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Apple, the iPhone is great, but multi-touch belongs in Macs

I’ve come across the belief recently that because Apple is currently focusing on putting multi-touch in handheld devices like the iPhone and the iPod Touch, that small handheld devices is where multi-touch technology is best suited. I’ve seen this general comment made in a few different places and it kind of annoys me. I like writing about this topic as I am incredibly excited by this technology’s ultimate potential and want to try and figure out where it is headed.

The iPhone barely takes advantage of it

As much of a leap as the iPhone’s software represents over other crappy cellphone operating systems, the implementation of multi-touch technology itself is little more than a marketing bullet-point right now. The iPhone barely takes advantage of multi-touch. You have the pinch feature that is used when expanding things like photos, and thats about it. And on such a tiny device, truthfully there’s not enough room to easily use more than 2 fingers even if you wanted to.

I previously wrote some speculation that one of Leopard’s top-secret features was going to be multi-touch. I though that Resolution Independence and Core Animation pointed the way to this for a few different reasons. While I’m disappointed that the future isn’t yet here, I’d be extremely disappointed if this wasn’t introduced in some of Apple’s Macs within a couple of years.

But if you had a multi-touch device with a larger screen, not only would you be able to use many fingers and even both hands at the same time, you could even use the hands of multiple people, enabling some fantastic collaborative ideas such as those found in some of Jeff Han’s famous videos, especially his newer ones.

All about the gestures

A large screen is important because multi-touch is going enable the use of thousands of possible gestures. A mouse just gives you one command with which to communicate with a computer, “click”. Multi-touch could give you thousands of possibilities to even more quickly work and play. You could even program the computer to execute custom commands via gestures that you yourself create.

For more fascinating speculation on future interface ideas, pointing-devices like the Wii-mote, and gestures, see Recognizing gestures: Interface design beyond point-and-click.

As just one example of a potential useful gesture requiring both hands, cup one hand down on the desk in front of you, and pretend to use your other hand to flick files into your cupped hand. Boom, you’ve just created a smart folder without having to select an option in any menu. Or set down one hand as a pivot-point and use your other hand to spin around a 3d model you’re designing. The possibilities to create natural shortcuts for work are numerous.

More and more Apple patents regarding multi-touch have been emerging in recent years and months. The news of a patent regarding a type of “gesture dictionary” is particularly interesting as that is ultimately one end-user feature you’d need to allow people to take full advantage of standard and ultimately custom gestures. To follow Apple patent news without having to dig through the horrendously unusable US Patent Office system, one great resource is Hrmpf.

Industrial Design

There has been some interesting speculation regarding what this multi-touch future is going to look like. Here’s one exceptionally well done portfolio piece created by Jacob Ross with the surprisingly feature-rich and free Blender 3d software, which I use on occassion.

The video is fantastic, but in my opinion this idea is wrong. A multi-touch desktop can’t be arranged vertically like a traditional monitor or your hand will get tired very quickly. It can’t always be arranged flat because depending on the position you want to sit in your neck will get tired. But an adjustable monitor somewhere in the 15 - 45 degree angle range seems perfect for somebody to use even for extended periods. Desktop versions will be adjustable much as an artist’s drafting table is. Perhaps some versions will double as desktops and portables by being able to be removed from a base. This next image is more along the lines of what I see a multi-touch desktop looking like.

Side-view of a general possibility for a multi-touch iMac.

Also, here’s a quick sketch I made of a possible multi-touch notebook. Where the keys and trackpad currently are located on MacBooks, instead you can have a giant multi-touch display that can double as a keyboard, trackpad, and literally any other type of input device you’d want to have.

Very quick drawing, but hopefully illustrates the general concept.

Software

There have been fewer software mockups designed for multi-touch than hardware mockups but there is another interesting short demo also created by the aforementioned Jacob Ross that looks pretty interesting. Personally though, I think people like Jakob Nielsen make some pretty great arguments regarding the usability problems of 3d interfaces, so it won’t be exactly like the interface suggested in Ross’s demo.

I think what is really beautiful about multi-touch is that more and more of the traditional computer interface is going to disappear. Instead of recreating existing interfaces on a multi-touch screen, a really great multi-touch implentation is going to go in the completely opposite direction. It will remove as much of the existing interface as possible and just let the data be the focus.

There was great speculation a while back by Blackfriars’ Marketing that one of the big secrets of Leopard was going to be the death of interface windows. While that doesn’t seem to yet be coming to pass, it is an interesting concept to think about when thinking about multi-touch.

I intend to examine those and a few other multi-touch interface ideas in a future feature. Some speculate that multi-touch won’t work for tasks like typing and other traditional interfaces but I think smart design can solve many of those problems.

Conclusion

I still think this is coming in the not too distant future, though my thought that it would be coming with Leopard seemed a bit too hopeful. Getting the technology to work intuitively is a very tough software problem to solve and would take quite a long time to make it work smoothly. Steve Jobs has dismissed this as a research project for now, but he’s known to throw the occasional curve-ball. This is a very exciting time to be alive. I can’t wait till I have my very own multi-touch Mac.

Posted on September 17th, 2007 by Chris Papadopoulos.

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Comments

1. Chris Papadopoulos @ Sep 19

   Thanks for the mention Touch Smarter.

   That site looks like it has a lot of great information on touch-screen technology which I find fascinating.

   Right now we have multi-touch on some smaller devices but I hope eventually it comes to bigger and bigger devices so we can take full advantage of it in all kinds of fields like painting, music, gaming, and even general productivity.

   

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