The product manager for Windows 7 recently demoed its multitouch features. The video is over at The Inquirer.
The most positive thing about having a quickly animated globe was that the demo showed that you select a small part of a large database of information very quickly. I’m not sure what the value of rotating that [...]
In which I consider whether platform defining software is more powerful than the inertia of a complex ecology of developers, software, hardware, support and marketplace.
The iPod system is an ecology that all competitors have found impossible to replicate and compete with. Better hardware features on mp3 players haven’t been enough, nor have different models for [...]
In which I remind you of Apple’s concept videos from the 80s and suggest it is time for a new one.
In 1987 and 1988 Apple were still facing an uphill battle with businesses when it came to convincing them that graphical user interfaces were better than MS-DOS command-line interfaces. Part of their campaign to show [...]
For the last thirty years people have been trying to come up with clever ways to make TV interactive. In the early 80s, we had Teletext services. We later had phone votes. These days digital TV users know that they can get more content – such as games, documentaries and commentary tracks – by ‘pressing [...]
Engadget pointed to a video on Vimeo that shows ‘the first major step in computer interface since 1984′:
They’re referring to the introduction of the Mac user interface (almost 25 years ago). That UI was a revision of the Lisa user interface for home users. The elements that made this work were the mouse, icons and [...]
In a recent article at InfoWorld, Neil McAllister reports that Microsoft have released a software development kit that shows how future applications can use a webcam input to replace a mouse or pen input. It works by recognising an object in your hand and tracking it as you move it across the screen.
There are upsides [...]
…is dead?
In multi-touch news, Apple has just been granted a patent for a devices that use an interesting arrays of sensors:
The touch sensing device also includes a plurality of independent and spatially distinct mutual capacitive sensing nodes set up in a non two dimensional array.
At first reading the invention seems to be about varying the [...]
On the subject of what multi-touch interfaces will be manipulating in the future…
I have recently been working with a company that combines databases together to build ’social networks’ – to model the way groups of people in society interact. This would be useful within organisations and projects too. If the connections within a project [...]
…where is the user interface design for multi-touch systems?
My friend Jean sent me a link to a blog on the Microsoft Surface concept. Surface combines the power of multi-touch with table-based Space Invaders games of the early 80s. A couple of cameras monitor where the glass top is touched. That information is passed to a [...]
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