I think we'll have to wait and see how they handle it with the iPhone. I hope they have some sort of smudge and scratch resistant coating.
When you buy your Apple touch screen device, you will note it will comes with a syringe and needle for you to inject yourself with their patented DNA altering concotion. After the injection, your DNA will be subtly altered so that your fingers no longer exude grease to mar the gleaming perfection of the Apple touch screen device you purchased.
Some users have reported that skin elsewhere has also stopped lubricating. Gone are the shiny noses that TV makeup artists have been battling for decades. Slightly more worrying, though, have been some unconfirmed reports that other bodily lubricants involved in reproductive processes have also been affected.
An Apple spokesperson has said that these issues had been noted and that the Apple store now has a great new line of Apple skin moisturising products and ancillary lubricants available.
Other than that, how about an Apple universal remote that uses the multi-touch screen technology? The screen would change depending on whether you were using it with your Mac, AppleTV, iPod stereo or whatever, giving context sensitive visual controls for each device. Throw in support for select non-Apple products such as HDTVs and HD DVD/Blue Ray players, etc...
Anyone who gets their greasy fingers on my Mac's screen will feel the wrath of my shatterproof plastic ruler across their knuckles!
Touch screen Macs - Noooooooooooooooo!
Don't worry -- natural selection will solve the problem in a generation or two. Males with greasy fingers won't be able to read their address books on their iPhones, but males with non-greasy fingers will and be able to contact the females, have sex, propagate their genes, and we will be on our way to evolving into a species of dry-fingered homo sapiens who have become the optimal users of the most important tool invented in millenia.
We just may need to start a new geologic era: the iPhonozoic!
To be honest, I don't see an immediate need for this in desktop models. Who wants to reach across the desk for hours? What about people who use Macs for 8 hours a day at work? Not a good idea.
Tablets, definitely. Portables.......... maybe, though that often has the same problem as desktops... reaching out in front of you. To make a touch-interactive UI really usable, the device has to be lightweight and easy to touch. I know it sounds stupid, but not all computers are easy to touch!
-Clive
I do not think that they would remove your ability to use a mouse and keyboard. Ussing multitouch would simply be another way of interacting. The controls on the screen would change based on the application.
Imagine a musician creating music while standing with the screen about 6 inches away and as he touches different regions of the screen different instruments play, their sound is modified and shorten/lengthen based on the gestures he uses. I don't ever remember something like this in the market.
Yes, nobody is going to work like a drone typing by using a touch screen for 8 or 12 hours.
But I can see someone painting, drawing, in general creating, with a large screen in front of them (specialy while standing) while they interact with their virtual canvas.
Think different, think creative and not mundane uses like typing, or writing code.
As long as it is an alternate inferface with standard keyboard and mouse still available for mundane tasks, I see this as a huge boost.
I must admit I am skeptical about this technology in desktops HOWEVER... lots of people are talking about fingerprints and scratched screens, etc. I thought of that too immediately and that's because it's an obvious issue that results from touching screens. So I hardly think Apple would overlook such an obvious issue and I'm sure they would coat the screen to avoid scratches and fingerprints.
I was actually refering to the lack of tactile feedback between the left and right mouse buttons. I don't move my fingers to right click, I just use the fingers that are already over there.
You get used to just lifting the left finger a couple of mm in no time to the point I do it with non Apple mice now. There's plenty of tactile feedback. It moves maybe 2mm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bdj21ya
The other big problem with the mouse is that it is too flat, and uncomfortable for me to hold.
And I find most of the current Logitech and Microsoft mice give me a pain in my ulnar nerve after a while so each to their own. I know people who get on with grasping a mouse like a ball in their palm but I generally prefer fingertips with my wrist on the desk. My favourite mouse of all time was 1987's Microsoft Mouse. I can remember getting that at work at the time and nothing has really lived up to it since. I still have two. Apple's latest wireless Mighty Mouse running with only one battery comes close though.
Lifting your left finger to click the right 'button' seems to be the only thing some people don't quite get immediately but it soon becomes second nature IME.
It's not that hard, but doubling the number of fingers that move to do the same thing is the bad part, it can easily make repetitive strain worse.
Quote:
I also switch off the side buttons. They're great most of the time but if you concentrate on drawing on Photoshop and the Dashboard suddenly appears because you've squeezed the mouse too hard it gets annoying quickly.
Try one someday for longer than the 15 minutes many people have attempted in an Apple Store.
I have one and I've tried a few in the stores, the amount of side force needed to activate the side buttons seems to vary a lot between mice. That's not a good sign.
Despite, I haven't subjected my Mighty Mouse to a hanging, but I end up switch-handing with a Wacom tablet mouse on one side of the keyboard, and MM on the other.
he noted that his current estimates of $3.20 per-share earnings on sales of $24.6 billion may prove to be conservative.
I would like to see Multi-Touch on monitors. I don't see a problem. Don't people wash their hands? I can move my finger across my screen without getting grease over it, and I imagine that others can do so as well. Companies are quick to take advantage of these innovations. I can see one coming out with some small iten you put on your desk, or stick to the monitor, that people with sweaty or greasy fingers could quickly swipe across before they touched the screen.
When you use the phone, you are usually in transit, and may not have the cleanest fingers. But sitting in front of your machine at home, or in your place of business, you have no such excuse.
Multi-Touch sounds like a very useful feature. I can imagine using it while working with many programs. Moving a page or image around on the screen would be easier with a finger than it would be with a mouse or trackball. While it's also easy using a pen on my graphics tablet, most people don't use them for their work.
I think a lot of people are missing the point of having a multitouch display on a desktop or laptop. People compare it to moving the hands from the mouse all the way up to the screen to do a simple click, or taking a stylus to do clicks all over the screen, neither of which is a step up from what we have today. But the difference here is the "multi" part of multitouch.
Easy examples have already been pointed out. Resizing or rotating images and webpages with two-finger pinch and rotate movements are much more accurate and natural than moving sliders or little boxes on an object's corner. And what about sound and video editing? There are tons of cases where being able to manipulate multiple controls on the screen at once would be a godsend, and are impossible to do currently without dedicated hardware.
For instance, you could move a bunch of sliders in a sound editing app all at once. Or how about that little keyboard in Garageband? Just blow it up to finger-tapping size and beginner users have a fully functional keyboard. It's not as good as dedicated hardware, but Garageband is made for beginners who may not have all the goodies yet.
Seriously, multitouch could be the beginning of a whole new way to interact with your computer. Forget all those single-click alternatives you've already tried because they're just awkward replacements for the mouse that's already on your desk. With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
I think the "multitouch is useless on desktops" statement is in the same vein as "Apple shouldn't waste its time on an MP3 player".
I think a lot of people are missing the point of having a multitouch display on a desktop or laptop. People compare it to moving the hands from the mouse all the way up to the screen to do a simple click, or taking a stylus to do clicks all over the screen, neither of which is a step up from what we have today. But the difference here is the "multi" part of multitouch.
Easy examples have already been pointed out. Resizing or rotating images and webpages with two-finger pinch and rotate movements are much more accurate and natural than moving sliders or little boxes on an object's corner. And what about sound and video editing? There are tons of cases where being able to manipulate multiple controls on the screen at once would be a godsend, and are impossible to do currently without dedicated hardware.
For instance, you could move a bunch of sliders in a sound editing app all at once. Or how about that little keyboard in Garageband? Just blow it up to finger-tapping size and beginner users have a fully functional keyboard. It's not as good as dedicated hardware, but Garageband is made for beginners who may not have all the goodies yet.
Seriously, multitouch could be the beginning of a whole new way to interact with your computer. Forget all those single-click alternatives you've already tried because they're just awkward replacements for the mouse that's already on your desk. With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
I think the "multitouch is useless on desktops" statement is in the same vein as "Apple shouldn't waste its time on an MP3 player".
With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
You're totally right. However, just not on MY screen.
If you want to give me a second screen to put greasy fingerprints on for apps that would benefit from that kind of UI, then fine, but most of the time I'm reading/writing text and don't want fingers anywhere near it. And then, when I'm editing images, having big smudges on them isn't conducive to getting quality images, particularly if I'm looking for detail in shadows.
Jeff Han's demo of a lightbox was about the most convincing application demo I've seen of the feature but only really for sorting and rotating images and basic editing. Past that you have to keep grease and dirt away from images.
I once had a really cute sales rep come round my office to try and sell me some new search engine affiliation - could have sold me anything, even a search engine I wasn't that keen on. But then she stuck her finger on my screen...... sale over.
I would like to see Multi-Touch on monitors. I don't see a problem. Don't people wash their hands? I can move my finger across my screen without getting grease over it, and I imagine that others can do so as well. Companies are quick to take advantage of these innovations. I can see one coming out with some small iten you put on your desk, or stick to the monitor, that people with sweaty or greasy fingers could quickly swipe across before they touched the screen.
When you use the phone, you are usually in transit, and may not have the cleanest fingers. But sitting in front of your machine at home, or in your place of business, you have no such excuse.
Multi-Touch sounds like a very useful feature. I can imagine using it while working with many programs. Moving a page or image around on the screen would be easier with a finger than it would be with a mouse or trackball. While it's also easy using a pen on my graphics tablet, most people don't use them for their work.
It's no stretch of the imagination to say the early adopters will be porn producers.
I think a lot of people are missing the point of having a multitouch display on a desktop or laptop. People compare it to moving the hands from the mouse all the way up to the screen to do a simple click, or taking a stylus to do clicks all over the screen, neither of which is a step up from what we have today. But the difference here is the "multi" part of multitouch.
Easy examples have already been pointed out. Resizing or rotating images and webpages with two-finger pinch and rotate movements are much more accurate and natural than moving sliders or little boxes on an object's corner. And what about sound and video editing? There are tons of cases where being able to manipulate multiple controls on the screen at once would be a godsend, and are impossible to do currently without dedicated hardware.
For instance, you could move a bunch of sliders in a sound editing app all at once. Or how about that little keyboard in Garageband? Just blow it up to finger-tapping size and beginner users have a fully functional keyboard. It's not as good as dedicated hardware, but Garageband is made for beginners who may not have all the goodies yet.
Seriously, multitouch could be the beginning of a whole new way to interact with your computer. Forget all those single-click alternatives you've already tried because they're just awkward replacements for the mouse that's already on your desk. With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
I think the "multitouch is useless on desktops" statement is in the same vein as "Apple shouldn't waste its time on an MP3 player".
I agree, any app that relies on a control surface or that could benefit from direct input would be fantastic on multi-touch monitors. Anything ranging from Painter, Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut, Soundtrack, GarageBand, the gamut of 3D modeling and rendering programs, even a lot of popular games, etc., etc., etc....
Yes, way before the iPhone announcement even. He's touching the screen.
Yes, but you don't have to!
"Instead of a typical cell phone's buttons, the iPhone has just a screen, and is operated by specific finger motions -- a capability similar to the products made by the firm that Elias and Westerman founded in conjunction with UD, called FingerWorks. Under Westerman and Elias' guidance, FingerWorks built a range of these multi-touch devices, including a no-touch keyboard, mouse-less mousepads and other gadgets that allowed users to initiate computer commands with finger gestures, or just by getting their fingers close to the keys."
And again: "FingerWorks (products need no on-screen contact to work. A FingerWorks keyboard senses the motion of fingers in the air, allowing users to "cut and paste" or zoom in and out with such simple gestures as "pinching" or "closing the lid of a jar."
All this talk about the smudge issue with touch screens reminds me of the Apple patent from a year or so back for screens where each pixel acts not only as a display pixel but as a "micro-camera" for receiving visual information. (I don't remember what it was called and all I was able to find on the web was references sto the proximity detector patent, though I'm sure that this would somehow integrate with the combined display/detector pixels patent...)
I can imagine this would be a clever way of detecting the location of a user's finger(s) at a respectable distance from the screen without the user having to actually touch the screen. With each pixel providing information to the processor on the location of fingers, it shouldn't be too difficult for an algorithm to calculate a stereoscopic representation of the fingers, and maybe even calculating relative distance of the fingers from the screen, which might permit a sort of 3D manipulation, where changing the distance of one finger relative to the screen, say, with the other staying at the same distance, could let you "push" or "pull" (parts of) objects away or toward you. Similarly, using the index and thumb on one hand as control fingers, rotating your hand in front of the screen could rotate an object away from you or toward you. Think of the possibilities that come from combining multi-touch with the pixel-level "micro-camera" patent...
"FingerWorks products need no on-screen contact to work. A FingerWorks keyboard senses the motion of fingers in the air, allowing users to "cut and paste" or zoom in and out with such simple gestures as "pinching" or "closing the lid of a jar."(1)
I hate to break this to you, but that article doesn't know what it's talking about. Fingerworks products always needed contact. It was essentially a multipoint trackpad, and you can't use a trackpad without touching it.
As for the analyst talking about touchscreen TVs, that's just dumb. People are so lazy that they won't give up their remote controls and they sure as heck won't get off the couch to walk to the TV to change the channel.
I could see this being used in an Apple automation home network with 15" screens and smaller that are relatively inexpensive positioned in various areas around your house, but a desktop or workstation that relied on this would totally suck. Tablets - Yes, iPhone - Yes, Remote devices - Yes, but for common working conditions it wouldn't be very practical.
Comments
I think we'll have to wait and see how they handle it with the iPhone. I hope they have some sort of smudge and scratch resistant coating.
When you buy your Apple touch screen device, you will note it will comes with a syringe and needle for you to inject yourself with their patented DNA altering concotion. After the injection, your DNA will be subtly altered so that your fingers no longer exude grease to mar the gleaming perfection of the Apple touch screen device you purchased.
Some users have reported that skin elsewhere has also stopped lubricating. Gone are the shiny noses that TV makeup artists have been battling for decades. Slightly more worrying, though, have been some unconfirmed reports that other bodily lubricants involved in reproductive processes have also been affected.
An Apple spokesperson has said that these issues had been noted and that the Apple store now has a great new line of Apple skin moisturising products and ancillary lubricants available.
Other than that, how about an Apple universal remote that uses the multi-touch screen technology? The screen would change depending on whether you were using it with your Mac, AppleTV, iPod stereo or whatever, giving context sensitive visual controls for each device. Throw in support for select non-Apple products such as HDTVs and HD DVD/Blue Ray players, etc...
It's called the One for all Kameleon remote: http://www.oneforall-int.com/
Anyone who gets their greasy fingers on my Mac's screen will feel the wrath of my shatterproof plastic ruler across their knuckles!
Touch screen Macs - Noooooooooooooooo!
Don't worry -- natural selection will solve the problem in a generation or two. Males with greasy fingers won't be able to read their address books on their iPhones, but males with non-greasy fingers will and be able to contact the females, have sex, propagate their genes, and we will be on our way to evolving into a species of dry-fingered homo sapiens who have become the optimal users of the most important tool invented in millenia.
We just may need to start a new geologic era: the iPhonozoic!
To be honest, I don't see an immediate need for this in desktop models. Who wants to reach across the desk for hours? What about people who use Macs for 8 hours a day at work? Not a good idea.
Tablets, definitely. Portables.......... maybe, though that often has the same problem as desktops... reaching out in front of you. To make a touch-interactive UI really usable, the device has to be lightweight and easy to touch. I know it sounds stupid, but not all computers are easy to touch!
-Clive
I do not think that they would remove your ability to use a mouse and keyboard. Ussing multitouch would simply be another way of interacting. The controls on the screen would change based on the application.
Imagine a musician creating music while standing with the screen about 6 inches away and as he touches different regions of the screen different instruments play, their sound is modified and shorten/lengthen based on the gestures he uses. I don't ever remember something like this in the market.
Yes, nobody is going to work like a drone typing by using a touch screen for 8 or 12 hours.
But I can see someone painting, drawing, in general creating, with a large screen in front of them (specialy while standing) while they interact with their virtual canvas.
Think different, think creative and not mundane uses like typing, or writing code.
As long as it is an alternate inferface with standard keyboard and mouse still available for mundane tasks, I see this as a huge boost.
Think canvas for music, colors, effects, drawing, painting, animating objects, animating models, organizing, brain storming.
I was actually refering to the lack of tactile feedback between the left and right mouse buttons. I don't move my fingers to right click, I just use the fingers that are already over there.
You get used to just lifting the left finger a couple of mm in no time to the point I do it with non Apple mice now. There's plenty of tactile feedback. It moves maybe 2mm.
The other big problem with the mouse is that it is too flat, and uncomfortable for me to hold.
And I find most of the current Logitech and Microsoft mice give me a pain in my ulnar nerve after a while so each to their own. I know people who get on with grasping a mouse like a ball in their palm but I generally prefer fingertips with my wrist on the desk. My favourite mouse of all time was 1987's Microsoft Mouse. I can remember getting that at work at the time and nothing has really lived up to it since. I still have two. Apple's latest wireless Mighty Mouse running with only one battery comes close though.
http://www.ideo.com/portfolio/re.asp?x=12328
Lifting your left finger to click the right 'button' seems to be the only thing some people don't quite get immediately but it soon becomes second nature IME.
It's not that hard, but doubling the number of fingers that move to do the same thing is the bad part, it can easily make repetitive strain worse.
I also switch off the side buttons. They're great most of the time but if you concentrate on drawing on Photoshop and the Dashboard suddenly appears because you've squeezed the mouse too hard it gets annoying quickly.
Try one someday for longer than the 15 minutes many people have attempted in an Apple Store.
I have one and I've tried a few in the stores, the amount of side force needed to activate the side buttons seems to vary a lot between mice. That's not a good sign.
Despite, I haven't subjected my Mighty Mouse to a hanging, but I end up switch-handing with a Wacom tablet mouse on one side of the keyboard, and MM on the other.
So I hardly think Apple would overlook such an obvious issue and I'm sure they would coat the screen to avoid scratches and fingerprints.
Either that or some form of manipulating the RDF using finger guestures in front of your in built iSight.
Here's the gesture for replying to your boss when asked to do overtime in Mail.app...
Of course it has to be localized. Here's the italian version...
he noted that his current estimates of $3.20 per-share earnings on sales of $24.6 billion may prove to be conservative.
I would like to see Multi-Touch on monitors. I don't see a problem. Don't people wash their hands? I can move my finger across my screen without getting grease over it, and I imagine that others can do so as well. Companies are quick to take advantage of these innovations. I can see one coming out with some small iten you put on your desk, or stick to the monitor, that people with sweaty or greasy fingers could quickly swipe across before they touched the screen.
When you use the phone, you are usually in transit, and may not have the cleanest fingers. But sitting in front of your machine at home, or in your place of business, you have no such excuse.
Multi-Touch sounds like a very useful feature. I can imagine using it while working with many programs. Moving a page or image around on the screen would be easier with a finger than it would be with a mouse or trackball. While it's also easy using a pen on my graphics tablet, most people don't use them for their work.
Easy examples have already been pointed out. Resizing or rotating images and webpages with two-finger pinch and rotate movements are much more accurate and natural than moving sliders or little boxes on an object's corner. And what about sound and video editing? There are tons of cases where being able to manipulate multiple controls on the screen at once would be a godsend, and are impossible to do currently without dedicated hardware.
For instance, you could move a bunch of sliders in a sound editing app all at once. Or how about that little keyboard in Garageband? Just blow it up to finger-tapping size and beginner users have a fully functional keyboard. It's not as good as dedicated hardware, but Garageband is made for beginners who may not have all the goodies yet.
Seriously, multitouch could be the beginning of a whole new way to interact with your computer. Forget all those single-click alternatives you've already tried because they're just awkward replacements for the mouse that's already on your desk. With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
I think the "multitouch is useless on desktops" statement is in the same vein as "Apple shouldn't waste its time on an MP3 player".
I think a lot of people are missing the point of having a multitouch display on a desktop or laptop. People compare it to moving the hands from the mouse all the way up to the screen to do a simple click, or taking a stylus to do clicks all over the screen, neither of which is a step up from what we have today. But the difference here is the "multi" part of multitouch.
Easy examples have already been pointed out. Resizing or rotating images and webpages with two-finger pinch and rotate movements are much more accurate and natural than moving sliders or little boxes on an object's corner. And what about sound and video editing? There are tons of cases where being able to manipulate multiple controls on the screen at once would be a godsend, and are impossible to do currently without dedicated hardware.
For instance, you could move a bunch of sliders in a sound editing app all at once. Or how about that little keyboard in Garageband? Just blow it up to finger-tapping size and beginner users have a fully functional keyboard. It's not as good as dedicated hardware, but Garageband is made for beginners who may not have all the goodies yet.
Seriously, multitouch could be the beginning of a whole new way to interact with your computer. Forget all those single-click alternatives you've already tried because they're just awkward replacements for the mouse that's already on your desk. With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
I think the "multitouch is useless on desktops" statement is in the same vein as "Apple shouldn't waste its time on an MP3 player".
Agreed.
Have you not looked at the Jeff Han links above? You don't have to touch the screen at all. Just hover above it.
aegisdesign
Have you not looked at the Jeff Han links above? You don't have to touch the screen at all. Just hover above it.
Yes, way before the iPhone announcement even. He's touching the screen.
With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
You're totally right. However, just not on MY screen.
If you want to give me a second screen to put greasy fingerprints on for apps that would benefit from that kind of UI, then fine, but most of the time I'm reading/writing text and don't want fingers anywhere near it. And then, when I'm editing images, having big smudges on them isn't conducive to getting quality images, particularly if I'm looking for detail in shadows.
Jeff Han's demo of a lightbox was about the most convincing application demo I've seen of the feature but only really for sorting and rotating images and basic editing. Past that you have to keep grease and dirt away from images.
I once had a really cute sales rep come round my office to try and sell me some new search engine affiliation - could have sold me anything, even a search engine I wasn't that keen on. But then she stuck her finger on my screen...... sale over.
As I've been saying.
I would like to see Multi-Touch on monitors. I don't see a problem. Don't people wash their hands? I can move my finger across my screen without getting grease over it, and I imagine that others can do so as well. Companies are quick to take advantage of these innovations. I can see one coming out with some small iten you put on your desk, or stick to the monitor, that people with sweaty or greasy fingers could quickly swipe across before they touched the screen.
When you use the phone, you are usually in transit, and may not have the cleanest fingers. But sitting in front of your machine at home, or in your place of business, you have no such excuse.
Multi-Touch sounds like a very useful feature. I can imagine using it while working with many programs. Moving a page or image around on the screen would be easier with a finger than it would be with a mouse or trackball. While it's also easy using a pen on my graphics tablet, most people don't use them for their work.
It's no stretch of the imagination to say the early adopters will be porn producers.
I think a lot of people are missing the point of having a multitouch display on a desktop or laptop. People compare it to moving the hands from the mouse all the way up to the screen to do a simple click, or taking a stylus to do clicks all over the screen, neither of which is a step up from what we have today. But the difference here is the "multi" part of multitouch.
Easy examples have already been pointed out. Resizing or rotating images and webpages with two-finger pinch and rotate movements are much more accurate and natural than moving sliders or little boxes on an object's corner. And what about sound and video editing? There are tons of cases where being able to manipulate multiple controls on the screen at once would be a godsend, and are impossible to do currently without dedicated hardware.
For instance, you could move a bunch of sliders in a sound editing app all at once. Or how about that little keyboard in Garageband? Just blow it up to finger-tapping size and beginner users have a fully functional keyboard. It's not as good as dedicated hardware, but Garageband is made for beginners who may not have all the goodies yet.
Seriously, multitouch could be the beginning of a whole new way to interact with your computer. Forget all those single-click alternatives you've already tried because they're just awkward replacements for the mouse that's already on your desk. With multitouch, you now have 10 fingers able to do 10 things on your screen all at once, all with direct manipulation techniques that UI designers go bonkers for. If this is built into Leopard with easy-to-code APIs, and all new Macs provide support for it, we could see some amazing stuff that no one here has even imagined. Totally revamped iLife and pro apps would be just the beginning.
I think the "multitouch is useless on desktops" statement is in the same vein as "Apple shouldn't waste its time on an MP3 player".
I agree, any app that relies on a control surface or that could benefit from direct input would be fantastic on multi-touch monitors. Anything ranging from Painter, Photoshop, Illustrator, Final Cut, Soundtrack, GarageBand, the gamut of 3D modeling and rendering programs, even a lot of popular games, etc., etc., etc....
Yes, way before the iPhone announcement even. He's touching the screen.
Yes, but you don't have to!
"Instead of a typical cell phone's buttons, the iPhone has just a screen, and is operated by specific finger motions -- a capability similar to the products made by the firm that Elias and Westerman founded in conjunction with UD, called FingerWorks. Under Westerman and Elias' guidance, FingerWorks built a range of these multi-touch devices, including a no-touch keyboard, mouse-less mousepads and other gadgets that allowed users to initiate computer commands with finger gestures, or just by getting their fingers close to the keys."
And again: "FingerWorks (products need no on-screen contact to work. A FingerWorks keyboard senses the motion of fingers in the air, allowing users to "cut and paste" or zoom in and out with such simple gestures as "pinching" or "closing the lid of a jar."
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/p...0357/-1/NEWS01
I can imagine this would be a clever way of detecting the location of a user's finger(s) at a respectable distance from the screen without the user having to actually touch the screen. With each pixel providing information to the processor on the location of fingers, it shouldn't be too difficult for an algorithm to calculate a stereoscopic representation of the fingers, and maybe even calculating relative distance of the fingers from the screen, which might permit a sort of 3D manipulation, where changing the distance of one finger relative to the screen, say, with the other staying at the same distance, could let you "push" or "pull" (parts of) objects away or toward you. Similarly, using the index and thumb on one hand as control fingers, rotating your hand in front of the screen could rotate an object away from you or toward you. Think of the possibilities that come from combining multi-touch with the pixel-level "micro-camera" patent...
Forget the Windex?
"FingerWorks products need no on-screen contact to work. A FingerWorks keyboard senses the motion of fingers in the air, allowing users to "cut and paste" or zoom in and out with such simple gestures as "pinching" or "closing the lid of a jar."(1)
I hate to break this to you, but that article doesn't know what it's talking about. Fingerworks products always needed contact. It was essentially a multipoint trackpad, and you can't use a trackpad without touching it.
As for the analyst talking about touchscreen TVs, that's just dumb. People are so lazy that they won't give up their remote controls and they sure as heck won't get off the couch to walk to the TV to change the channel.