whole generations, including our own are currently being introduced to this technology thanks to the iPhone, and seem to pick it up relatively easy. So I think the learning curve will not be as steep as you may think....
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Apple Exploring MultiTouch Interface Gestures
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whole generations, including our own are currently being introduced to this technology thanks to the iPhone, and seem to pick it up relatively easy. So I think the learning curve will not be as steep as you may think....
My point was that using the word 'intuitive' isn't right here. If it were actually 'intuitive' then it wouldn't need to be explained or the explanation would be very common sense. A mouse is intuitive. The explanation is something like "moving this mouse attached to the computer moves this pointer on the screen. When the pointer on the screen is over something you want to interact with, click the button on the mouse". Even small children get that easily.
A set of gestures, although they can be learned and some may make more sense than others, are not 'intuitive'.
i think i disagree... with an iMac sitting on your desk at eye level, reaching up and touching the screen would get tiring, and not be as efficient. that's why the fingerworks gesture pad is so cool... you just leave your hand on it.
although we may get to gesture-aware monitors some day, i bet the first iterations will use the trackpad on laptops, and mice on desktops (then tablet portables). having a multi touch surface on a mouse could allow you to instantly execute way more commands than 8 buttons ever could, all without moving your arm. And Apple can keep there 1-button mousies. Or maybe a keyboard could have a multi-touch area. if only apple would redesign their keyboards...
I agree 100%.
A multi-touch "back" on a mouse would be an ideal interface.
1. It allows those ludites out there to continue using their mice just as they always have (and presumably a pref pane could disable all mouseback gestures).
2. It keeps your hand on the mouse when working in visual apps (I'd love to be able to not have to keep looking at the keyboard so that my left hand can find the 'm' key while my right hand is on the mouse in Final Cut Pro, for instance)
3. It is sleek (no buttons on the mouse, no "chin" needed on the keyboard) and uncluttered (no additional doohicky floating around on the desktop)
4. Gestures can relate more directly and consistently to their action (for instance, instead of dropping down a "zoom" menu and picking a setting, or sliding a slider, or - worst of all! - using the mouse scroll wheel that sometimes zooms and sometimes scrolls, I "zoom" using a standard gesture).
This would be one "mighty mouse" I'd pay real money ($100+ range) for!
Interesting! I might have to investigate that further. Most of the touch stuff I've seen looks like they'd fatigue my wrists in a heartbeat. I love my Kinesis keyboard but mousing around isn't as easy... here's hoping Apple comes out with some killer hardware that solves the conundrum.
Well, "pinching" and "stretching", IMHO, are incredibly intuitive - far moreso than sliding a zoom slider on the screen using the "intuitive" mouse.
In other words, yes, mice are "intuitive". However, they are used to manipulate on-screen artifacts whose effects are, in fact, quite not intuitive. Gestures are even more intuitive than the mouse (to make a gesture I move my fingers on the surface), and have the distinct advantage of allowing for multiple action vectors (ie, your fingers may all move in different directions to the extent that is possible with human fingers and hands). This allows them to manipulate on-screen objects in a much more intuitive manner.
There are four obvious aspects to an intuitive interface:
1. It works analogous to something else the user is familiar with
2. It works the same way in a similar context (ie, the "zoom" gesture in Excel is the same as the "zoom" gesture in Safari)
3. Commands are as distinct as their effects (ie, similar gestures will achieve similar effects, and there is generous distinction between any two gestures)
4. Effects are reinforced in multiple media (ie, on-screen realtime display of what the user is doing on the gesture pad; perhaps dynamic texturization on the gesture pad itself could be used for additional feedback)
When all you have is "point", "poke", and "double poke", you fail a lot of those tests by default.
I think gestures, as presented, fail a majority of those tests as well. Certainly calling gestures 'intuitive' smacks of hubris.
Yes, I would agree the pinching and stretching are intuitive to some degree. The problem is that you have to know that you can do that. When presented with a blank interface like the iPhone, that's going to be a challenge. Many of the other gestures on the charts shown are not intuitive at all. Look at the charts provided. How many of the multi-finger gestures do you think you could figure out without help? When the library reaches a certain size you'll have to devote a reasonable amount of energy to memorizing them all and that's not 'intuitive'.
When this technology was first revealed in Fast Company magazine I wondered how long it would be until we saw a practical commercial application. Wow! that was fast, microsofts tabletop and the iphone are here. It would be cool if this tech could be converted to holgrams for 3 demesional interaction.
Sorry if this has been mentioned
I still feel that the new iMac would be a killer piece of hardware if it ended up being removable.
The patent was filed in Jan. 07. It is surfacing, no pun intended, now, a few days before the release of an announcement that everyone feels is the new form factor iMac.
I think that an iMac that can remove the "screen" or essentially the whole computer from a stand and you can use while surfing the net, etc. would be great and then when you need to create a movie or do some intensive things like photoshop or page layout, you put it back on the stand, pull the keyboard our and go to work as usual.
I can see this touch thing working, with this.
It won't kill the notebook line as it would not be as safe to travel with it as there is no face.
This would be awesome!:
I still feel that the new iMac would be a killer piece of hardware if it ended up being removable.
The patent was filed in Jan. 07. It is surfacing, no pun intended, now, a few days before the release of an announcement that everyone feels is the new form factor iMac.
I think that an iMac that can remove the "screen" or essentially the whole computer from a stand and you can use while surfing the net, etc. would be great and then when you need to create a movie or do some intensive things like photoshop or page layout, you put it back on the stand, pull the keyboard our and go to work as usual.
I can see this touch thing working, with this.
It won't kill the notebook line as it would not be as safe to travel with it as there is no face.
This would be awesome!:
I believe that the arrows merely represent directional options. Being "Thumb & 1 Finger" combinations there will obviously only be two points of contact. The icons just show that placing your fingers at two outward points and moving them inward (213) will produce a cut, while placing them together and moving them outward (212) will produce a paste.
Nah, I don't buy it....
It's an interesting thing to note that someone actually tallied up the maximum number of unique, useful gestures and printed up a "dictionary" of them. That part, I'm ok with. But imagining a future where this will be the preferred input device for computers and digital devices, to the extent where it eliminates a keyboard and/or mouse?
I just don't see it panning out quite that way. I think a few intuitive gestures will get incorporated into practically anything with a touch-sensitive display. The iPhone illustrates how it can be implemented in a good way.
But as soon as you require learning a whole new "language" just to do the input/control of the device? People become disinterested. I remember years ago, a company invented a "more efficient keyboard" that had the user stick their fingers and thumbs into a pair of glove-like contraptions mounted to square bases, similar in size to mouse-pads. Each key could be "typed" by simply twitching a finger inside the "glove", either up, down, left or right. With enough practice, typing speed could shoot through the roof - and in theory, it should have eliminated carpal-tunnel too. But where are these today? I doubt most people have ever seen one, much less used one!
The problem is, it has too high a learning curve for most people. The standard keyboard is practically universal. You know your PC at work will type just like your PC at home, which worked just like your old typewriter, and it scales down to virtual on-screen keyboards, or mini-keys on a slide-out cellphone keyboard. Learn once, and use anywhere.
Some copyrighted collection of 200-300 "gestures" only used in Apple-branded devices just aren't going to appeal to many people.
It's an interesting thing to note that someone actually tallied up the maximum number of unique, useful gestures and printed up a "dictionary" of them. That part, I'm ok with. But imagining a future where this will be the preferred input device for computers and digital devices, to the extent where it eliminates a keyboard and/or mouse?
I just don't see it panning out quite that way. I think a few intuitive gestures will get incorporated into practically anything with a touch-sensitive display. The iPhone illustrates how it can be implemented in a good way.
But as soon as you require learning a whole new "language" just to do the input/control of the device? People become disinterested. I remember years ago, a company invented a "more efficient keyboard" that had the user stick their fingers and thumbs into a pair of glove-like contraptions mounted to square bases, similar in size to mouse-pads. Each key could be "typed" by simply twitching a finger inside the "glove", either up, down, left or right. With enough practice, typing speed could shoot through the roof - and in theory, it should have eliminated carpal-tunnel too. But where are these today? I doubt most people have ever seen one, much less used one!
The problem is, it has too high a learning curve for most people. The standard keyboard is practically universal. You know your PC at work will type just like your PC at home, which worked just like your old typewriter, and it scales down to virtual on-screen keyboards, or mini-keys on a slide-out cellphone keyboard. Learn once, and use anywhere.
Some copyrighted collection of 200-300 "gestures" only used in Apple-branded devices just aren't going to appeal to many people.
There are various levels of "failure". Likewise, "intuitive" is something that it is unlikely any artificial interface for which our DNA has not been hardwired will ever achieve. At best, we approach it. IMHO, multi-point gestures can get a lot closer than single-point (mouse) gestures can.
You also have to know how to use a mouse and that when using it to point and drag a "slider" on the screen that it will do the same. When the number of gestures is small, such knowledge spreads amazingly quickly. My mother (who is as far from technologically in-tune as one could be) was interested and amazed by the iPhone stretch/pinch gestures after seeing them on commercials just twice.
Absolutely. The point of the chart was not, so far as I can see, to say, "these gestures will appear in the next device", or even, "these gestures mean these things". A patent application, by its nature, needs to be broad in terms of possible applications.
I'd expect that a small handful of gestures would appear in a future device of some sort, not a library of 300+. My assertion isn't that these particular gestures are or are not intuitive (note for instance that the now-established pinch/stretch gestrues are labeled differently in the original charts) but that the incorporation of multi-point gestures will allow for more intuitive gestures than are currently possible.
Again, though, if you are willing to deem mouse manipulation of objects "intuitive" then you have already declared a very wide range which is acceptably "intuitive". We are currently nowhere near your original definition of "intuition", nor mine. We have "discoverable" and "consistent" as the hallmarks of the most intuitive user interfaces. Allowing more points to express a user's intent than just one can only increase the ability to communicate. Instead of just pointing and saying "Ugh", we now can use five different vowels!
Perhaps this should not be compared to input devices for a desktop computer. It's not a mouse and keyboard replacement - it's been mentioned already that keyboards are actually pretty good at what they do, after all you can use 8 fingers and 2 thumbs.
Multitouch screens become a better proposition for user input when you consider a pocket size device like the iPhone. It's pretty tricky to crowd your fingers around physical buttons on a mobile phone. So the short cuts associated with desktop use just aren't there in a physical phone interface, at least not in such a rich form. So gestures work well when space is limited.
Another great thing about a virtual interface is its flexibility, that it can be updated by the publisher through software updates, or configured by the user through preferences. It would be trivial to flip the mapping of thumb and finger if you are left handed for example, though I guess this is not an issue anyway as a stroke is a stroke is a stroke, no matter where you stroke from!
The form computers take is changing, or rather the variety of things that are computational is growing. We're getting comfortable with using computers in different situations, and developing new ways to use them in response to the constraints of those situations.
I don't want a keyboard in my pocket like I don't want to a touchscreen on my desk.
Toe controlled rockets are always good though...
Multitouch screens become a better proposition for user input when you consider a pocket size device like the iPhone. It's pretty tricky to crowd your fingers around physical buttons on a mobile phone. So the short cuts associated with desktop use just aren't there in a physical phone interface, at least not in such a rich form. So gestures work well when space is limited.
Another great thing about a virtual interface is its flexibility, that it can be updated by the publisher through software updates, or configured by the user through preferences. It would be trivial to flip the mapping of thumb and finger if you are left handed for example, though I guess this is not an issue anyway as a stroke is a stroke is a stroke, no matter where you stroke from!
The form computers take is changing, or rather the variety of things that are computational is growing. We're getting comfortable with using computers in different situations, and developing new ways to use them in response to the constraints of those situations.
I don't want a keyboard in my pocket like I don't want to a touchscreen on my desk.
Toe controlled rockets are always good though...
Really?
They wouldn't let us use any form of electronics at all on the APs (English, Calc AB, Calc BC, Chem, and Biology)! This was 1990 and 1991, and I had a TI-81 (TI's original graphing calculator), and the TI-89 didn't come out until 1998, so I'm guessing you're talking about around then. Had I had the TI-81 in there with me, the Calc test, at the very least, would have been balls-easy. I mean, you could store all sorts of cheat notes on that thing!
Just shows how "consistent" those tests are ... Looking up TI-89 on Wikipedia I find they allow those things in the SAT now too ... kids these days!
Not so new...
The reference to "chords" brings to mind the 1968 movie
http://www.cedmagic.com/history/first-computer-mouse.html
where Doug Englebart introduced the mouse to the
world... the rest is history.
Also introduced in that move was a 5-finger keyboard called a "chord keyset" device. Doug used the keyset to enter text by pressing a combination of 1-5 keys.
It, supposedly took a bit of learning (as if the mouse didn't), but once mastered, text entry was easy and fast. An additional advantage was that chording could be done with one hand while, concurrently, mousing was done with the other.
It just may be that we are in the early stages of a new era of text entry.
The reference to "chords" brings to mind the 1968 movie
http://www.cedmagic.com/history/first-computer-mouse.html
where Doug Englebart introduced the mouse to the
world... the rest is history.
Also introduced in that move was a 5-finger keyboard called a "chord keyset" device. Doug used the keyset to enter text by pressing a combination of 1-5 keys.
It, supposedly took a bit of learning (as if the mouse didn't), but once mastered, text entry was easy and fast. An additional advantage was that chording could be done with one hand while, concurrently, mousing was done with the other.
It just may be that we are in the early stages of a new era of text entry.
For sure, though gestural inputs are more like a set of command shortcuts, representations of discreet tasks rather than typed text.
Nothing to do with Apple, but this is a nice touch interface for composing music:
http://www.jamespatten.com/audiopad/index.php
A direct link to a QuickTime demo
http://www.jamespatten.com/audiopad/vid1.php
And of course there's the system used in Minority report. There's an interesting story about this, in terms of how films can influence technology innovation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bn-zZX9kdc
These use gestures across a larger space, a bit like the Wii
http://www.jamespatten.com/audiopad/index.php
A direct link to a QuickTime demo
http://www.jamespatten.com/audiopad/vid1.php
And of course there's the system used in Minority report. There's an interesting story about this, in terms of how films can influence technology innovation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bn-zZX9kdc
These use gestures across a larger space, a bit like the Wii
Star Trek Pad
I was watching Star Trek Enterprise last night... They were playing with a "Pad"... It looks like a silver enclosure with a 7" to 9" backlit screen and a thickness of probably 1/2"...
now has the closest thing to the "pad" ever on its iPhone. But why stop there? Instead of creating a sub-notebook laptop, which Sony and others have already done, create an iPad with all the iPhone's multi-touch features, minus the phone, and put a REAL Mac OS X on it. The iPad would be to portable computers what the iPhone is compared to a flip-phone. No need to flip open a screen to make the thing thicker. Make it a 1/4" thick with some kind of memory card slot and a nice, big multi-touch screen... Millions will buy it and will rule the future!
I was watching Star Trek Enterprise last night... They were playing with a "Pad"... It looks like a silver enclosure with a 7" to 9" backlit screen and a thickness of probably 1/2"...
now has the closest thing to the "pad" ever on its iPhone. But why stop there? Instead of creating a sub-notebook laptop, which Sony and others have already done, create an iPad with all the iPhone's multi-touch features, minus the phone, and put a REAL Mac OS X on it. The iPad would be to portable computers what the iPhone is compared to a flip-phone. No need to flip open a screen to make the thing thicker. Make it a 1/4" thick with some kind of memory card slot and a nice, big multi-touch screen... Millions will buy it and will rule the future! Said brilliantly.
I see the keyboard staying (hey, it's been challenges many times before, but never really bettered... and using words to communicate isn't going away any time soon), but multi touch could easily replace the mouse as the main input device on a lot of computers (by "computers" I don't just mean desktops).
Bring on the revolution!
I seem to recall there being a PC laptop built along these lines before - it had a detachable screen that could be used as a tablet, but it was essentially a dumb terminal, linking to the laptop proper over wireless. This made it utterly useless for anything more demanding than using Word - it couldn't even handle video when the screen was detached, and certainly not anything like 3D. Of course, it lacked multitouch and high-speed 802.11n networking, but the complete and utter failure of similar albeit more primitive concepts in the PC market before might make Apple wary of doing something similar themselves - in much the same way that they have shown reluctance to embrace the PDA and tablet PC markets.
Mouse less iMac on the 7th
Apple releases updated iMac. In addition to being visually stunning new iMac include hardware H.264 encoding and decoding. iMac will be mouse less. Touchpad supporting gestures replaces mouse. Favoring zero buttons over one button mouse. H.264 hardware and gestures will also be included in updated Mac book and Mac book Pro.
Apple releases updated iMac. In addition to being visually stunning new iMac include hardware H.264 encoding and decoding. iMac will be mouse less. Touchpad supporting gestures replaces mouse. Favoring zero buttons over one button mouse. H.264 hardware and gestures will also be included in updated Mac book and Mac book Pro.
'Quicksand' looks rude!
I think I will stick to 'Rock' 'Paper' 'Scissors'
Back on topic....
I think 'MultiTouch' is the next logical step in computing - and to me this would include motion capture gloves and other devices (Wii).
I am sure that there were many who said the mouse would never be popular as well