mathoda.com

When I first saw multi-touch screens being developed in universities, I knew it would be pretty revolutionary. They later showed up in movies like Minority Report, devices like the Apple iPhone (my iPhone post), and presentations such as the one shown here: http://www.mathoda.com/archives/112.

Microsoft has now thrown it’s hat into the ring with Surface, a multi-touch table computer:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Pretty neat, although they are targeting high end resorts and other such places as the first customers for their $10,000 computer.

I suggested desktop multi-touch would happen in an earlier post, stating:

Despite this recent history, I believe software that runs on your local computer without needing an internet connection is going to make a come back. Two things will cause this change.

The first is that multi-touch interfaces will come to desktop machines, allowing for new types of desktop applications. You only have to look at the Nintendo Wii to see that when the human interface to a machine changes, new forms of software can meet previously unmet or unknown desires.

http://www.mathoda.com/archives/123

As cool as multi-touch desktop computers are, I’m waiting for the first laptop/tablet computer with multi-touch capabilities.

Steve Jobs of Apple indicated that their multi-touch efforts were first directed to such a device, but they decided to redirect towards the phone market due to its size and the obvious integration advantages with the iPod.

I’m sure Apple and Microsoft and a few dozen startups are hard at work developing a multi-touch laptop… who will get the prize?

Update July 20, 2007: Microsoft research demo’ed a rudimentary multi-touch laptop.  See my blog post: http://www.mathoda.com/archives/167

While Apple’s iPhone’s multipoint touch screen interface is great (http://www.apple.com/iphone/), it won’t be the only full screen touch cell phone in the world. In fact, it looks awfully similar to a touchscreen cell phone that LG has already designed and has already won design awards for. See http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2006/12/15/the-lg-ke850-touchable-chocolate/.

Does the LG phone have similar neat user interface tricks up its sleeve?

Time will tell.

As someone who often doesn’t like Apple products (although I do like the iPod with some caveats… like the lack of a delete button) I must admit that what Apple introduced today (the Apple iPhone) is pretty damn revolutionary. They leveraged university research on multipoint touch devices, but what they made from it unites alot of powerful technology in a very easy way.

Kudos, Apple, kudos.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/7#comments

Update, 3/27/08: With some chagrin I must add that Leopard is significantly better than Vista, so while I find the Mac often frustrating in small aspects of its design, I do think Apple has the edge right now.