“The multi-touch controls familiar to Apple iPhone users will be built-in to Microsoft’s Windows 7,” Darren Waters, Technology editor, reports for BBC News. “Windows Touch will be a ‘first class way to interact with your PC alongside mouse and keyboard,’ said [Microsoft, which] believes multi-touch PCs will become popular in retail, public spaces, on laptops and ‘kitchen PCs.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Gorilla Arm.
Waters continues, “Some Windows machines already feature rudimentary touch input and Apple is also reportedly readying touch for Macs in its Snow Leopard update to OSX [sic].”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s Mac OS X has long had multi-touch. On the trackpad, where it belongs – unless you like food and grease smeared all over your “kitchen PC’s” screen, as Microsoft and their box-assembling lackeys apparently do. Next on BBC News: “Microsoft to buy Windex; to ship free bottles with all 17 ‘Windows Touch’ editions!”
To us longtime Apple watchers, Cupertino seems to be saying quite clearly, “Multi-Touch™ on the screen only when trackpads are not part of the device.“
Back to the point at hand, Apple’s Mac OS X has long had multi-touch on their Macintosh personal computers. Apple introduced two-finger scrolling and panning trackpads, an early implementation of Multi-Touch™, on January 31, 2005. Subsequently, Apple introduced more advanced Multi-Touch™ with the debut of the MacBook Air on January 15, 2008. Each model of Apple’s MacBook family now sports Multi-Touch™. And Apple’s iPhone – which is also a portable computer from Apple – started shipping on June 29, 2007. You’d think the Technology editor of BBC News would be able to accomplish a bit of research. Perhaps he couldn’t get to a computer screen with all of those piles of Microsoft’s cash in the way.
Apple’s Multi-Touch™ Trackpad:
Direct link via YouTube here.
Oh, by the way, Multi-touch™ is a trademark of Apple Inc.
Direct link to video here.
MacDailyNews Take: “I can’t wait to show you them all…” but, first, Apple has to release final versions of Snow Leopard and iPhone 3.0. Thanks for your patience.
Waters continues,” A small number of multi-touch PCs are already on the market, including the HP TouchSmart and the Dell Latitude XT, and Microsoft hopes Windows 7 will create a new ecosystem of devices that take advantage of touch.”
MacDailyNews Take: Again, blatant lie or utter ineptitude, take your pick. Multi-touch Macs have been on the market for years.
Waters continues, “Windows Touch will features controls such as tap and double tap, drag, scroll, zoom, flick and rotate… Microsoft user interface evangelist Chris Bernard told BBC News: ‘Windows 7 will help take touch into the mainstream… While Surface and machines running Windows 7 are different devices we have evolved a common vocabulary of touch. Gesture and touch are the two biggest changes to how we interact with our computers since the launch of the first Graphical User Interface, and the use of the keyboard and mouse… We made sure you are getting the full Windows 7 experience.'”
MacDailyNews Take: The full Windows 7 experience? The “Wow” really does start now: Imagine, PCs that serve up shit sandwiches all day long! Some day the whole world will understand that Microsoft bred pathological liars and thieves while dooming the world to a decades-long, productivity-robbing Personal Computing Dark Age. The whole world, except the BBC, of course.
Waters continues, “To help optimise the different ways of touching and gesturing Microsoft said it analysed data from ‘thousands of sample [sic] from hundreds of people.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Wow. Hundreds of people. As opposed to Apple, which has tens of millions of Mac OS X notebook users and 30+ million iPhone and iPod touch owners who are using Multi-Touch™ daily. Oh, almost forgot: Watch out for those pesky patents, Microsoft:
• Apple files sophisticated gesturing patent: ‘Multi-touch Gesture Dictionary’ – August 02, 2007
• Apple patent describes new multi-touch gesture language – July 03, 2008
• Apple patent application details Multi-Touch™ swipe gestures for iPhone touch screen keyboard – December 26, 2008
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Does it make more sense to be smearing your fingers around on your notebook’s screen or on a spacious trackpad that’s designed specifically and solely to be touched? Apple thinks things through more than other companies, Darren. You should know that by now. The iPhone’s screen has to be touched; that’s all it has available. A MacBook’s screen does not have to be touched in order to offer Multi-Touch™. There is a better way: Apple’s way.
Watch Corporate_Mouthpiece-For-Sale (read: “non-independent”) Rob Enderle “demonstrate” touch in Vista service pack, er, ‘Windows 7’ beta and pretend that Apple hasn’t for years been shipping multi-touch Macs for – guess who? – BBC News (October 2008):
See the full video via BBC News here.
MacDailyNews Note: To make a formal complaint about the BBC or its services, please click here.
UPDATE: 10:59am EDT: The Beeb has added to their horrendous article. The article is now just slightly less horrendous with the addition of the following new sentence, “The latest generation of Apple’s laptops also feature a glass trackpad that supports multi-touch gestures.” Hmm, wonder what prompted that? Still nothing about Gorilla Arm, potential patent infringement, earlier Apple multi-touch implementations, etc. As usual, the Beeb’s effort is ineffective, incomplete, and incorrect.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dirty Pierre le Punk” for the heads up.]
