“When Steve Jobs demonstrated Apple’s new phone at Macworld recently, the feature that elicited the most ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the audience was the touch-screen interface: it allowed more than one touch at a time. This ‘multi-touch’ technology adds functions such as allowing a person to easily zoom in and out of pictures and Web pages by pinching the screen with two fingers,” Kate Greene reports for MIT’s Technology Review.
Greene reports, “But the full power of multi-touch technology might be unleashed in screens far larger than those on phones. Over the past few years, Jeff Han, consulting research scientist at New York University, has developed an inexpensive way to make large multi-touch screens accommodating 10, 20, or even more fingers. He envisions applications ranging from interactive whiteboards to touch-screen tables and digital walls–any of which could be manipulated by more than just one person. And this month, Han has unveiled Perceptive Pixel, his new company based on the technology.”
Greene reports, “There are many ways to make a multi-touch screen, Han explains. Some of the early designs measured the change in electrical resistance or capacitance on a surface when fingers touched it. But these devices have limited resolution, are relatively complex, and don’t easily and inexpensively scale up to large dimensions. Apple has not disclosed what multi-touch technology it’s using on the iPhone.”
Greene reports, “Some researchers are even developing touchable displays that can touch back. The emerging technology that enables this is called haptics. One type of haptics technology involves a surface that senses when it’s touched and then vibrates at various frequencies, depending on the placement of one’s fingers. This sort of technology could be useful for the touch keyboard on Apple’s iPhone, says Scott Klemmer, professor of computer science at Stanford University. ‘You wouldn’t get the tactile feel of real buttons, but [because of the vibrations] you can tell you’ve touched a real button.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: We first covered Jeff Han’s multi-touch interface last February with a direct link to video of Han’s UI and a link to Wired’s “Cult of Mac” coverage. At the time, we wrote, “This could change everything. Again.”
In recent days, Han has updated his website with the cryptic blurb, “Yes, we saw the keynote too! We have some very, very exciting updates coming soon- stay tuned!”
Jeff Han’s “Multi-Touch Interaction Research” Web site: http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
Related article:
Video of how Apple’s rumored touch-screen Tablet Mac could work – February 13, 2006
I wonder to what extent Apple’s iPhone patents cover the use of multi-touch technologies.
So, is he connected to Apple???
10, or 20 fingers on my Mac ???? NO WAY !!!
I would kill anybody who touch my beautiful iMac
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I want 21 points of contact on my touchscreen, please.
Quick! Pull my finger.
My guess is he’s been spending some time on holiday in Cupertino.
I don’t mind 10 to 20 fingers on my Mac, as long as they’re connected to the right people, if you know what I mean, wink wink nudge nudge…
As long as this doesn’t happen, it’ll be OK. (Follow the next few strips for the ongoing touch-screen adventure…)
oh my god, what if there is a fly circling around your touchscreen?
This could really change the internet porn industry… think about it….
Apple should spend some of its cash horde and buy this guy and his company
I cant wait to finger paint in Photoshop. Then my art career will have come full circle.
I know what wallpaper I’ll use already. Will this work with my tongue?
This guy shoudl team up with the original inventors of the scratch and sniff.
Imagine the possibilities of touch and sniff……..mama I’m coming home…….
5 Years Out…
The new MBP opens like a book with screens on both sides. When you need to type, the bottom 1/3 of each screen becomes the keyboard. When you video conference, thousands of cameras packed between the pixels capture your image and transmit. When you want to scan or fax you place the picture you want to send on the screen to be scanned and sent.
If Mr. Jobs has issues with the keys on a Treo, (they’re always there, even when you don’t need them; what happens if you want to add functionality but you can’t add new keys; wasted space when you’re not using them; needless clutter when they’re not needed) you can bet that he’s got designs on clearing them from the laptop, too.
There’s a video out there that I saw once showing some of these things. Anyone out there got a link?
How about a virtual multi-touch screen?
In 1984, Apple changed the world by introducing the point-and-click GUI to the masses (never mind that the Lisa with a similar GUI was actually released in 1981).
It took Microsoft more than a decade to replicate that point-and-click GUI with Windows 95.
But the point-and-click GUI remains essentially unchanged since 1984. A Mac user running OS X Tiger would feel very comfortable driving the original 128 KB Mac, for example.
Well, all that’s about to change in 2007. Apple is ready to replace the point-and-click GUI. 2007 will be the year of the Multi-Touch GUI. Imagine Multi-Touch iLife ’07. The “Top Secret” feature of Leopard? Multi-Touch. All running on shiny new Multi-Touch Mac hardware (will that be a huge reason to upgrade or what).
Now THAT would be a development worthy of a SuperBowl commercial. Beatles on iTunes? Blah.
Uhm.. I have to do that, forgive me! 😀
Maybe researcher have THIS kind of plans for the iPhone, watch this video:
http://www.blog.nanoda.com/en/fun/apple_iphone_commercial.html
^_^
This could revolutionize Air Traffic Control – if our Gov’t invested in productivity that is.
Very cool.
I read somewhere that Apple bought Fingerworks.
10 or 20 fingers?
Reminds me of a Swedish masseuse I once met in New York…
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The real innovation will be when the Mac touches the user!
remember that patent, where the lcd monitor is also the camera, where every pixel
can also see as well as show?
ponder that..
“Scott Klemmer, professor of computer science at Stanford University. ‘You wouldn’t get the tactile feel of real buttons, but [because of the vibrations] you can tell you’ve touched a real button.'””
This would Kick Holy Ass. The possibilities are literally endless. Goodbye to all physical buttons forever.
And as they did with USB and CDRoms, it takes a company like Apple to show us what the future will look like. The iPhone is only the beginning of a cascade of redesigned consumer goods with context modified interfaces.
So I was looking at the video on Han’s Multi-touch website, and if you notice, in the third demonstration, he uses the pinching feature of the iPhone to zoom. Portents of whose multi-touch they’re using, perhaps? Also, I’ve heard people say that Mac can’t take over the market no matter how much better it is, not because people refuse to change, or anything like that, but rather because almost every single company is entrenched in M$’s trash, and that the only way for Mac to take over the PC market would be to revolutionize how you interact with your computer, making it something completely new, rather than simply making a better and more pleasant user interface. I think multi-touch is that technology, that revolution. The day of the Mac is near at hand!
MDN word: “Close” as in, close the doors Microsoft, Apple’s taking over.
Ever seen a HP© Calculator with its several function keys,
used to switch the functions assigned to other keys.
Real pain to understand and use.
Replacing the calculator’s physical key layout with an iPhone kind of layout,
with OS X, communications, big screen layout for graphing, et cetera,
presents distinct possiblities which surpass all current calculator capabilities.
Hmm.