“We are now witnessing the emergence of a new user interface for digital devices, including laptop computers, advanced cellphones, wireless portable data gadgets and other types of computing products,” Walter S. Mossberg reports for The Wall Street Journal. “This interface is generally called ‘multitouch,’ and it involves using one or more fingers on a screen or touchpad to perform special gestures that manipulate lists or objects on a screen — without moving a mouse, pressing buttons, turning scroll wheels or striking keys.”
MacDailyNews Note: Headroom, Uncle Walt, headroom. Headroom is the space left between the top of the head and the upper screen edge. Nice crown moulding, but tilt down that camera, Walt! All of your videos look like they were shot by a drunk Orson Welles.
Mossberg continues, “The best-known example of the interface is on Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch devices. It allows you, for example, to rapidly flip through photos, lists of emails or song titles by merely ‘flicking’ a fingertip on its screen, or to resize a photo by ‘pinching’ the image with two fingers. And, this month, Apple moved some of these multitouch features onto a laptop, its new MacBook Air, where fingertip actions are performed on an oversized touchpad rather than on a screen.”
“On Apple’s MacBook Air, the touchpad still allows you to use one finger to move the cursor and click like a mouse can. But, optionally, it can do much more using multitouch gestures,” Mossberg reports. “You can rotate photos by just touching two fingers to the touchpad and moving the images on the screen as you wish. You can quickly move back and forth through a series of Web pages or photos by ‘swiping,’ or placing three fingers on the touchpad and moving them rapidly sideways. And you can shrink or expand a photo, or zoom in and out on a Web page, by pinching the image.”
“All recent Mac laptops, not just the new Air, have the optional ability to scroll through a screen without using any button or special zone on the touchpad. You just place two fingers, instead of one, anywhere on the touchpad and drag them across its surface,” Mossberg reports.
“Apple didn’t invent the multitouch concept. Academic and commercial researchers, and small, obscure companies, have been working on it for years. Apple is adapting the concept, adding its own ideas and popularizing it — just as it did in the 1980s with the mouse and the graphical user interface, which had also been invented elsewhere,” Mossberg reports. “Rival companies are scrambling to add multitouch features to laptops and other digital gadgets.”
Read more in the full article here.
OK, that’s just too darned funny, MDN: I’m teaching Citizen Kane today!
I’ll be sure to bring up your comment in my class
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My girlfriend has a multi touch interface.
Gives a whole new meaning to the three finger gesture, doesn’t it?
@AI
Too funny,
My wife also has multi touch, but prefers here rabbit with 4ea “C” batteries
my 1st wife also had multi touch, but her definition of multi touch was multi partners, hence ex-wife
…and straighten that lamp shade!
(actually, it looks like this is in a bedroom, and panning up may have taken the bed out of the picture.)
Also, something about the word “touchpad” reminds me of a junior high dare.
Another example of Apple leading and the rest of the World following.
Apple. Real Intelligent Design.®
Apple didn’t invent the multi-touch concept. It just bought the professors and students who did invent it (along with their patents) and made them Apple staffers.
That big table thing is sooooo stupid!
I’m not surprised. Everyone loves to bag Apple. But they all end up following their lead. We will conquer them all.
As long as we are critiquing Walt I would suggest that he sign off not by saying, “I will see you next week”, but rather by saying, “You will see me again next week.” After all, that is the reality of the situation.
I thought Steve had hundreds of patents on multi-touch stuff and that no one else could do any pinching or fanning or stroking or darting or tossing or hammering or switching or dancing or flipping or flowing or dancing or passing or flicking or tapping or squeezing or stuff like that.
TommyBoy – Incorrect; The inventor of Multi-Touch Jeff Haan works for Microsoft and not Apple. Apple also improved on the original concept which used cameras and lights and could only be used on a “big a*sed” table and not a portable device.
Aaaaahhh… the power of simple, intuitive tools. Ten years ago, in order to make a video podcast such as this one, you needed:
Very powerful computer (G3 Macs were just coming out);
Video capture card (or a beige G3 with analog AV i/o);
Video camera
Commercial video editing software (such as Strata Studio) – iMovie was a couple of years away;
In order to make such effort, you really had to be totally into this video making business. That pretty much guaranteed you had some basic knowledge about it (composition, lighting, etc).
Today, you can get a first-gen MacBook (CD) for $600 on eBay and begin making your video podcast out of the box. You no longer need to invest in yourself in order to justify investing in the equipment.
Walt is doing a video podcast mainly because he as an iMac at home and it would take zero effort for him to make one. I’m only hoping that, for future ones, he tries to fix the stuff that didn’t look right previously. My other complaint (in addition to the extra headroom) is the exposure. Add a few ambient lights and, perhaps, some spotlight into the face (top-right, maybe about 4ft away). Ordinary drafters desk lamp ($12.99 at cheap stores) can be positioned any way you wish and does wonders for this kind of work…
Hmmmm…how about MDN make it´s 2-cents comments via a video for us all to watch…..and criticize….and laugh at and….
So, when can we expect the touch-pad become the equivalent of a Wacom touch tablet?
Apple didn’t invent the multitouch concept. Academic and commercial researchers, and small, obscure companies, have been working on it for years.
Actually humans have been using the multitouch concept for thousands upon thousands of years. Computers just suck and it has taken a long time to get to the point where they can just barely start to accommodate us rather than the other way around.
Don’t taunt Mossberg, MDN! He can crap bigger than you!
Did anyone else see the multi touch screen/TV monitor that MSNBC was using in their election coverage reporting for the florida primarys? I was wondering if this was just a big assed table mounted on the wall?
Strange. I don’t consider M$’s big-assed table a multi-touch device.
It is not activated by touch at all but uses a series of cameras, lights and motion sensors to figure out where you are in relation to the screen and then it simulates the touch experience. The sensors are just very accurate triangulation devices.
It is also probably impossible to make a small device like the iPhone using this technology.
In all, the real touch technology that Apple has developped is probably considerably more scalable and, therefore, more deployable on a multitude of devices.
Bravo Apple!
Lets put credit where credit is due: The multitouch screens have been in SciFi movies and novels for decades. From their imagination, comes our reality.
Macaday,
Apple actually patented a pressure sensitive touchpad several years ago. This would be a great enhancement to the multi-touch concept!
I love my WACOM tablet!
Walt tilts the camera up so you can’t see the black lace panties and garter belt he wears! Multi-TOUCH, indeed!
“Incorrect; The inventor of Multi-Touch Jeff Haan works for Microsoft and not Apple.”
Do you have a source for that? Consultant for several companies, perhaps.
Here’s what I have from NYU:
“Jeff Han
Consultant
Department of Computer Science
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
New York University”
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/
And this:
“Jefferson Y. Han is a research scientist for New York University’s (NYU) Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and one of the main developers of an “interface-free” touch-driven computer screen.”
“Han has founded a company called Perceptive Pixel to develop his touch screen technology further, and he has already shipped touch screens to parts of the military.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Y._Han
No mention of employment at Microsoft.
@Lawyers: Start your engines
EXACTLY. It’s all about the patents, or lack thereof.
Where are the patents?!
Headroom, lighting, random bottles of water in the background…
Walt, we need to have a production class. Call me.