Touch screen is the future of computing, says Microsoft
A MICROSOFT ENGINEERING BOG has announced further details of touch-screen functionality in the company's forthcoming Windows 7 operating system, along with the first video of the core UI Touch Pack for sticky-fingered users.
Anyone who has ever played with Apple's Iphone will be intimately familiar with the vast majority of the multi-finger gestures used by Microsoft's new UI with scrolling, zooming and rotating handled by flicking, pinching, twisting and gouging.
The current implementation of the rotate gesture lacks Apple's elegance, with images snapping 90 degrees with each twist of the fingers rather than turning incrementally. One area where the Windowers seem to have beaten Apple to the punch, however, is in copy and paste. Microsoft has opted for horizontal scrolling as a two-fingered gesture leaving single-digit side-to-side swiping for highlighting text.
Rather than being a nailed-on addition which only works with specially-engineered applications, touch gestures have been added to Windows 7 at the core level which means they should work with every piece of software (which works with the OS, of course).
So is it game over for the good old-fashioned mouse and keyboard combo? Not according HP's Phil McKinney. Speaking at an event in Los Angeles, he said that touch was not "the magic answer to everything."
Talking about Microsoft's first foray into the touch-screen market, the Surface PC, McKinney said, "The fact I have to reach over to use the screen, you can do that for a certain amount of time but then you revert back to the mouse and keyboard. Touch as the only point [of contact] starts to have some challenges. Typing on glass is like banging your fingers on granite."
A dedicated HP team in India is looking into a computer that can be controlled without the need for physical contact, Minority Report stylee, because, as McKinney explained, "The keyboard is a hugely intimidating factor for some users. It's like a secret language and you have to be on the inside of the club to understand it."
There are also cultural challenges to be overcome if touch gestures are to become the new standard for computer interaction. "In certain countries it's not socially acceptable to point with your finger," the HP exec... erm, pointed out. µ
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Google Gorilla Arm to discover why touch screens are not a good idea.
Yaawwwwnnnnn. Ahhh hum huh hmmmm ahem. Yaaawwwwnn.
Devices with touch screens like the iPhone and-the-like are pretty much useless for the blind and visually impared. Due to the lack of tacktile feedback, such devices leave blind people "in the dark". At the moment, the number of devices which rely 100% on touch screens is limited. If the drive to make "everything" have a touch screen as the main input continues, blind people will find themselves limited to a diminishing set of specialised (expensive) devices.
Additionally, I wonder what the legislators might have to say regarding accessibility?
P.S. Your CAPTCHA test below appears to discriminate againt partially sighted people too!
Touch screens are fine if you're sighted and have long frakking arms. Touch screens are fine for ringing up your tab at the local pub. But if you do serious work such as database entry, spreadsheet usage, or any of a thousand other similar process a touch screen is a waste of time and resources.
This technology is decades old and if it were useful it would have been something other than a dead horse ages ago.
I'm sure touch is all fantastic on the M$ coffee table showing 1680 x 1024 over something the size of a snooker table, but in the real world, with 1400 x 1050 on my laptop screen, I couldn't use touch with my fat fingers to even get the correct line of text to highlight, let alone the correct horizontal position.
Sure it's all fun on an iPhone or Nintendo DS, but they are supposed to be fun. The pub/restaurant till is also a good use, it's easy to clean and doesn't have a keyboard to collect all the dust and breadcrumbs.
But a PC is supposed to be productive, and I'm far more productive with loads of small pixels and a keyboard/mouse thank you very much.
MS are screwed for patents on this one as there is so much prior art it's untrue. You backed the wrong horse fatty Ballmer. So I'll have a mouse K/B and touchscreen - now I know how a one man band busker feels.
When we get direct control from the peripheral nervous system then I'll get excited but it's back to sleep for now.
I work on CAD and the not so often finger that points to the screen and touches it leaves a rainbow-esque fingerprint... can't imagine working on a touch screen all day and touching it with both hands! EEW.
Touch screen displays seem to have worse visibility than normal ones. In strong light conditions they are like dim cellar windows.
Plus. Waving your whole arm across the bloody screen vs. minimal movements of your palm and two fingers.
Ya hoo my arm rest I patented will come to fruitation . Can't see to many people holding up their arms for to long. I'm working on a bionic arm just for the touch screen, Have to work on the touchy feely part tho, and if you get pissed off it will sense that, give the finger salute automatically.
Some exciting times ahead for anyone developing a touch screen interface.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/655/1050655/apple-wins-multi-touch-patent
was the future too according to poor BG long ago.
Touch screen must be about 25 years old bye now. (used in controll systems in aviation etc).
In fact it something funny with this "the future" thing.
Place yourself 25 years ago and look at the "future" of today.
So, what did we get, the internet, cellphones and the disaster MSDOS and Windows.
And well yes Visicalc.
OK, Am I wrong here, or did Microsoft not come out with multi-touch WAY, WAY, WAY, before Apple computer stole the idea?
Too many scifi movies have been fed into the the marketing hype machine, she cannae take it cap'n.
Some applications might need touch screens but public service interface screens require remote hand gesture due to the contagion issue eg using a public payphone. That could be hand or eye movement.
Larger screens require gesture magnification as we get with the current input devices like mouse, trackball and tablet. Gorilla arm and RSI / muscle fatigue will make anything else impractical for repetitive use. So again hand or eye movement detection would do it. Touch screen wouldnt.
Touch screen is only viable where the screen size is less than or equal to the easy range of movement of forefinger tip flexing at knuckle and wrist. 5" square max, for micro devices or hi tech control interfaces only and then only for personal use due to the smear effect.
The whole minority report thing was a beautiful balletic performance, but no way you are going to trade stocks or answer customer service phone calls using one of those 5 days a week.
hehe, someone is suffering from BSG withdrawl....you're not alone ;p
Just what I wanted to do, reach over my desk every time I wanted to change something on my computer.
M$ comes up with another bright idea.
I'll rejoice when they make me control my PC without having to take my hand off my crotch.
Especially during winter.
Welcome to the World of very dirty monitors.
The danger of bifurcating the human race into different species cannot be overlooked. Texters with agile hyper-opposable thumbs, and touchscreeners with long dry pointy index fingers. Oh, and maybe other people too.
The horror...
your balls otherwise one will feel discomfort on the wrist not to mention - like one guy above said - greasy screens... now imagine staring at a porno image... damn you will need to give the screen a wipe first or else it'll be all blurry, annoying to say the least.
When i use the DS, every time at the start i clean the screen. It seems the bottom screen needs the most attention, understandably, that is the screen you come in contact with the most. Think about it. If people keep putting fingerprints on my TV screen, one time, i'll have to lay them on the kitchen floor! Anyway, there will be people like, in the job centre as a perfect example. It's good there and tilted at a perfect angle etc. can't picture myself being on that for long. Probably get some injury and loose a limb!
Bye. Jon.
Bought HP laptop with touch screen about a year ago. Returned it the next day. It had a weird screen effect where some kind of lines being visible when moving eyes/head. Checked other models and all had the same effect. No touch screens for me unless they get it fixed.
Gorilla arm was a side-effect that destroyed vertically-oriented touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. Designers of touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans are not built to hold their arms at waist- or head-height, making small and precise motions. After a short period of time, cramp may begin to set in, and arm movement becomes painful and clumsy — the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; "Remember the gorilla arm!" is shorthand for "How is this going to fly in real use?".Gorilla arm is not a problem for specialist short-term-use devices such as ATMs, since they only involve brief interactions which are not long enough to cause gorilla arm. Gorilla arm also can be mitigated by the use of horizontally-mounted screens such as those used in Tablet PCs, but these need to account for the user's need to rest their hands on the device. This can increase the amount of dirt deposited on the device, and occludes the user's view of the screen.
Oh, I got over BSG when it first came to conclusion in 1978. But I would like to know who the "He" is when "Angel" Baltar said, "You know He doesn't like that name." I think the "He' is Brand (creator of the "Brand Box")in Jack L. Chalker's "The Wonderland Gambit". But then, that would make the writers of the latest BSG a bunch of thieves and we don't want that.
Are they really so stupid as to think I bought a massive monitor to sit the stupid thing within reach!
Whats their next invention ' a remote control for people with larger monitors*' - yes its called a sodding keyboard and mouse - or perhaps a tablet that I used to use to design microchips on 30 years ago using 'gestures'
Invent this : a touch sensitive computer that accelerates out of the window on foot oriented gesture everytime MS invents something I did as a kid.
*ok penis extension that actually saves my eyesight.
Well the only thing I could think was that Baltar was refering to the entity that they both are....as in they are one so when he said 'He' the six gave him a look as if to say 'hey buddy we're both'. Well that's all I could workout anyway. I thought that the two 'angel' versions and Starbuck were just 'God' presenting him/herself in a way others would follow. My two cents anyway.
who types any more question mark this is way faster period backspace exclamation mark
A touch screen user who wants to get to know Vista speech better. I am in fact stylussing into the upright Fitaly on-screen touch/stroke keyboard and not dictating or typing. This is about half touch typing speed. Speech blows it away, but ironically you can't speak the gibberish that you use to control a computer. It comes out "Dalziel L".
Anyway, screen wiping support will be extremely important.
Didn't we go through this 'touch screens are the future' rubbish 20 years ago? Seriously, what is Balmer thinking?
Someone already mentioned tablets... Office has had pretty decent handwriting recognition for a few years now, but Microsoft doesn't seem to have promoted it too well.
Touch screens? Tried an Ipod touch, and trying to drive with a finger was fun ... for 5 minutes ... but uncomfortable for serious use.
If I want to throw away the keyboard, I can hook up a tablet to my antiquated W2K and moderately antiquated Office 2003, and scrawl all I like - with a clean screen. Office actually recognises my handwriting performed with a mouse amazingly accurately, so if I bothered to buy a tablet, I'd probably have 99.9% accuracy. Only thing is I know how to type, and until Microsoft introduces shorthand recognition, typing will always be way quicker than writing, but then they could do it for shorthand typing too, and it would still be quicker.
How long before those ancient jokes about blondes, correcting fluid and computer monitors become a reality with Windows 7?
Mac users have had Cocoa libraries for ages, but now presumably Windows users who forget to wash their hands can literally develop in chocolate.
A tablet doesn't touch a touchscreen for hand-eye positioning accuracy, at least for me. If you get something that works, you really can throw away - or anyway put in a drawer - your other input devices. But screens that react to actual touch aren't the best for accurate control - that is when the computer detects a stylus next to the screen and you can move the cursor without every movement being a "mouse click". Wacom do that well, although their desktop monitor with the feature was mighty expensive when I last asked, maybe a year ago. In fact I found the stylus mechanism was the weak point, and anyway I did better - on a device I don't have any more - by using the stylus to pull the cursor around (and tip: I made the screen cursor a little ball instead of an arrow point), but a trackball for left and right click.
Touch screen is not the future. It's the present day :)
But engineers have to improve touch screen.
http://hot-virtual-keyboard.com/
Pointing may not be good for screen as you don't know where those finger have been in the nostrils, the ears, and etc... Those fingers can leave dirty marks on the screen that may be contaminated with whatever bacteria that person was in contact with.