Computers will never be the same, the iPhone's multi-touch is just the beginning:

Look at this test of the multi-touch interface, which is so beautifully simple:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146923853181774&q=multi-touch&hl=en

It's amazing, isn't it?

I remember watching this old Sun Microsystems video with a similar system, but they didn't think it out as much as Apple, and Apple's system is much easier looking.

It literally looks like something out of Star Trek.

:shrug:

Just sick of the hype. Apple products are great, but I'll wait for iCoffeeMaker or something really practical.

not an actual product. I thought it looked pretty cool and that I would want to use it.

much more fluid than a mouse.

to get excited. To each his own, and all that. Right?

Redstone

No?

It's not the iPhone, but the technology behind the interface.

This is how all interfaces will work in the near future. Have fun with Windows 98...I mean Vista.

I also like the flexibility that it gives programmers. They're not locked into using existing buttons. You can create as many or as few as you need!

but this will be a definite need on a computer in the future. Imagine having three ways to control a computer, a mouse, a keyboard, and a multi-touch monitor.

Of course, now that I think of this, I think Sun Microsystems may have prior art on this one, because their system looked like it operated in a similar way. How much do you want to bet me that this goes into some kind of big dispute?

I looked it up, it was called Starfire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_video_prototype

I just wish it didn't take so long to get into my greedy little hands. :)

I'm not so sure that Tognazzini's Starfire video is showing the "multi-touch" innovation that Apple just presented, although his video does anticipate some interesting concepts that have become commonplace today (touchscreen technology and the world wide web). Which is not surprising, since Tog started the User Interface Group at Apple when he worked there and wrote their first user interface guidelines before going to Sun. I don't think that video shows the concept of multi-touch, though.

That Starfire video itself was inspired by Apple's now-classic 1987 Knowledge Navigator video. As for that video representing prior art, I doubt it, since even I designed conceptual interfaces utilizing touchscreens and such long before 1994 (I also was heavily influenced by the Knowledge Navigator video), and I sure ain't no gazillionaire.

No, the only department at Apple that is better than their design department is perhaps their legal department.

of course, that's not to say that companies won't be tossing lawsuits at Apple, since they do have rather deep pockets.


Also, I do indeed agree with you that the iPhone will change things, though. and not just the innovative input method, but more importantly, perhaps it'll change the way the mobile phone industry designs phones and that'll be a good thing for everybody.

this will surely replace finger painting as we know it. Amazing. A true breakthrough in innovation. I am getting ready to throw my computer away.

Do not need but....want...I want!!!

I'm having a hard time figuring out how I could post to an internet forum with it or do my job transcribing reports, other than typing out the letters. I can guarantee you one thing though, this system will come with a special "cleaning kit" for your monitor. The build up of skin oils could get severe. My cousin, when she messes with my computer, puts her fingers all over my screen. What a mess. Yuk. My husband does that too, but I can yell at him for doing it.