anything as long as the proper support is added in Windows 10 apps.
For the time being, however, this is just a feature that looks good on paper, but it remains to be seen if and when ASUS plans to launch it. You can check out the discovered Microsoft Store extensions in the box after the jump.
