Touch Computing
One of my first posts on this blog discussed Windows Vista vs. 7, and multitouch. After a conversation with my brother James this past weekend I have been thinking more about the benefits/costs of moving away from the typewriter + x/y screen analogue we have all come to know and love and towards Minority Report. This also ties in with the fact that I have been using the best or second best touch based hardware/software combo available for the last couple weeks: the Palm Pre.
Essentially, I feel that touch does very well at most of the basic computing tasks for light users. Navigating the web, switching between tabs/windows/cards/apps/programs/whatever, and especially navigating through media. Touch is all about intuitiveness and ease of use. Programs will be designed with big buttons, boucy effects, realistic speed scrolling, basically everything that is on the iPhone/Pre now.
Touch fails on a few fronts however.
You have to be able to reach your monitor. As LCD's get cheap and 23in monitors cost $150, you dont always want to be 1ft from your screen. That said, laptops overtook desktops this year as people wanted portability/wifi and storage/speed concerns fell. I expect this trend to continue, and laptops are really where I see touch computing growing. Kill the annoying touch pad (basically a 1/10th representation of screen touch), improve the OS, increase tab/button size and you are there. Notice though I did not say kill the keyboard. I dont want a touch keyboard, not yet. If haptics get really good, and LCD's very cheap, then maybe I would consider a 2-screened laptop looking like a giant NintendoDS, but that is a ways off. One of the main reasons I got the Pre over the iPhone is a hardware keyboard, typing is still very important.
Another problem is pitch and yaw. In the same way that the touchpad on your laptop sucks for games, so will a touch screen with no mouse. Mice give you a pointer you can move to x,y coordinates on your screen. So do touch pads, and thus touch screens. But mice can also act as pitch and yaw controllers. Move it forward, look up, moved it left, look left. Beacuse of a number of features--momentum, centering, response time, acceleration (a mouse is not 1:1, the faster you move, the faster the cursor moves) etc.--a mouse is by far the best way to control simulated movement within a game/3d computer world. Touchscreens, quite simply, would suck at this: you would never want your avatar flying around Second Life using a touchscreen (full disclosure: I have never played Second Life and never will).
So touch will not be the best for everything. But it will be a revolution in the way that we use and interact with our computers and portable computers. Wireless portability is the trend all across the computing world. And if you want it wireless and portable, you are going to want to be able to use it quickly and easily wherever you are.
Personally I would love a laptop/tablet form factor with quick boot linux OS and Windows 7 as the main operating system. Flip the screen so that it faces up, launch linux in 5 seconds, open firefox, browse the internet on a 10-12in screen, get to the office, flip the screen back up, fire up Windows 7, plug in a mouse and a 2tb USB3 hard drive, rinse and repeat.
Essentially, I feel that touch does very well at most of the basic computing tasks for light users. Navigating the web, switching between tabs/windows/cards/apps/programs/whatever, and especially navigating through media. Touch is all about intuitiveness and ease of use. Programs will be designed with big buttons, boucy effects, realistic speed scrolling, basically everything that is on the iPhone/Pre now.
Touch fails on a few fronts however.
You have to be able to reach your monitor. As LCD's get cheap and 23in monitors cost $150, you dont always want to be 1ft from your screen. That said, laptops overtook desktops this year as people wanted portability/wifi and storage/speed concerns fell. I expect this trend to continue, and laptops are really where I see touch computing growing. Kill the annoying touch pad (basically a 1/10th representation of screen touch), improve the OS, increase tab/button size and you are there. Notice though I did not say kill the keyboard. I dont want a touch keyboard, not yet. If haptics get really good, and LCD's very cheap, then maybe I would consider a 2-screened laptop looking like a giant NintendoDS, but that is a ways off. One of the main reasons I got the Pre over the iPhone is a hardware keyboard, typing is still very important.
Another problem is pitch and yaw. In the same way that the touchpad on your laptop sucks for games, so will a touch screen with no mouse. Mice give you a pointer you can move to x,y coordinates on your screen. So do touch pads, and thus touch screens. But mice can also act as pitch and yaw controllers. Move it forward, look up, moved it left, look left. Beacuse of a number of features--momentum, centering, response time, acceleration (a mouse is not 1:1, the faster you move, the faster the cursor moves) etc.--a mouse is by far the best way to control simulated movement within a game/3d computer world. Touchscreens, quite simply, would suck at this: you would never want your avatar flying around Second Life using a touchscreen (full disclosure: I have never played Second Life and never will).
So touch will not be the best for everything. But it will be a revolution in the way that we use and interact with our computers and portable computers. Wireless portability is the trend all across the computing world. And if you want it wireless and portable, you are going to want to be able to use it quickly and easily wherever you are.
Personally I would love a laptop/tablet form factor with quick boot linux OS and Windows 7 as the main operating system. Flip the screen so that it faces up, launch linux in 5 seconds, open firefox, browse the internet on a 10-12in screen, get to the office, flip the screen back up, fire up Windows 7, plug in a mouse and a 2tb USB3 hard drive, rinse and repeat.
Comments
Post a Comment