Minority Report may have brought the concept to the public’s attention, but Jeff Han is the pioneer in the development of multi-touch screens which Apple is using on the iPhone and eventually on their computers and iPods. While we’ve had single touch screens for a long time, and while, in a sense, multi-touch isn’t that revolutionary, it’s only now that we’ve all got PCs powerful enough to use them to full effect. His website has a number of videos showing what he’s doing with them.
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
An again snore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok how many people have clean hands all the time and how grimy will these screens become?
After that he is not showing ANYTHING other than playing being done with this. Where is the WORK to be done? Let me see him working with datasets and speadsheets and word documents. Let’s see him do double book accounting with the thing!
Yea its so awesome to be picking through photos, playing with maps and shuffling crap around. But WHAT about the real world of business that pays our bills, powers the grid and gets us food for our gullets so we have the time and energy to play flip that picture or zoom that map???
Until these people show us the meat and potatoes, the dessert is all fluff!
Cursor_
Oh my goodness. Bye, baby. You can use that marriage license for a potholder because the technology fish are schooling and I won’t be late for class. Sell the house and kids. Heck, keep one kid because when I get old I’ll need a techie just to figure out how to update it (in 3D of course).
Just too cool! I want one right now!!
I believe this video is more than a year old, Jeff Han demonstrated this at last year’s TED, why is it on the blog now? Cool technology though…
This will probably come as a shock, #1 – but, there are a number of people (including beyond this blog) – that think life, work and progress needn’t be consumed with assisting beancounters in their self-appointed role as the gods of commerce.
Otto – this is not a tech newspaper blog. Folks discuss interesting stuff whenever they feel like it.
I want to see him playing SPORE with that interface.
Agreed this isn’t for typical office employees, but for creative types, such as those using Photoshop or Illustrator to create ads and whatnot, this could be very cool. OTOH, is this just an evolutionary step from a Smartboard?
#5,
“This will probably come as a shock, #1 – but, there are a number of people (including beyond this blog) – that think life, work and progress needn’t be consumed with assisting beancounters in their self-appointed role as the gods of commerce.
”
That is a nice concept but unfortunately, the only people who do not have to work for a living are the very rich or the very poor. The other 98% of the world’s population have to struggle with the burden of labor (mental or physical) in order to eat, have a roof over our heads, make a better life for our children and enjoy our “off” time.
Actually, I can think of quite a few military applications of this technology. Coordinating battlefield movements of troops in a way that’s more fluid and real-time… I can see the military jumping all over this.
Right #9 – so, think and behave like an accountant. Poor, dull git.
Who the hell wants to do their computer work standing anyway?
Expect multitouch pr0n games in the future.
Beancounters forget that PC stands for Personal Computing.
The wonderful world of business has moved back to one step above Big Iron and Dumb Terminals. Thin clients don’t have optical storage, floppy drives or USB ports. Security doesn’t allow for it. What is used for all the “important” crap that concerns #1 is a dumb terminal with an OS and (maybe) a hard drive. Individuals who own and use their own Personal Computer need something more than Visicalc.
I haven’t any preference for a touchscreen, yet. Cripes, I haven’t used one on anything other than a PDA since 1985 (early HP dayz). But, then, there was a time when anything other than command line entry was regarded with suspicion and who the heck wanted a mouse?
#12, I hope you are trolling… this could easily be done sitting, its a demo which is why he is standing…
I think most of you are missing the point. This doesn’t have to mean you throw out the keyboard and mouse, it could just as easily be an addition to current input devices. Also, I think that using a pen like stylus would be much easier to enter numbers in a spreadsheet than using a keyboard.
OK…
a 2″x3″ screen.
Plastic membrane
2 fingers…3 fingers…???
WHY??
1 hand to hold the item, and 1 hand to hold/use 2 stylus??
I dont see why the controls would need to be on the screen.
I can see the plastic membrane being scratched to HELL, from finger nails. I see dirty/virus laden fingers ALL over the screen.
NOW think about cleaning that screen. I know alot of you KNOW how to clean these screens, but we are NOT among the many, that DONT.
For practical USE, business and so forth, I see no USE.
For some strange Kiosk, there MIGHT be a use.
For SOME music demo, there might be a use.
Maybe even for cad/cam…
I could really see some person with the monitor ON their lap in HL, using more then 1 finger, and his HANDS get in the way of the monitor.
Dave, thank you for posting this. I didn’t know about it …. must have missed the blip a year ago.
As for scratches, there’s a simple solution. wear thin cotton gloves or cotton “thimbles”.
I also found this interesting…
“Yes, the iPhone uses Multi-touch technology. * FingerWorks has been bought by Apple in June 2006. * Jeff Han has NOT been hired by Apple to work on the iPhone There were rumors that Apple had tried (unsuccessfully) to hire Jeff at one point to work on the launch of the iphone. NY Times techie David Pogue even asked Steve Jobs about him on the day of the launch. Here’s Jeff Hans’ response on the iPhone: “The iPhone is absolutely gorgeous, and I’ve always said, if there ever were a company to bring this kind of technology to the consumer market, it’s Apple. I just wish it were a bit bigger so I could really use both of my hands.” “
An indication of how desperately this is needed… the incredible success of tablet PCs. NOT!
Yeah, I really want to stand 18 inches away from a huge screen all the time… easy way to go cross eyed or blind. If this gets any use at all, it will be on standard (20″) screens.
Some of us dinosaurs remember a time when people said things like “We already have keyboards that can generate any ASCII character and 132- character-wide 256-color display screens, so what’s the point of some gimmick that moves useless little pictures around on the screen? It’ll never fly.”
Cursor_ & Steve S –
There’re millions of salaried workers in countless fields whose jobs involve photos, blueprints, diagrams, maps and other such visual representations. They’re in the “real world of business” and that’s the labor they perform in order to “eat and put a roof over their heads.”
I don’t think you guys have been getting out much these last 20 years or so…
20,
My old computer was AMIGA, not wintel…I had 4,096 colors…NOT 256.
20, Some of us dinosaurs remember a time when people said things like “We already have keyboards…what’s the point of some gimmick that moves useless little pictures around on the screen? It’ll never fly.”
Right on. I can imagine what I could do with this tech. Let the others keep the boring spreadsheets and word processors. Damn Neo-Luddites…
#20: Display screens? Who needs display screens when my teletype works just fine!
Teletype? You had a Teletype?
‘Ooo! Ooo! No more buttered scones for me, Mater, I’m orf to read what’s on my bleedin’ Teletype.‘
You lot don’t know how easy you’ve got it! Why, we had naught but wee pairs of lights for each bit in the registers, and we were lucky t’have them!
Teletype! Why, I never!
[/channelGrahamChapman]