Touch Screen Tech Comes of Age

pottercw writes "Good summary of today's touch-screen technologies on Computerworld — the obvious Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface, plus projected touch screens (nothing for users to break), handheld devices that you control from the back (so your fingers don't obscure the screen), and of course giant multitouch walls a la Minority Report. Anyone got $100K?"

Comments

$100k? Try $40!

[Roger W Moore]

I don't have $100k but I do have $40, a web browser and a basic knowledge of electronics. If you do too you might want to try this link.

JCL5M for the win.

[pcgabe]

Anyone got $100K?

Anyone who has watched Johnny Chung Lee's videos knows that you don't need $100k. You just need a wiimote and a little brainmuscle. ^_^

please....MS Surface is not touch

[Anonymous Coward]

"the obvious Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface

Once again - MS Surface has nothing to do with touching. There are 7 cameras below the glass that track and feed movement. The glass is the point reference and is not configured to detect or relay any physical content. It's just a big ass table with old tech stuffed inside.

So many punsters read so many reviews of tech products and believe so much MS hype without paying attention to what they are reading. MS seems to rely on that, by the way, and what a business model that must be in detail :)

Re:please....MS Surface is not touch

[westlake]

Surface has nothing to do with touching. There are 7 cameras below the glass that track and feed movement. The glass is the point reference and is not configured to detect or relay any physical content. It's just a big ass table with old tech stuffed inside.

Surface can take the punishment of the game room or bar.

It might be possible replace a damaged table top with a cut glass sheet or plastic panel purchased from Home Depot.

The use of rear projection suggests that it should at least be relatively simple and cheap to scale Surface to any arbitrary size or shape, for vertical or horizontal mounting.

Surface can read codes stamped into objects. Glasses. Cameras. Game pieces. Surface can communicate with objects - perhaps over a Bluetooth link or something faster.

Surface seem to do most of its work in software. I can't see any objection to using simple, reliable, off the shelf hardware.

GPC vs Embedded device

[fermion]

First the touch screen as the user for embedded devices, like phones, gas pumps, store check out registers, has long been established. These devices serve limited well defined purposes, can be sold at high enough prices to support the hardware and integration engineering,

Second, just because one as a touch screen does not mean on does not have a WIMP. This is such a basic flaw in the article, that I stopped reading TFA. In the simples case, the Pointer is the touch part of the screen. In more extreme cases, the menu structure may be simplified to pre-WIMP norms, though in most cases such menus will be based on configurable icons, not text. This does not, however, mean that the menu does not exist.

What we have been seeing lately, and what does exist on the general purpose computer, like a Mac or x86 running an MS OS, is the point taking on additional functionality, such as scrolling, zooming, etc. The complexity of completing such tasks vary. On the Apple, touch pads used gestures to scroll while an HP might have a dedicated part of the touch pad scroll. IN particular, Apple did not import the functionality of the iPhone as a touch screen application, but as a touch pad enhancement, an enhancement that appears to be mostly hardware related.

The question we have to ask is do we want our screen to be both out input and output device. For compact integrate devices like phones there is some advantage. But for a GPC, is there an advantage over a mouse, or even the command line? Mice are very efficient at moving quickly over large screen real estate, and can be very precise. Mice can be more efficient at moving through large documents than even the command line. Do I think I can edit this document faster if I had to touch the screen to move around? I don't think so.

Touch screens will continue to proliferate as interfaces to embedded devices. If they get cheaper, they will added on as a gee whiz accessory, just like the 238 USB ports and memory card readers and even floppy drives Re now added just so the feature list does not look so inferior. But it will still be a WIMP interface.