Disappointing news for older MacBook and MacBook Pro owners: The newest update to Mac OS X, numbering 10.5.6, brings a new preference pane for the computer's trackpad. The let down is that it doesn't introduce the fancy new four finger gestures found on the latest unabomber MacBooks.

Fair enough, you say. It's a hardware feature, right? Well, no. MacBooks which are already able to take three of your fingers simultaneously and can also be trained to take four, as was demonstrated by jealous hacker michaelb last month when he used his young lady's new MacBook installer disc to add the feature to his older MacBook AIr.

Worse, the update seems to have narrowed your choices. The shot above, from Apple Daily Times, shows that you can no longer switch off the two-fingered gestures for scrolling or screen zoom, and secondary click (two fingers in the pad along with a click on the button gives a right-click) seems to have been ousted in favor of a secondary tap.

It's galling. My MacBook Pro is one of the machines not blessed with four-digits of Apple love, and knowing that it could be makes me mad. Mad, I tell you. This isn't the first time Apple has differentiated products arbitrarily through software. In recent memory, the iPod Touch was passed over for Google Street View. And the fickle-seeming nature of the decisions is the worst part -- nobody is going to ditch a year old notebook just to get these new gestures, so really, Apple, why?