Multi-touch on the desktop

Link: 16/07/2007 10:07 AM 6 comments

Craig Hockenberry writes about Multi-touch on the desktop:

"If you’re one of the people who think that a multi-touch monitor is a good idea, try this little experiment: touch the top and bottom of your display repeatedly for five minutes. Unless you’re able to beat the governor of California in an arm wrestling match, you’ll give up well before that time limit."

As much as I want mutlti-touch monitors, I think he's right. A little physical gesture pad would be cool though :)

On Jul 16, 2007 at 12:01 pm, Nick Smale wrote:

Thing is, I'm imagining that a multi-touch desktop would be just that -- a desktop. The traditional vertically placed monitor's a poor precedent -- imagine a monitor that instead is placed flat on you desk, like a sheet of paper...

On Jul 16, 2007 at 01:28 pm, Dominik Wagner wrote:

What I would like to see is a multitouch display where the keyboard is now on a laptop. That would be great. unless, of course, the main thing you do is typing. But for creative stuff that could be really great, and you would have even more screen estate. I want an iBook DS ;)

On Jul 16, 2007 at 01:54 pm, Craig Hockenberry wrote:

I'm not sure that you'd really want a gesture pad. The joy of touch-based UI is that the action is directly underneath your finger. Unless the application you are using is on that pad, it's not going offer much more than a trackpad—with the associated distance between the action and the result.

I like Dominik's idea of a dual-input approach. Of course, the risk you run there is that you get into a situation where you have to manage applications on their associated screen (because one has touch input, and the other does not.)

-ch

On Jul 16, 2007 at 01:55 pm, David Sinclair wrote:

Thanks for linking to that; it's a great perspective on a favorite topic of mine. I've written a reply on my blog:

http://www.dejal.com/blog/2007/07/multi-touch-desktop

I agree that a nearly-horizontal multi-touch surface would be the best.

On Jul 16, 2007 at 09:14 pm, Ian Wessman wrote:

The guys at OK/Cancel made a great comic about this issue in response to the movie Minority Report:

http://www.ok-cancel.com/comic/3.html

On Jul 20, 2007 at 09:58 pm, Jon H wrote:

How about just being able to handle two pointing devices?

For a desktop, you could have a keyboard with a nipple-style controller over on the left side. In multi-touch situations, you'd just twiddle that while you twiddle the mouse with your other hand. The computer would sense that the second control was in use, and provide multi-touch functionality.