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Windows 7 Touch, Dead On Arrival
snydeq writes "Ongoing Microsoft hype around its Surface touch technology has suggested that, with Windows 7, a touch-based UI revolution is brewing. Unfortunately, the realities of touch use in the desktop environment and the lack of worthwhile development around the technology are conspiring against the notion of touch ever finding a meaningful place on the desktop, as InfoWorld's Galen Gruman finds out reviewing Windows 7's touch capabilities. 'There's a chicken-and-egg issue to resolve,' Gruman writes. 'Few apps cry out for a touch UI, so Microsoft and Apple can continue to get away with merely dabbling with touch as an occasional mouse-based substitute. It would take one or both of these OS makers to truly touchify their platforms, using common components to pull touch into a great number of apps automatically. Without a clear demand, their incentive to do so doesn't exist.'"
linux and gaming
Why would I ever want to sit up from my comfy chair to poke at a screen?
And thank goodness for that. Touch interfaces are acceptable where there isn't room for anything else (though the lack of a physical keyboard is always highly unpleasant), but I'd hate to see multitouch become the 'standard' interface for desktop computing. Sure, it's fun to throw about a few snapshots or fly about Google Earth. For all of 5 minutes. Try actually DOING anything, however, and you'll quickly switch back to a 'traditional' interface in order to avoid grief.
The problem is that with laptops/desktops the screen isn't really in a good position to accurately touch.
But I like the idea of getting rid of the persistent cursor. You just leave it lying somewhere on screen when you're not using it.. there's no reason to leave it sitting there, or have to navigate awkwardly between controls, when you can just touch.
I'm reminded of the PC vs console gaming argument about how mice are better because you can snap directly to a target instead of holding the control stick and having to wait as you pan around. Well touch vs mouse it's the same argument. With the mouse you have to start pushing your mouse across the mousepad, wait for it to reach its destination, and then fire. With touch you just tap the spot
Obviously touch would never work for FPS controls but desktop controls are similar.. "aiming" at the little 5-pixel high link may be harder than it has to be
Touch and multitouch have been around for decades; the reason people aren't using them is because they simply aren't all that useful, outside maybe consumer phones and systems like ATMs. It's the same with 3D movies and interfaces; like flu epidemics, these dead ideas keep coming back every decade-and-a-half.
article in one page
I don't need even more fingerprints on it.
It would be kind of neat for doing presentations, though.
We can just depend on the OEMs, whose craptastic bundleware powers are exceeded only by those of scanner and camera manufacturers, to produce horribly nonstandard custom UI elements and "helper" programs to iron out the trouble. Extra credit will, of course, be granted for clumsy partial shell replacements that(while they run at all times and somehow manage to slow everything down) will just dump you back into straight Windows for anything more complex than taking publicity shots.
That should make the greasy fingerprints and nasty case of aching gorilla arm entirely worthwhile.
of course we all know that the true touch screen desktop environment was invented in the late 23rd century,
AKA: A solution in search of a problem.
Having used touch screens for a variety of applications, I'm having a hard time envisioning it's use in a home environment. We're all used to the precision offered by a mouse, and no one wants a touch screen TV.
It would take a radically new appliance to thrust touch technology in to the lime light.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Yeah thats right. It takes very little energy to use a mouse. Very small hand gestures can make big things happen on the screen. Imagine how tired your arm would get if you had to touch the screen all day to make anything happen. Even if the screen was closer to you, possibly lying flat on the desk, it would still be harder.
Yeah no.
Touch is great for fairly narrow types of usage. Industrial machine interfaces for one. I'd like to see OSs integrate some touch functionailty, or at least make it possible to set the thing up to be touch friendly, just to get the improvements for those narrow uses. As it is HMI packages usually look and work like cobbled together shit and you end up having to keep a keyboard in a desk drawer somewhere even if you don't want one. Or even if you manage to put together a truly touch only HMI you still need a keyboard to deal with the inevitable OS crash, since most HMI packages are Windows only.
But yeah, for general computing, desktop touch is a novelty.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
What can't you do with touch? Just use it exactly as you would use a mouse. Make your widgets bigger and more pudgy-finger-friendly and you're good to go.
I see X as able to support all sorts of input devices... touch screen support should be standard..
We should get touch features in common apps, they should be done in a way that makes the experience superior to anything Windows can muster.
Hey, if that ever happens, it could be the year of the Linux desktop :)
Really? You posted that why? Shouldn't you be busy telling everyone at the planetarium that the solar system model on display isn't the real solar system? Or telling giraffes their tall? Or turtle's that they're small? Could you maybe spend your time more productively telling Sisyphus he'll never finish?
We have been learning this lesson for years now. Does anyone recall the long list of features that never made it into Vista and what a useless pile Vista ended up as?
Let's just agree that it doesn't exist until Microsoft actually releases it -- until then, everything Microsoft says should be taken with a grain of vaporware salt.
I am at a loss to understand why you didn't just right C# instead of C-pound. Considering that the # symbol is also known as sharp, hash, pound and "number". Also...I seem to recognise pound with £. I haven't heard of C£..Might be a good language to create just for the sake of confusion ;)
signature is pants
Apple is keeping quiet on whether ornot it will launch a touch-screen tablet computer this year, but Windows pc makers are moving right ahead. several laptop makers are planning to make touchscreen machines, according to Computerworld.
new zealand optical touch vendor, NextWindow, is supplying at least some of the touchscreens. they already supply HP TouchSmart line, and Dell's Studio One. Nextwindow's CEO says they will be available for windows 7's october release.
Shoddy MS Copy: C-pound
It's C Sharp.
For the kind of apps touting touch technology, the same can often be done with a well-placed mouse click combined with one or more modifiers keys (e.g. Ctrl, Alt, Shift) without getting the screen dirty! Touch technology has found its place in small devices (e.g. iPhone, Palm Pre) because it's a more useful interface than the small keyboard, and the technology has found its place in large devices (e.g. Surface) where there are new features to be implemented on a flat table-top surface. But for the desktop or laptop computer ... there's really no need for multi-touch technology. It's cool but coolness fades quickly if there's no usefulness to it.
Its a lot less of an effort to use a mouse than it is to use a touchscreen. The hardware just isn't there yet also, screens smudge and are inaccurate or suffer from slow speed.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'm sorry--it must be hard for you to work at Microsoft. Maybe when the economy gets better you can get a job someplace less evil.
I know Microsoft dosn't want quick conversions to multitouch applications. They just won't work 'right'. Surface is great for public computers, where you want usage locked down anyway, such as hotels, casinos, waiting areas, transportation terminals... the single flat surface is pretty easy to sterilize and clean compared to a keyboard.
When making a Surface application nothing can be modal, and everything can happen at once... drag and drop ten different items to/from ten different sources and destinations at the same time for example.
My biggest disappointment when working on Surface was the annoucment of the 'Surface Business Desk"... turns out it was just a particular set of contact information for businesses that wanted to use Surface to call.
If I were designing it, a multitouch workstation wouldn't replace the monitor, it would replace the keyboard and mouse, and still have the monitor... I have more ideas, but I'd have to see about patenting them before disclosing =)
What is this "based on" nonsense? Wouldn't that make it the original?
And I hate to break it to you, pal, the iPod is far from an original nor was Netscape the first ewb browser.
Why don't you go around calling Safari a shoddy clone? How about Linux? Or what about OpenOffice?
without them, why would I need it? for that matter, where's Windows 7 for high-res cameras, projectors, and frosted glass? Until that appears... I mean, I want it to :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"I am at a loss to understand why you didn't just right C# instead of C-pound."
It's called a 'dis'.
Everyone knows that no new technology can succeed without the endorsement of the pr0n industry.
You have one upright screen and one screen laid flat. All touch interaction happens on the bottom screen. This is the model of the Wacom Cintiq pen displays and the Nintendo DS video game system.
The Zune is based on the iPod, clearly. However, you're right. The iPod was a 20-year-later elaboration of the Sony Walkman. That's just the point. Apple came up with a great innovation in the iPod. I understand there were other devices with pieces of the idea but--obviously--they didn't take off and so we don't talk about their iTunes store or iPhone app store.
Its a lot less of an effort to use a mouse than it is to use a touchscreen.
Sign your name with a stylus on a touch screen. Now try to do the same thing with a mouse. You can see why some graphic artists like tablets.
Make something that people want to touch, virtual boobs? Virtual Boobs 7! What a money maker!
A tablet with multi touch would be the best platform for making music ever.
Fuck. I guess if it's not from your iGod it's just not an innovative. That's your problem.
I'm sick of third rate trolls like you. If the Zune is based off the iPod than the iPod is based on the Archos Jukebox. And the idea of an apps store is no different than what many mobile publishers have done for years except that Apple wants to ensure it has 100% control over it like they try to do with anything else. If MS had come out with this you'd be bashing them instead of praising them. Take the blinders off, fucktard.
Otherwise known as C-octothorpe.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Its a lot less of an effort to use a mouse than it is to use a touchscreen.
I think that depends very much where the touch is. For example, the touchpad on my laptop takes very little effort to use.
On the other hand, I absolutely cannot play FPS reasonably on the thing, so maybe you're right.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I like my mouse. I can get from one side of the screen to the other in any direction without moving my mouse more than an inch. With touchscreen I'd actually have to move my whole arm around.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I use handheld computers on a regular basis at work. When I switch back to using a laptop after spending some time using a touchscreen device, I naturally want to touch the screen to move windows, select items from the taskbar, etc. It's silly that the functionality is missing. There's no need for this to replace the mouse. Touch-display and mouse input should complement each other.
When Java adds something as simple as anonymous functions, I'll concede your point.
And no, I'm not an MS fan. I like Ruby. But I think you're crazy if you don't at least see how a lambda closure -- especially a dirt simple lambda closure, in a tiny bit of syntax instead of a class and a half -- is not at all like Java.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I coded to Microsoft technologies for years until I got sick of that ecosystem. Like it or not, the iPod was an advance. Prior to that, though we had been passing mp3s around for years, there was no official way to buy music legally--and the iPod really made that happen. Did you hear that there will not be a Zune app store--because the Zune is good for nothing better than FM radio. The iPod is iconic. Microsoft and their technologies are for the hausfrau.
Apple creates new products and new demand for them simultaneously through secrecy and good marketing. And I imagine there are many people at Apple working their asses off to try to find a way to do desktop multitouch. Not saying they will, but I wouldn't write off Apple.
The iPod was a 20-year-later elaboration of the Sony Walkman.
*facepalm*
You know, there used to be this thing called an mp3 player, and later a portable music player. They're still around, but as soon as the iPod got popular, these other things like the Rio and the Nomad were suddenly seen as "iPod clones", even when they predated the iPod.
The innovation of the iPod was making it simple enough for everyone to use, not inventing the thing itself. The innovation of the Walkman was making it portable in the first place.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My parents have the terrible habit of pointing at pictures and such on the computer by actually touching the monitor. Within a couple days their monitors look absolutely terrible, smudges/finger prints just all over. I cannot imagine how touch screens would ever be desirable outside of like video poker or entering the PIN for my debit card at the checkout.
Funny, over the past decade, I watched tons of changes happening to Java. Anything that is wanted by the community will likely find its way in. You see, the Java world runs like a Democracy. People don't like Swing and eventually there's SWT. People don't care for bare JSP so Craig McClanahan wrote Struts. EJB came along and a lot of people disliked Entity Beans and so Gavin King developed Hibernate. Same goes with Spring and a raft of other Java-centric technologies.
In the MS world, you're just plain stuck.
Maybe if touch could be used with remote gloves like in that movie Johnny Mnemonic so it is possible to sit /stand well away from display and still manipulate your desktop.
With remotes like Wii has , that should not be far fetched .
Once again Microsoft shows how they care more about the face of the OS then the guts, it's still a horribly broken OS with lack of file system support and lack of stability / memory management. In the mean time I'll just be sitting in my nice safe Linux install not having to worry about a new UI that will take 7 months to develop and 7 years of patches / updates to make it work.
Even more grubby fingerprints all over the monitor.
Use the wrong gesture ..... and instead of Windows giving you a BSOD, you get the Middle Finger!
Except if you knew anything about it, you would know that they use the sharp character whenever possible and it's based on C++, not coffee beans. Nice high horse, choosing Java. What brilliant programming language are you going to support next, Flash?
Of course the desktop monitor is the wrong place to use a touchscreen. The tablet PC would be far more appropriate, and I hope Win7 gets touch, pen, and handwriting support right. As a software developer diagnosed with carpal tunnel a few years ago, I've been waiting for a convertible tablet that makes full use of the interface's potential.
Bet you'd have rockin' shoulders though, from holding your arms up all day.
Question everything
Anything that is wanted by the community will likely find its way in.
Unless the community gets bored and moves on to languages like Scala, Clojure, Ruby, etc, which already have what they want.
You see, the Java world runs like a Democracy. People don't like Swing and eventually there's SWT.
And this is different than anything except Delphi, how?
In the MS world, you're just plain stuck.
...until you realize there's Mono.
Also, half the things you mentioned (Swing, SWT, JSP, Struts, EJB, Hibernate...) are just frameworks. Just because .NET comes from Microsoft and ASP comes from Microsoft doesn't mean you can't write web services in .NET without ASP -- or without IIS, for that matter.
But again -- anonymous fucking functions. Javascript has it. Lisp has it. Ruby has it. Perl has it. C# has it. Smalltalk has it. Hell, even C has it -- this is not exactly a new idea.
Java can sort of kludge it together with anonymous classes. And it looks absolutely nothing like it does in C# -- even Javascript manages to make it look better than Java.
Seriously, show me the Java equivalent to:
Or maybe:
Contrived examples? Sure. But I'm sorry, your "language that looks 99% the same as Java" actually looks nothing like Java, unless you claim JavaScript "looks 99% the same as Java", in which case:
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
As I've said before, if you can touchify an OS, it's great. I use a very specific version of Windows XP on the lighting console I use. The dual touch screens take the place of the mouse (there's a trackball built in but only used really when a touch screen has issues) and of course tons of hard buttons and knobs etc. By combining the 2, touchscreens and keyboards (hard buttons) you can get everything done so fast you wouldn't believe. I don't think you can have only one or the other and go as fast as having both. That being said, it's built so the touch screens are at the right angle (and height, but that's up to you) and distance from the hard buttons, to make everything easier - you don't end up moving your hands too much. Even hours of using touch screens don't make you too fatigued.
Parent deserves mod points. The keyboard came first, after all. It took me some time to get used to the idea of a mouse, but today, they coexist on the very same computer. Imagine that, huh?
So, go ahead, put the touch stuff up there. There are times when a stylus or a finger can do something that I will NEVER accomplish with that stupid mouse. Just don't kill my mouse off. I hate the little bastid, but I can't get along without him!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
there was no official way to buy music legal
Except of course, buying the physical CD and ripping it.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
If the iPod were just a flash drive for carrying mp3 songs, it would not have been 1% as popular.
It was the beauty of the device, physically. (So many others looked like hell).
It was the seamless integration with the iTunes store. Not rocket science.
It was the marketing whiz that goes into all Apple products along with obviously superior design.
It was all the things I'm named and the synergistic combination of those things caused Record Labels to agree to license their music.
Microsoft was capable intellectually of making those pieces but--my original point--they lack the initiative to take the risk of being a market leader in anything! Their reluctance to lead in touch is the sine qua non example.
As a graphic artist who uses a tablet, I can say with confidence that a mouse is far, far, far, far, far easier to use than a touch screen monitor.
Point one: a mouse (like a tablet) lies flat on my desk, requiring zero upper arm/shoulder exertion. I can spend eight hours using a tablet no problem--imagine holding your arm straight out for eight hours. Or imagine having to hunch over a monitor mounted flat on your desk--you'd destroy your neck and back within a week.
Point 2: I can move my cursor from one side of the screen to the other by moving my mouse about 1.5 inches. Tablets, while larger than mouse pads, are almost always much smaller than monitors. Most graphic artists use 8x5 or smaller tablets. My monitor is 16x22. That's a lot more space.
Point 3: a mouse cursor (or tablet stylus) is much more precise than a finger on a touch screen. With my mouse, I can hit a single pixel, no problem. With my stylus, I can get within 2-3 pixels, no problem. With my finger? I would guess 10 pixel accuracy would be hard...and 20-30 would be more realistic.
Sign your name with a stylus on a touch screen.
I do that all the time after using a credit card at Walmart and everytime I'm sure they are thinking that another drunkard must have entered their store just based on what my signature looks like.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Have you compared the two languages? Java does not look that much like C++ or C. C-pound is a total obvious copy of Java both in syntax and in most of its features. C-pound is Microsoft's Me-too language.
I assume that what the author's comment about Apple "merely dabbling" in touch interfaces was in reference to desktops only? Apple runs circles around Microsoft when it comes to successful touch interfaces built onto their OS's back end; look at the iPhone. Microsoft's own Windows Mobile platform makes almost no effort whatsoever by comparison.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
You certainly can find some niblet that C-pound has implemented such as you mentioned. But it remains just logic. The vast number of disadvantages of having to live in the MS ecosystem far outweigh the alleged advantages of having some obscure feature. It sounds like in the next breath you'll be telling me that "Gandalf has many powers..."
Lazy bloody Americans.
I am not a Windows user, so I can't comment on Gruman's take on Windows 7, but he seems to be missing a lot about the Mac. Ever since the iPhone and the advent of CocoaTouch, Apple has been migrating touch elements into the desktop Cocoa framework and the laptop trackpad hardware. Today's MacBooks have trackpads that are, essentially, as sensitive as the iPhone. Two-finger scrolling has been joined by other gestures, most recently four-finger strokes to invoke Expose and the like. Application in Cocoa can (and many do) take advantage of two finger "spread" and "squeeze" gestures to zoom in and out, or "twist" gestures to rotate.
Gruman identifies the chicken and egg problem correctly enough, but misses the fact that Apple has a great advantage in the way Cocoa is architected. Many of these features can be implemented by Apple in such a way that Cocoa apps inherit these behaviors "for free." At this point the Mac OS is quite "touchy" and this drives some of the tablet rumors we hear. There is very little to prevent Apple from making the Mac screen itself an input device with gestures that many (if not most) Mac apps would have no trouble interpreting.
The other advantage for Apple in all this is CocoaTouch itself. Apple has a touch interface already widely deployed and is on its third generation of the framework that drives it. The iPhone/iPodTouch has many more users than MS Surface and Apple is learning from every one of them. Just because a casual user of the Mac OS does not get confronted by a host of touch options does not mean the potential is not present, after all, this is the company that ships a five button mouse configured to act like a one button mouse!
Because all I want to do is smudge up my already smudgy screen.
Reading the previous comments you've posted here, I'm having a hard time deciding whether you're a troll, an unfortunately misinformed individual, or a complete and total dumbass. Can you please tell me which?
I just love the author's statements about the"new" touch gestures:
it adds a unique two-finger gesture for opening a contextual menu (hold one finger on the object and tap a second finger near it)
This one sounds exactly like what I used to do on an old rear-projection SMART Board system, and as such is certainly not unique to Windows 7.
Windows 7's new two-finger swipe gesture for horizontal scrolling
And this two-finger scrolling gesture also functioned on that old system (which worked on Windows 98). It was a vertical scrolling gesture, not horizontal, but that's a very minor difference.
- James
Seriously, show me the Java equivalent to:
Or maybe:
Try:
Runnable foo = new Runnable() { // do some stuff
public void run() {
}
}
setInterval(foo, 1000);
Happy to help you with any more Java questions!
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
I said the exact same thing when mice were taking over from keyboards. You have to take one of your hands off the keyboard to use it- terrible ergonomics if you are typing.
Of course the mouse still became mainstream in the end though, even in word processing programs, as it is simply far more intuitive for newcomers regardless of ergonomics or speed at which you can acomplish a task.
I suspect the same will eventually be true of the touchscreen.
There is a world of difference between my Lenovo X60 Tablet with WACOM pen and screen and badly abused credit system at Walmart. Seriously, a good tablet will give you pressure sensitivity (detectable by inkscape and GIMP) and allow you to create very nice drawings. There is no way you can make a decent signature on some of those credit card pads even if you took the whole day to do it.
A multitouch system isn't apples to apples with a typical desktop. A single solid state multitouch screen with an onscreen keyboard is perfect for reading, for the following reasons.
1)Surfing the web and reading articles requires very little user input, far less than Office work or gaming.
2)Touchscreen-compatible gloves keep the screen clean and pretty
3)Intuitive interfaces that work as intended are fun to use
The third point is what will make Apple's super-iphone sell like crack at Kanye West's houseparties. Given the option between a traditional laptop for surfing the web, and a Star Trek style multitouch tablet, which do you think is more fun to use? It doesn't matter if it takes ten times longer to do a task, a fun interface wins over one that is only efficient.
In many ways, the hype around touch has came and went. The lightpen is from the 50s and has been common since the 80s (at least common enough for the layperson to have seen one or used one before). The touchscreen is from the 70s and has been mainstream since the 80s (everyone has had to use one before).
I think the revolution is not in users getting to use touch interfaces, but in software developers to wrangle the interfaces and APIs to make it work in general purpose heterogeneous computing environments (that is, outside of embedded systems and in multi-vendor, multi- application graphical environments)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I recently modded the Acer Aspire One with an eGalax touchscreen. initially, windows 7 recognized it, but for the life of me, i could not get it to properly calibrate without installing some beta win7 drivers provided on the manufacturer's site. now it works perfectly, but windows 7 doesn't recognize it as a touch screen anymore? meaning, i don't get any of the win7 features like gestures and the like. just standard touchscreen support. hopefully, this will be improved by the time win7 is officially released, but it until that time comes, eGalax touchscreen users seem to be screwed. keep in mind, i'm not looking for multi-touch support, i wasn't expecting it on what is a relatively cheap mod. but not recognized at all as anything more than a generic input device? as i said, the eGalax touchscreen as a touchscreen works flawlessly in win7, but not much more.
30 years ago could had been argumented something pretty similar regarding why to use mouse if required too little energy to use a keyboard. Taking out your hands out of the keyboard to do something around? No way.
Is another input device, with its own strong areas and weak ones, like mouse. Is not only touch, but also multitouch what makes them worth ( and that kind of input is not so trivial with mouse or keyboard ).
Thou not the touchscreen, but a multitouch fingerpad on your desk might be usefull I think for many of us.
Yeah thats right. It takes very little energy to use a mouse.
I believe that when the GP said "standard interface" he was referring primarily to the keyboard and not the mouse. Many skilled computer users prefer to use the keyboard (preferably an advanced keyboard with lots of programmable macro keys) rather than the mouse because expert level keyboard use is both faster and more efficient in many cases.
This would be a perfect thing for the Haiku people to build into their BeOS alpha.
I was shopping for projectors since I wanted to make a touch enabled tabletop - I've seen similar things done by art & tech teams on the net in the past. Haiku would be awesome for its response, quality of media playback, and speed of development I imagine.
And, finally the device Jean Louis was trying to get BeOS into! I bet you could sell touch enabled Haiku to a manufacturer for use in their surface-style desktop / projector / camera combo or to distribute as an open source project.
Yes could be done in Linux with less flair I imagine too..
If the iPod were just a flash drive for carrying mp3 songs,
It pretty much was. Especially now.
It was the beauty of the device, physically.
Which is not innovation.
It was the seamless integration with the iTunes store. Not rocket science.
Indeed, not rocket science. Also, I doubt very much that this was what sold it -- was the iTunes store even available at launch?
No, it was seamless integration with iTunes which is, again, not innovation.
It was the marketing whiz that goes into all Apple products
Which isn't innovation.
along with obviously superior design.
So obvious that many hate it.
You know, from your comments, there's one thing that's obvious -- you're a zealot. You can't imagine that someone could hold a different opinion than you, and somehow not be an idiot.
I don't mind the iPod design, I just don't particularly want to pay a premium for it.
It was all the things I'm named and the synergistic combination of those things
Synergistic -- buzzword bingo much?
caused Record Labels to agree to license their music.
Also not innovation.
they lack the initiative to take the risk of being a market leader in anything!
Except your complaint about Microsoft was that they make "shoddy copies" of competitors' products -- and indeed, your use of the word "original", really suggests you're trying to say that Microsoft doesn't innovate, they let others innovate, then create a shoddy copy.
Except that Apple does the same exact thing, it just usually isn't as shoddy.
To call the iPod a "pioneer" is to ignore the years of other music players that did exactly what it does, just not as well and as seamlessly. And, in case you missed the memo, "The same thing, but better," isn't innovation -- it's just a shiny copy, instead of a shoddy copy.
To call it a clone of the Walkman is a bit of a slap in the face to all the stages in between -- portable CD players, portable MP3 players, portable music players -- hell, if I remember, even Pocket PCs could do this by the time the iPod came out.
It would be a bit like calling the Porsche Boxter a "pioneer", and talking about how really, it borrowed from the horse-drawn carriage. No, dipshit, the Model T was the pioneer, you could even say the Prius is innovative. The Porsche is just well designed and expensive.
Their reluctance to lead in touch
As opposed to, what, Apple's eagerness to lead?
</sarcasm>
I don't disagree, I just think you could've chosen better examples. Java, at least you acknowledged that there's a history there -- but then, C was based on ALGOL -- and C++ was far from the first object-oriented language (Smalltalk, Self) -- and Java was far from the first JIT'd bytecode language (again, see Smalltalk). And Netscape? Try Mosaic.
But hey, at least you mention PARC, so you've got one out of four examples accurate. Good job!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So, aside from all the type garbage, there's actually an entire extra line of cruft.
So I can give up any hope of something like that ruby example. Let me expand it a bit:
That is actually how it works -- the &:odd? does actually create a proc that works like the above.
And yes, I did find that in a quick Google. It's just so crudely bolted on it makes Perl objects look beautiful. (No offense to whoever came up with it -- it does look pretty cool, it's just that the ugliness of Java is leaking through.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My vision for several years is desk-sized screens. Imagine a screen built into a desk with a slight angle -- instead of being vertical. Now the issues of holding your hand up to the display go away. Windows are shuffled like papers on a traditional desk. The only problem is how to distinguish between leaning on the screen and actually trying to put input into the computer.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This method is still cheaper and more complete.
Want to get the rest of the albums/songs from that group you found on iTunes?
Sorry? We don't have the rest of their back catalog. ...back to Amazon or Virgin Megastore.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You certainly can find some niblet that C-pound has implemented
It's C-Sharp, or just C#. You may as well call them M$ and complete the zealotry.
it remains just logic.
Yes, yes, they're all Turing-complete. But I still wouldn't want to write it in Brainfuck, or java. I probably wouldn't mind writing it in C#.
I agree with you about the ecosystem. What you're missing is that the language actually is superior, in a big way. And what makes you a douche is, you still haven't retracted your obviously false statement that C# is "99% identical" to Java.
I get it, I do. I've never used Visual Basic, yet I make fun of it all the time. But when someone tries to teach me something about it, I pay attention.
obscure feature.
So obscure that it's used in things like a SQL API -- so obscure that it's actually the default method of iterating in Ruby?
Seriously, I (and many Rubyists) use this every day. If I used C#, I'd probably still use it every day. It's "obscure" like for loops are -- especially since I use it where I would use for loops, and it makes more sense there. Hell, even jQuery uses this, and it's the first thing I do in every jQuery app I write:
This example looks like it might have some idiomatic equivalent in Java, but it's hardly an "obscure" feature -- and I didn't even mention $.each() or $('.foo').each().
alleged advantages
In other words, you haven't even taken the time to examine the advantages, you just reject anything from em-dollarsign outright. I mean, I do too, when I can, but I at least look at it to see what I'm missing.
It sounds like in the next breath you'll be telling me that "Gandalf has many powers..."
Erm, WTF?
I mean, if I'm going to take that analogy seriously, it sounds like you're trying to say that Gandalf is C#. Does that mean Java is Saruman?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Clicking GUI buttons is a far cry from trying to draw accurately. The demands of a graphic artist are nothing, at all, like the demands of the general computer-using masses.
Of course, a stylus and tablet are also nothing, at all, like a touchscreen.
The millions of office workers out there really do not want to sit for eight hours a day holding their arms in front of them like mummies. I'd say it's likely to be physically impossible for a human to do that for more than a few minutes without the muscles fatiguing to the point where they are nonfunctional.
This touchscreen garbage keeps coming up every so often, usually with a tone of regret, lamenting the fact that the technology hasn't made any real inroads. There's a reason it's made no inroads, and that's a lack of demand. The reason the lack of demand is there is because touchscreens pretty much suck.
You iPhone-loving kids deal with touchscreens in a very specific, limited, handheld system for reasons I can't quite fathom but I will acknowledge that the technology seems to work for that very specific, limited, handheld system. Anything more complex and touchscreens seriously start to bite, and all attempts at integrating them into a normal computing experience have been met with failure because they bite.
Other than the iPhone, which I still don't even like, I've only seen one useful, real-world application where touchscreens were a good idea, and that's POS systems, particularly in restaurants. As a waiter I could wander over to one, tap the screen a few times, and place or modify an order. But those were also severely limited systems, with a user interface designed with a small number of very specific functions arranged into large, easy-to-tap buttons. It didn't need to do anything else, it didn't do anything else, and so the touchscreen worked well for one-handed operation (and no risk of spilling crap all over a keyboard).
Given the totally limited places touchscreens have ever been useful, I have to say WHO CARES if it never really goes anywhere?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Well, if this means anything, Microsoft seems to be really pushing touch:
http://www.fubiz.net/2009/03/17/microsoft-sustainability/
The video also brings up a great design idea that a lot of commenters have been missing: what if you replaced the mouse with a flat surface perpendicular to the screen? What if you had a mouse, keyboard, AND multitouch features all in one device?
Seems like Wacom is planning something just like that for the Desktop. ;)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/15/wacom-bamboo-multitouch-pen-tablet-spotted-by-mr-blurrycam/
I would totally buy one.
I often find myself trying to execute pinch gestures on my mouse pad after working with my MacBook
There's nothing like a screen that even remotely appears to respond to viewer interaction to get children involved. They won't tell you this, of course, but you'll know immediately by the trails of peanut butter, jelly, ketchup and various bodily emissions left as bookmarks in their favorite places on your console. Trust me on this.
http://www.archive.org/details/doa_1949
Try holding your arms up for an extended period of time. It is extremely tiring. Well, that's what you'd be doing with a touch display on a desktop. Very bad ergonomics. To be able to comfortably work at computer for longer periods, you want to have your arms at rest on the desk. Now you could in theory move the monitor down to the desk. Ok but now we have a bad neck/back position. You are going to have to lean over to get a good view of it. You'll have to lean in even farther if you use a standard, cheap, Twisted Nematic LCD panel (which most panels are) as they have poor off axis viewing.
Ergonomics are important, not just a talking point. Depending on your body, poor ergonomics in a repetitive task can lead to RSI of one sort or another. Even if not, it is tiring and thus decreases productivity.
Currently, touch screens have no benefit at all I can see for a desktop environment. They are only really useful when space is limited. Something like an iTouch makes sense because you want more screen space, but you don't want to make the device bigger. Ok, you make the screen touch sensitive. It does not make sense when there's plenty of desk space.
While there are some tasks that call for finer control than a mouse gives, like some art tasks, that is what a tablet is for. A pen interface provides much finer control than a touch interface, and also doesn't suffer from the smudge problems.
Touch can enhance a mouse with gestures, but is not going to be a replacement. Research should focus on eye tracking and brain wave interpretation for mouse replacements. Lazier input = more efficient input
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
"Touch me, I'm 7!"
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
I sit before a beautiful Elo-modified NEC 2090uxi LCD touchscreen monitor, connected to my Vista desktop machine. Vista refuses to use this device as a touch-based input device, instead insisting that it's a mouse.
And, I guess, that's probably true -- its driver does present the touchscreen as a mouse. I'm just frustrated after trying to make it work a couple of nights ago. I mean, sure, it's handy to have a touchscreen (pushing the "Play" button in Winamp with my finger never seems to get old), but it'd be cool to taste a bit of what specialized support the OS has for the interface.
If 7's touchscreen "support" is similar, then I guess it's a nonstarter for me. I'm currently too jaded to bother with plugging the NEC touchscreen into my Windows 7 laptop, but I'm not holding my breath.
(Disclaimer: This comment is anecdotal. It is not argumentative. I don't have an axe to grind. I simply have a geek desire to play with a touchscreen proper, and am disappointed that I've not been able to do so, despite having (AFAICT) all of the hardware and software needed to do so.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Yet most graphic artists I know don't use their tablets all the time. The tablets are good for specialized purposes -- drawing. Touch would be good for some specialized purposes, I'd imagine -- think about the possibilities with 3D modeling, being able to pinch and pull, rotate, whatever. I certainly wouldn't want it everywhere any more than I'd want to use a wacom pad all the time.
http://www.tenjou.net/
I can spend eight hours using a tablet no problem--imagine holding your arm straight out for eight hours. Or imagine having to hunch over a monitor mounted flat on your desk--you'd destroy your neck and back within a week.
Think Cintiq, it's a monitor + tablet combo that you can have in your lap, just like a regular sketchbook. Now what I'd like is a 24-30" Cintiq that also allows me to use my fingers to move objects/windows about (when I put it into "finger mode" that is) while still allowing me to use a stylus (when in "stylus mode").
Or how about a table that can be tilted? We already have those (and they used to be quite popular with artists, architects and others who had to draw things). That's the kind of thing that could also be useful, both for an individual and when working in groups.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Seriously, show me the Java equivalent to:
I've been programming in Java for over 10 years professionally and I've yet to really need your feature request. It could be that it just doesn't fit well in the object-oriented paradigm. For one thing, all functions belong in a class because in Java the Object is king. Objects do/own operations. However something like this might work:
So your setInterval() function is defined to take a java.lang.reflect.Method instance representing the function to call. This is a bit more laborious than your example, but I feel that in anything more than a contrived use-case there is really a better way to design the solution that fits within the Java way.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
How about taking notes and having the computer later "textify" your hand-written outline via OCR? I would love that! Depending on the price, if it had a high-precision touchscreen, I'd ditch paper for most things and move to that! If the interfaces are designed correctly, it should be pretty functional for a bit more than just note-taking even. Think of all the media you could get on your system: education material, movies, songs, etc. That would just be fantastic! I'd use it as I go back to school part-time next semester.
Personally I think that the most powerful UI ever concieved of is keyboard combined with a modal/modkey system that has command chaining. It is just plain faster than anything else for almost every simple computing task. Sure there are a few things where a mouse might give the user and edge, but that probably means that the keyboard commands were gimped. The one place where mice and touchscreens have an advantage is in apps where you need select something on a grid, eg crop a photo or select cells on a spreadsheet, and touch REALLY cant compete there because its percision sucks.
Kudos to the guys who invented the mouse, I suspect that as long as technological civilization exists it will use mice. Also keyboards, but that is sort of... obvious, unless we suddenly switch to mind controlling computers (which seems like a rather bad idea, and would fail for the paint/spreadsheetcells anyway since you can move your muscles faster than you can coherantly think what you want to select).
The millions of office workers out there really do not want to sit for eight hours a day holding their arms in front of them like mummies.
The obvious solution would be to put the touch-screen flat on the desk (and split the keyboard out to either side). Add eye-tracking to switch context/windows, multi-touch on-screen interaction, and built-in windex for a potentially workable solution..?
If you're gonna attack the curmudgeon at least use something real, C-# is the copy Microsoft made of Java when Sun said they had to follow the standard as written and not do their normal E.E.E. trick.
Rather than fixing msjava they took they're marbles home and painted them blue.
Why are they surprised at all the blue ball jokes?
Yeah you know what? no. Yeah.
The angle would have to be big enough that anything you placed on it would fall off... On my desk, right now (in addition to two 24" and one 26" monitor, keyboard, two mice, a mouse-charger, usb hub and a microphone), I've got scratch paper, a stapler, recently paid bills, fluoride tablets, mosquito-repellent, an open package of AA batteries, the pen-holder for a tablet, a ruler, a screwdriver, my wallet, two usb sticks, a box of doggie treats, a box of shelled walnuts (empty), the remote for the tv, my cell phone, a pitcher of lemonade, two bottle caps, a roll of sports tape, and that's just what I can see without lifting anything...)
Of course, you'll have to buy a "screen condom" otherwise your big screen LCD will be useless in short order. And thus, a new side business is born.
Like Macworld and the thousands of vendors selling ipod "condoms". There will be ribbed, fluorescent, and animal print screen condoms.
Come on! He's a curmudgeon of course; it's right there on the tin!
It's not as if Microsoft isn't well known for instilling this attitude in both current and former users.
Playing FPS with a touchscreen, though, would just become a pretty version of whack-a-mole. Want to BOOMHEADSHOT that blue team sniper on the balcony? Just touch his face on the screen. Instant death.
Turning to shoot the guy stabbing you in the back might be an issue, though.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Perfectly agree. I have no idea why people think touchscreens would preclude the use of a mouse and keyboard...
However, I'm not sure why everyone's buying into this capacitive fad... Are people writing and painting with their fingers these days?
The obvious solution would be to put the touch-screen flat on the desk (and split the keyboard out to either side). Add eye-tracking to switch context/windows, multi-touch on-screen interaction, and built-in windex for a potentially workable solution..?
Jeez. The obvious solution would be to use computers the way they are, until some serious shift in the nature of human-computer interaction is required. It works fine the way it is.
Right now I can kick back in my chair, sit upright, slouch around, glance at the screen while talking to people, and so forth. It works fine for basically every computer user with two functional arms, and many with only one. In fact, right now my feet are on my desk as I type this on a laptop, and I can move one hand to control the workstation sitting on the desk if I need to.
Your solution would require us to all sit hunched over our desks, staring straight down so we could see the screen, train ourselves to limit our eye movement, spread our hands on both sides of the desk like we're having trouble holding up our body weight (which, after sitting hunched over like that, we might)...
I fail to see what is wrong with the current desktops and laptops as they stand today.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
There are plenty of posts here poo-pooing touch screens, I think that there are as yet unknown input methods that will come with spatial touch recognition.
There are comparisons to the mouse and sure, shoehorning touch onto an interface designed for mice may seem sub-optimal. But human fingers are incredibly dextrous and common usage may evolve a better way; you wouldn't play a piano with a mouse.
POKE 36879,8
What I want to see is accurate gaze tracking.
I like the idea of making a 'click' noise with your tongue for a simple, intuitive, self-contained interface
A hiccup could be inconvenient.
And don't go near the computer when you've got coughs or sneezes, or need to blow your nose.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
At Wal-Mart? They are probably simply impressed that you know enough of the alphabet to sign your name.
Do they call you "Doctor Glitch?" after using the credit card?
The Walkman was hardly the first portable cassette player. It was just the first one to be marketed to consumers for music playback.
Portable tape recorders existed more than a decade before the Walkman was invented in 1979.
Facepalm, indeed. The innovation of the Walkman was marketing toward people for music and entertainment, and not just for journalism and dictation, not inventing the thing itself.
***********these are MY own personal opinions and not the opinions of my employer, they are mine and mine alone, just like the ones on my blog, http://rongeorge.com/ *****************
I work at MSFT and just happen to work on the Advanced Design Team that designs Natural User Interfaces for several products around the Org. I myself specialize in touch and multi-touch devices and gestural languages. The thing you have to remember, is that Touch, Multi-Touch, and Pen are all already supported in the core of the Windows 7 operating system. This isn't a small feat. No other OS has that today. The bigger fact is that we have had that for over a year now. The API recognizing the difference, and the ability to track so many targets is monumental in the input field. Ask any interaction designer and if they know the history, it will all go back to input devices and drivers "tricking" the OS into thinking it was something different rather than for what it truly is. Silverlight 3 also has this functionality already built in. These are core functions that allow any software developer around the globe to start building multi-touch applications right NOW. Not next year, but right now. The code is there.. build it.
We are by far not "merely dabbling" I think that's ludicrous. Do you have a multi-touch device and is it working right now? Yes. That is not dabbling. There is a lot of great stuff that Microsoft has put out with this release and so many more great things to come. The one thing to remember though, is that as a platform, we have to do things thinking of other developers in mind. I came from the Surface Team before going to ADT and want to clarify something. Surface does respond to touch, but remember that it is a vision based system and WAY ahead of the competition. It has hover, item recognition, and so many other capabilites that other companies can also build on. Once again, it is a platform. Don't confuse them, they are separate devices but both with very rich interactions and uses.
I also see all this about Apple and the iPhone. If you want to give credit where credit is due.... you should all say Wayne Westerman and not Apple. He is the genius that Apple bought and brought over to save their failing tablet and turn it into a phone. His company, Fingerworks, made an incredible product that still has very loyal fans.
I stopped using a mouse 2 years ago, and have never looked back.
PS: If any of you are in Seattle and would like a demonstration of Surface's capabilities along with a Win7 touch demonstration, please drop me a line, contact info is at my blog. I would be happy to show you around campus as long as you write about it here. Thanks for reading.
touch = pictograph system of Mesopotamia
keyboard = Phoenician alphabet
Pictograph systems were superseded by alphabets for the same reason keyboards are more efficient that touch screens.
or whatever they end up being called. Net-Tabs? OOh thought of a better one TabNets.
Basically I've not bought a netbook as I've no real need for one. I have laptops and desktops coming out of my ears - without a need to have something low-powered and smaller than a laptop to carry about, I have no need of one.
What I would like is a tiny tablet. Something that boots quickly and I could use as I dunno, a glorified media center remote. Maybe as prices come down, something you could hang on your fridge door to display your shopping lists and the weather forecast on. For simple tasks touch is the best UI.
I'm sure mini-tablets will come out with the atom/amd in them - but with nobody pushing them, can't see it taking off. My guess is that at some point apple will release their "giant ipod touch thing" - and then every PC manufacturer in the world will immediately start knocking out TabNets.
if only that the accompanying stylus is better. Can someone tell me if full screen handwriting recognition missing from vista that was there in xp tablet is back? Or did Microsoft loose a lawsuit?
of course....and touchscreen phones will never catch on what troll would suggest using touchscreen on desktops anyway? it is supposed to be used on tablets. like notebooks with touchscreen capabilities so you can read books and magazines comfortably. or use tablets as remote controls for media centers. Its more intuitive to use tablet then some remote control with too many buttons.
i see this working wonders with photoshop and similar things, allready seen it been used at bioware, and i wish i had it
myself, would increase workflow a great deal. As for being dead on arrival, thats a taboid headline. It works great, at work we
are getting one of those computers in a touch screen panel machines, all you need to operate it is a power cable. Perfect for having
in the lunch room, terminal, gallery, fun info, maps, wiki, gonna connect it to our arcade machine to choose what game to play.
And i guess there are more things to use it on other than just fun stuff, but thats mainly what we are going to use it for.
I guess no-one thinks touch mobiles are any good at all either, and that was dead on arrival too.
However, I'm not sure why everyone's buying into this capacitive fad... Are people writing and painting with their fingers these days?
Sure. Although by the time they're 4 or 5 they've usually grown out of it.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I fail to see the problem that multitouch solves. Everything we have seen so far has been anything but intuitive. The interface and its setup is what makes a computer easy, not the HID interface. If you want you can make an OS very easy to use with nothing but a keyboard, or like Windows hopelessly random with gui elements and settings being sprinkled all over in no apparant pattern.
Changing to multitouch wont help Windows 7 a bit, what it needs is to be simplified and take away stupid settings and repetitive tasks from the user. More automagic and a lot less "Do you really want this or that?" popups.
HTTP/1.1 400
Many articles and comments about touch have a lack of imagination about how it might be used. Many commentators say "Touch interfaces wouldn't work for me, for my tasks and with my hardware." Please remember that there are many people who use computers differently to you, and there are many different hardware possibilities. Touch will never replace a keyboard and mouse... but keyboards and mice are not the be-all and end-all of computer devices.
MYTH. Touch interfaces mean that there can't be a keyboard.
FACT. At my office, I have a Fingerworks iGesture pad. This is a bit bigger than the largest MacBook touch pads, and it has a cable to plug into a USB port, and it works fine with Windows and Ubuntu. I've used it for the last 5 years. I switched to using it rather than a mouse, because I can use multi-finger gestures to scroll, zoom, navigate backwards and forwards in a web browser etc., and this immediately got rid of the RSI I was beginning to get from the mouse. (Damn scroll wheel.) There is no reason at all why we shouldn't have touch surfaces like this, to complement a keyboard (apart from the fact that Fingerworks was acquired by Apple, and Apple is keeping this lovely tech from the rest of us.)
MYTH. Touch interfaces are no good because you'll get tired pointing at a screen a few feet in front of you.
FACT. Your screen doesn't HAVE to be a few feet in front of you. At home, I use a slate PC most of the time (from Motion Computing), with a pen. I've used it for nearly two years. It's great for reading email or browsing web pages, with the screen in my lap or resting on my knees in bed. When I want to type, I plug it into its keyboard/stand which comes with a nipple-type mouse.
MYTH. Touch interfaces are no good, because most people use their computers for word processing and emailing and programming, and these are best done with a keyboard and mouse.
FACT. For those tasks, keyboard+mouse are great. But there are other tasks too.
Desktop touch screens could work great as a more or less dedicated control device but not as a duel function monitor/mouse alternative. A smaller (maybe 6"x6" or 6"x9" or whatever) touch screen device laying flat beside a traditional keyboard could offer a wonderful configurable control surface that could actually be useful for a variety of games and applications.
-shane
Touch interfaces make more sense for "all-in-one" computers with 20" or larger LCD panels, primarily in multimedia playback and for moving elements on a screen.
Your solution would require us to all sit hunched over our desks, staring straight down so we could see the screen
How did people see the paper they're writing on for the hundreds of years before computers?
Odd. I had a whole collection of legal MP3s prior to the iPod and MP3s were sold legally across the web prior to iTunes. Don't be a fucking liar here on top of your obvious bias too. Not to mention that if I wanted MP3 from iTunes that didn't come until much later in the game as we were stuck with Apple's proprietary format before that.
...that no one has yet mentioned http://www.nuigroup.com/ yet.
Well, it would probably make sense to make touch-enabled interfaces more table-like and less wall-like. That is to say, to make them horizontal.
Someone is definitely looking forward to having a sore neck.
You see, your idea is great, except that for the past couple of million years since Lucy, we've slowly evolved and somewhat adapted to an upright position.
Granted, our level of adaptation isn't optimal yet, given all the typical human disease associated with upright position.
Never the less, they way we are organised, we're better at looking at thing in front of us. Not at looking down.
As an exemple, just ask any university student currently having an exam session :
They stay the whole day in the library and spent this time reading - i.e.: looking *down* on book *laid* on the table.
Neck and back pain result from this. Much more than what's seen in people doing a day job with computers (where they watch a screen in front of them).
Touch screen and other "minority-report"-like hand controlled stuff is really cool in theory. But there is a fundamental problem with all these :
Therefore, biomechanically, we're just not well organised to have the input and output localised at the same level.
(Which one more point telling us that if we were indeed intelligently designed, the design wasn't intelligent in the first place. And probably drunk)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I am a Java developer with 14 years in the business, currently work in Manhattan. I have a thriller novel that is quite close to being published.
The tip of a human finger just doesn't have the same kind of resolution as a mouse (or trackball or any other modern pointing device you care to name, with the exception of the ones that come built into laptops, which are universally horrible, which is why most laptop owners carry a USB mouse around in the laptop bag).
... for these tasks, touchscreen would be no use whatsoever.
Touchscreen works well for special-purpose applications that can be designed totally around a multiple-choice concept, like those greeting card kiosks at the mall, but for a general-purpose desktop, it's just not appropriate. A regular old five dollar mouse is significantly superior.
Apple makes touch work on some of their special devices (notably the iPhone) because they design the interface around it. If you only have twelve buttons on the screen at a time, you only need an effective resolution of one-third of the screen width and one-quarter of its height, which is achievable as long as the user doesn't have the thick callused fingers of a diabetic former factory worker (like, say, my dad).
But if the user were trying to do typical desktop tasks, like word processing for example, they'd be trying to do things like select text, and suddenly now the resolution needs to be fine enough to let the user select an individual word out of a screenful of type. With a mouse this is very easy -- it's designed to point at an individual pixel, so a large construct that takes up multiple pixels in each direction, like a nine-point character, is no problem at all. But it's not so easy with a touchscreen.
Some users also do things that actually push the limits of the resolution of a mouse. Image editing (pixels or spline control points, take your pick), font editing, certain kinds of games,
So even if you did have a touchscreen on your desktop, you'd still need a mouse as well. Whereas, if you have a mouse, you really don't need a touchscreen, because the mouse can do it all.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Touch doesn't make any sense unless you have no room for a mouse or keyboard. We have a touch interface on the computer systems that we put together for our medical device at work. It was originally supposed to make room in the limited spaces that hospitals have for all the devices that they use. Turns out that upon revisiting them for preventive maintenance, they have been using the keyboard and mouse that were provided for the maintenance tech. So, the ease of a touch interface isn't as easy as you would think. Quite frankly, the icons and categories that Windows Vista uses are way too abstract and are not intuitive. Going toward a touch system that would require this kind of interface is destructive and a big step backward. The future plans of our systems are to eliminate the touch screen altogether and make the interface more Windows 'conventional'. Another thing is that the touch screen phones, at least to me, are a pain in the ass. I couldn't even get used to the stupid Ipod style ring on one of the phones I owned. Of course, I don't use a phone like a personal assistant and wouldn't be lost if it were to be misplaced, I keep my life in the real world, not in the electronic world. Just a thought, though... all I really need is XP on a computer, a phone with a contact list and camera, with nothing else, and obviously no touch screen. Sheez, even the intro crap when you turn on/off the phone is really annoying...
for(int i=1;i100;i=i+2)
array[i].dostuff();
I don't see the difference... why bother with num.odd? Is incrementing a counter by 2 instead of 1 complicated? the java way is actually shorter also.
Note : I prefer java (but work in a Windows/C++ shop)
This is a honest question...I have nothing against whichever language, but am I missing some deeper insight with the example you gave?
Its... maybe in the morning I'll have a epiphany and everything will be revealed...
*there should be a less than before the 100 in the loop, but I just noticed it doesn't show in the preview... :)
I would absolutely love to have a multitouch screen for using DAW software.
It would be awesome to be able to manipulate multiple on-screen faders at once, just like a real mixer. The only options right now are to do it one track at a time with the mouse, or buy a pricey control surface.
Then there's the issue of mapping which tracks are controlled by which faders. Motorized faders cost a LOT more, but are much easier to work with as they will automatically set themselves to the correct positions.
A multitouch display makes this easier AND cheaper.
It could be that it just doesn't fit well in the object-oriented paradigm. For one thing, all functions belong in a class because in Java the Object is king.
Yes, in Java, everything's an Object.
Except primitive types, which must be boxed to be objects. And classes, and methods -- those aren't objects, without using that cumbersome reflection API you've noted... All of which are objects in both JavaScript and Ruby, and are trivial to fetch in JavaScript.
Trivial example, using Prototype:
I guess it's just convenience at that point, though.
Oh, and they aren't closures. A contrived example (jQuery this time):
Sorry, I probably could've used a better example -- after all, the click event will probably contain the DOM element that was clicked anyway. But you can see two things here that just aren't as easy in Java:
The outer function lets you create your own control structures, by passing functions as arguments -- think of them as blocks. If there wasn't a foreach loop, you could create one using a for loop. Even where there is a foreach loop, the object defines its behavior -- thus, it's more object-oriented.
And, the inner function has access to any variables visible at its scope. Sure, you could make an anonymous singleton, store those values in there, and define a method. Or maybe an anonymous subclass of something that "onclick" expects. But these seem so hackish when the solution is so simple and intuitive.
I feel that in anything more than a contrived use-case there is really a better way to design the solution that fits within the Java way.
Quite possible, but it's still going to be cumbersome.
Keep in mind, there's nothing stopping me from doing things the Java way in JavaScript or Ruby. But these examples aren't that contrived -- I really do use things like some_range.map{...}.inject{...} -- your basic map/reduce, but trivial enough for a one-liner. So the Javascript/Ruby way looks better than the Java way, though that's a matter of taste.
On the other hand, trying to do the Javascript/Ruby way in Java is going to look ugly.
Oh, and you want <ecode>, I think, though that often seems to kill my indentation.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Bet you'd have rockin' shoulders though, from holding your arms up all day.
Yeah, then that one shoulder would match that one forearm you use so much
I don't see the difference... why bother with num.odd?
Because it's a contrived example. Let's see...
gets grabs a line from stdin. Here, I'm splitting it by any whitespace, then parsing each as an integer. But if I stick with contrived counting examples, maybe:
I think I'm now at the point where you'd have to do something like this in Java (untested, it's been awhile):
I mean, sure, you can do it, but why? Or take map/inject (map/reduce) -- here's an integer parser in one line:
Again, contrived -- I'd probably do '10101.to_i instead, but how would you do it in Java, if you had to parse the number yourself? Oh, and it works for arbitrary bases, too:
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The usefulness of such technology simply isn't there. So why bother with it? I guess it just sounds cool.
Back in the 1980'ties I visited a ship construction bureau at Burmaster & Wain in Copenhagen.. everyone there used HP CRT touch screens. When I've got my Powerbook G4 in 2000 and something I discovered the fun of multitouch...
That's a nice idea, but the problem is that, as the summary says, enabling ubiquitous touch would require some radical changes to our current UIs - anything interactive must become much bigger, toolbars are favored over menus, you lose a mouse button, etc. Most of these would make the mouse-based experience worse in order to enable the touch-based experience. *That's* why no one is doing this. You can't just add it in cheaply, and there's little evidence it's worth a large cost.
The big advantage of a touchscreen is that you don't have to find the cursor/pointer to start manipulating. With a mouse or a trackpad every action you perform has to start where the last action left off. This means a lot of repetitive moving of the cursor/pointer to get from point a to b to c back to a back to b, etc. WIth a touch screen you avoid all of this repetitive input.
For point and click users a touch screen could actually reduce the amount of input activity they have to do by 50% or potentially even more as touch gestures tend to be much more effective than having to click multiple buttons or keys to achieve the same results.
The reality is that very few people are *constantly* interacting with the GUI. More typical is for people to manipulate a window (scroll) then read for 2 minutes, then repeat. On my laptop I could do that while resting my hand on the lower surface, touch the bottom scroll arrow with a finger or my thumb and not think twice about it. It would be no different than resting my finger above a down arrow key. Move a window, resize or minimize... these are very brief actions that occur every hour or so and a lot of people already avoid them with multi-touch input or key combinations.
The question to ask is "What do we do repetitively and frequently with a mouse that would be a burden with a touch screen?"
I honestly can't think of much. There are some accuracy issues with specific GUIs which would not work well with a touch screen if fingers were the only input option (a stylus would solve that) - but otherwise I just can't think of any job related or leisure time activity on a computer that is so repetitive and frequent that it would cause muscle fatigue if a touchscreen were used instead.
If you are referring to typing - well everyone knows that a keyboard is the best interface for that activity, why would a touchscreen device not have a keyboard? We're not talking exclusively about Tablet PCs here... that's just one form factor.
I think all laptops should be touchscreen and all monitors should also be touchscreen. They should both still have keyboards of course and potentially a trackpad or mouse for when you need very accurate input. However I think people would adopt the touch interface for 99% of their activities without breaking a sweat and in fact will work less hard and be less mentally fatigued at the end of the day as they will be able to relax that part of their mind which currently controls the mouse... something not everyone is good at.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Bet you'd have rockin' shoulders though, from holding your arms up all day.
Yeah, then that one shoulder would match that one forearm you use so much
Nah, it would be the other shoulder. It would look really weird, all those guys with the shoulder on one side all muscled up and the forearm on the other, with the rest of the body small and spindly.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Basically having a clamshell screen design with an interferometer that decides which screen is horizontal and which screen is vertical would be an interesting design. The key pad could have feed back and be custumizable. Same with finger mouse area. You could also design custom touch controls for different applications like gaming for example. You eliminate the hardware chicklet keyboard and a hardware mouse and the whole system is more portable. It could also be lighter to carry.
Having said that, the demo touch computer that I walk by on the MS campus in Redmond generally seems to be either blue-screened or at a "operating system not found" prompt. Two of the three times that it was up and I tried it the interface seemed locked. Admittedly it's probably a very old beta release.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
That's because there isn't anything wrong with them.
Personally, I only use the touch feature on my laptops occasionally, and usually just disable the pad. I highly doubt I'll switch my primary input setup until they get the neuro-controlled thought input devices into the mainstream.
For graphics art, I use a touch-stylus... the pad is not touch sensitive, it's the "pen" itself, which provides a much more accurate and precise input. And lets you use it on pretty much any decent surface. And means that you don't have to buy a 2nd display in order to input and view at the same time.
"Oh yeah? Well Linux sucks at things too!"
Wow. How insightful. And it's partially true.
What the fuck happened to Slashdot?
And this is different than anything except Delphi, how?
Hey even in Delphi there are third party packages that people have made to replace the default ones. And of course the whole Indy library for networking.
Bet you'd have rockin' shoulders though, from holding your arms up all day.
Really? Didn't seem to do much for the French.
I assume the point you want to make is that Ruby is far more expressive than most other languages. I agree and would rather use it for most things if not for established projects wanting to stick with languages they're already using (C++, Java, C).
The only real difference with closures in Java and in Ruby is that Ruby gives you a writable version of the parent stack frame, where modifications to variables can occur, whereas Java gives you a read-only version, where you declare stack variables of interest as final so that all living versions of the stack frame remain consistent. It is really a minor inconvenience overall, especially compared to static typing.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
But why? ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
More like gorilla arms.
You'd have to rewrite the constitution, so you also get the right to non-ursidae arms. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Lets see I have a touchscreen in my kitchen, (old 12" ELOtouch, SFF celeron, WIFI) for recipes, shopping lists, and watching my recorded TV/listening to music while in the kitchen. Whole family loves the thing, and it just gets wiped off like the rest of the counter tops. It does have a wireless keyboard with a trackball, but I don't think that has been pulled off the top of the fridge for a long time.
I have a Hitachi slate windows PC in the living room (can't get the fingerprint reader to work in linux), everyone in the family has a profile setup on it, and logs in with a finger swipe. I use the thing for drawing all the time, and find it a really comfortable way to compute. Of course for real text entry or coding work I still have to drag out a standard form factor laptop as using the onscreen keyboard is tedious and not nearly as fast as touch typing. I do have a BT keyboard I could use with it, but standard laptops just have an ergonomic advantage for text entry. My only real complaint about the slate is that it does not respond to finger input. I love the pressure sensitive stylus and it does wonders in Alias Sketchbook, but it would be nice if I could 'smudge' pencil and move the paper around with my fingers... much as I would with a normal drawing pad. On a funny note, I do still 'wipe away' the screen after using the eraser... like there are virtual rubber bbs on my tablet pc.
I've owned all sorts of various touch screen toys (Palm, PPC, TomTom) over the years. One thing I can say for certain is that touch screen technology is starting to finally feel mature.
Finally I just picked up a 'MyTouch 3g' phone. I just absolutely love the Android UI! Simple, fast and for what it is (a social communication device, or a phone with toys) perfectly suitable. So around my home at least the "Touch revolution" started long time ago (the ELO Touchscreen is nearly 10 years old, tablet at least five), and I'm glad the rest of the world is starting to catch on.
~WTF is up with trying to format an okay looking post here... tryed plain text, html (including using tags)... I give up, at least the 'code' option at least picks up the carriage returns.
Personally I buy D-Link over more expensive crap because generally the more expensive crap is crap. Linksys I could almost guarantee would die in a 1 year, and their wireless stuff use to really suck. I understand Cisco has improved the quality of the products, but people are still using custom firmware because of the limitations of the original firmware. I don't have these problems with D-Link.
Belkin products they basically don't support after you've bought them. If they kind of work, that's good enough for them.
I know people that have put D-link bluetooth devices through the wash a few times and survived. I've had the misfortune of dropping a powered on D-link router into a vat of concentrated detergent and after it still worked. I haven't had one of my D-Link devices die on me yet. Even here at work we have had a few Cisco and other network equipment die, but the D-Links keep ticking away.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Sure the artist who created the cover art of an issue of "The New Yorker" on an iPhone must be about 3 since he hasn't grown out of it. Type "new yorker cover iphone" into Google if you want to see a link to the jejune effort.
Instead of a touch screen why don't they come up with a input device similar to the macbook trackpad, this will get rid of the mouse and the user has almost the experience of using a touch screen.
The only real difference with closures in Java and in Ruby is that Ruby gives you a writable version of the parent stack frame, where modifications to variables can occur, whereas Java gives you a read-only version, where you declare stack variables of interest as final so that all living versions of the stack frame remain consistent.
I wasn't aware that stack variables of interest were available at all.
But yes, having access to the stack is pretty much the definition of a closure, as I understand it.
minor inconvenience overall, especially compared to static typing.
It's largely a result of static typing that this construct is so verbose in the first place, and it's largely the verbosity that bothers me, so I agree.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Same hub-bub that rolled around about how great voice recognition was going to be a few years ago. Just like voice recognition, multi-touch WILL be adopted, and just like in voice recognition, in limited, specialized devices or applications.
It will find less purchase as a general purpose controlling device.
I have to say I'm kind of surprised at the amount of "I don't want to move my finger/hand/arm across my desktop monitor" comments on here. If there was "functioning" touchscreen software does anybody really think it would be on a standard desktop screen? Been to a casino lately? Seen the number of horizontal machines? Lots and lots of them? Personally I think they suck and won't use them, but they are always crowded. Fat lazy people with 3 chins like slouching over and looking down. If/when touchscreen software becomes ubiquitous, all average sized desktop monitors will be installed on swivel arms for optimal positioning back and forth between touch and mouse/keyboard usage. Think a cross between an airplane tray and that stupid futuristic iMac.
It may surprise you to hear that touch technology has been around for decades. The general idea is that precise controls like keyboards and mice are just too darn hard to use. They've been installed on POS systems, but ultimately replaced when they realized how much slower it made things. Touch saw a great renaissance in the last few years from companies like Mitsubishi, Northrop and Perceptive Pixel, but they have all realized that they were a gimmick and changed gears. HP tries to bring it to the desktop with Google and Nui, but nobody cares. iPhone users slowly start to wake up to the fact that the only reason for the touch is to afford a large screen.
Here's a quick experiment you can do at home. Try using one arm to move your mouse, and the other to point at the screen every time you use the mouse. I give you 45 seconds before the fatigue cripples you. So touch is tiring, imprecise, and gimmicky. Sign me up
The main problem is that Windows is mostly used to run legacy software. Just look at your typical Windows system and look at the fonts used in the applications. It's not rare to find the "System" font in them. That font has been phased out with Windows NT4 and Windows 95, yet many applications still haven't been updated. Now just look at the tab-order in those applications. Mostly the cursor is just jumping around wildly.
In real life Windows nobody cares about user interfaces and even if programmers cared, it's to late as most software has already been written for that plattform. Even if all programmers would decide on a new idea, it would still take several years for it to arrive at the average user.
Few apps cry out for a touch UI, so Microsoft and Apple can continue to get away with merely dabbling with touch as an occasional mouse-based substitute.
On a sufficiently small laptop (like my EeePC), I'd prefer a touch screen over a touchpad anytime. Please, please, please, please just make it standard on machines like that.
We had touch screens in the 1980's and gave up on them. Why? Use a touch screen for an hour and your arm falls off. The wonderful thing about the mouse is that you can rest your forearm on the table, you can rest your fingers on the mouse, and so take the weight off of your upper arm muscles. Why doesn't anyone today remember this? We gave up on touch screens twenty-five years ago. Jeesh.
There's no way that touch is going to work 'automatically'. App interfaces have to be designed with touch in mind. The average button in a desktop app is too small to work with touch, and you can't just 'make all the buttons bigger' without seriously messing up layouts and causing usability issues.
I don't think we need all apps to work with touch out of the box - we should modify the ones that need to be modified and re-think them to work right with the new interface mechanism. What microsoft *should* do is provide a suite of applications based around multitouch. IE, picture viewers, web browser, email, solitaire/minesweeper, media player, picture viewer, mapping, and maybe a paint or music app. Even a few esssentail apps like these would help show that multitouch is cool and help justify spending the extra bucks on a capacitive screen.
I agree. Right now we are moving to two different interfaces -- touch for handheld devices, and mouse/keyboard for desktop devices. As previous posters have pointed out, this can be irritating when moving from one to another.
As to the number of posters who comment that having your arm in front of you for hours on end is unworkable:
With the possible exception of artists and possibly gamers, most computer users use a mouse intermittently. It's a case of click once to position a cursor, then type for several minutes. Click once. Type for a while. Click once, read for a while.
The two technologies complement each other.
Other places I can see this having an advantage:
1. Inventory applications. I would love to have a touch screen connected by blue tooth to my camera for doing inventory at my tree farm.
2. Harsh environments. In addition to the industrial process control, I can see a big advantage to a solid slab for field biologists, anyone on a boat.
3. Collaboration. Being able to touch something over someone's shoulder in a team or teaching situation has lots of merit.
4. Markup/editing. As a former teacher I would love to have a software/hardware combination that was as easy to use as a red pencil for correcting stuff.
5. Math. ALL math right now is a real pain to enter from a keyboard. The closest to a reasonable keyboard interface I've found was in FrameMaker's equation editor. LaTeX can come close for speed, but what you type is very distant from what you get. Having a touch screen with handwriting recognition for math would be a huge win.
Sure these are specialized applications. But it is the OS's chore to present this to the developers. Otherwise everyone has to re-invent the wheel, and every GUI is different..
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
With a mouse or a trackpad every action you perform has to start where the last action left off.
Touch screens are no different. Here's why:
This means a lot of repetitive moving of the cursor/pointer to get from point a to b to c back to a back to b, etc.
And touch screens have a lot of repetitive moving of the finger to get from point a to b to c back to a back to b, etc., unless you're talking about hitting one part of the screen with a thumb and another with a pinky like a pianist.
The question to ask is "What do we do repetitively and frequently with a mouse that would be a burden with a touch screen?"
One is anything that ordinarily involves the "hover" operation, such as looking up a button's tooltip or a web page element's title= attribute. Mouse has hover; touch screen does not.
I think all laptops should be touchscreen
Touching a laptop's screen would raise the bottom half.
and all monitors should also be touchscreen.
Desktop monitors would need to have a much bigger tilt range than they have now. Otherwise, gorilla arm.
Oh I agree. Nothing can beat a drawing tablet and a mouse will never be able to. With the pressure sensitivity and the ability to basically hold the stylus just like a regular writing utensil it is essentially like using a paper tablet although it still takes training to get used to the sensitivity. What makes the store drawing pads even worse is that they can be so scratched up (ran into this a week ago at the local Lowe's) you can't tell what you are doing and that is in addition to the "ink" not appearing even close to where you are supposedly touching the pad. Makes me wonder if they have to be re-calibrated after a while of frequent use.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Only on slashdot can you see a post that ends with youre a moron" get +5 insightful.
Well, I guess you did put your tactless insult in a bullet list. +1 for you!