Leopard sporting touch capability?
The iPhone and then Microsoft's recent "me too" mulitouch showing of their game table got me to thinking....
I think touch, multi or not, will feature into Leopard and new hardware. Specifically desktops.
It would be cost prohibitive to do the whole screen, but you could have areas of the screen respond to touch. ie: the dock.
I googled the idea and there is actually a few article well thought out already.
There is a link to one here. Check it out. It is interesting.
http://www.dailytechrag.com/node/5440
I think touch, multi or not, will feature into Leopard and new hardware. Specifically desktops.
It would be cost prohibitive to do the whole screen, but you could have areas of the screen respond to touch. ie: the dock.
I googled the idea and there is actually a few article well thought out already.
There is a link to one here. Check it out. It is interesting.
http://www.dailytechrag.com/node/5440
Comments
From the perspective of current desktop computer designs, the ergonomics of a touchscreen don't make any sense. Right now, you have 2 main input devices and they are both right beside each other in an orientation that allows you to both rest your arms and switch beteween them quickly. Adding a 3rd input device that is (often) relatively far away and does not allow you to rest your arms is probably not going to be helpful from a usability/productivity standpoint.
Your suggestion that it would only be used for a part of the screen like the dock is even less likely/useful. Is reaching your hand up to the screen to launch an app then bringing it back to the mouse or keyboard useful in any way? I see that as just more effort.
Just because something CAN be done and it's on Star Trek doesn't mean it SHOULD be done.
Having just the dock (or any other special are of the screen) touchable would be a terrible idea. Why would you use multi-touch just to launch and switch apps? That would fail to capitalize on the coolest aspects of multi-touch - scaling, scrolling, dragging...
Also, seeing your display from an angle is not optimal. If you start to rotate it up to overcome that problem then you run into the tired arms problem again along with the strained neck.
This kind of change in interface usage also represents a paradigm shift which is something that Apple is not afraid of. However, they aren't just going to shoehorn it into current tried-and-true products. They would have to create an entirely new product and I don't see that happening any time soon.
In my opinion, this is a solution looking for a problem.
Though large-size touch screens are quite expensive. Every Mac sold for the past 1.5 years (save for Mac Pros) has a built-in video camera. Why not take advantage of this to detect gestural movement instead? Not to replace the mouse & keyboard, of course, but as a supplemental means of UI -- or even primary UI for specialized applications?
It's quite doable, as Kickaha's extremely clever Facetop project demonstrated.
Ever since seeing that one guy at NYU who could throw pictures across the wall and resize them by pinching them, people are FREAKING OUT about multi-touch on this forum. People were freaking out about Robson over a year ago, and saying "OMG I HOPE THEY REFRESH THE MACBOOK TOMORROW!!!!!11!" but look how that's going. Multitouch is sweet, but it is a lightyear away from actually being designed, implemented and marketed properly. I wonder what kind of processing power I need to pinch all my pictures on a wall-sized multitouch and then throw them to my friend across the room. Let alone the ergonomics of doing so for more than 30 min a day.
I don't know the details, but i'm sure the mouse didn't become the industry standard overnight. Multitouch is such a physical (moreso than technological) leap forward that your average consumer (who consumes windows anyway, btw) isnt going to use this in the next 5 years. As for single touch screens: if Apple doesn't offer them already, they won't in the future. Buy a gateway.