- Craig Pringle

My last post, which was about Microsoft's lack of Tablet marketing, generated some really good comments and discussion - thanks to all those who joined in.

Tablets are constantly referred to as having failed to meet expectations. 

But as Hilton Locke pointed out:

Pen and touch digitizers have been around for a lot longer than Tablet, so the digitizer technology is relatively mature.

The hardware is there.  There is support for that hardware in the operating system - but there is a lack applications that leverage the pen and/or touch.  A tablet can run any application that will run on the Windows OS, but when it is running an application that is not "tablet-aware" it is just a laptop with a few extra tricks up its sleeve.

Hilton also pointed this out...

...it's hard to convince the ISVs to Tablet-enable their apps. Without custom app support, the $50-100 cost difference for Tablets is an unnecessary expense. So the most common usage in business is still notebook with pen as "super-mouse". Not terribly compelling.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not pointing the accusatory finger at the developer community at large here.  It is not their fault.  I don't think that Microsoft have done enough to promote developing for tablet PC to the developer community.

Microsoft should not only be heavily promoting pen and touch technologies to developers - they should be leading by example.

Personally I think this is one area where Microsoft have really failed. 

The ink support in the Operating System is not what it should be - the community wants write anywhere.  That alone would be a great step forward.  Office is Microsoft's flagship product - why does the ink support not extend beyond scribbling on documents?  Why is it left to third party developers like Loren Heiny to write a tool that lets you use a pen to review and mark-up a document in a more natural way?  Or developers like Josh Einstein to make Outlook more ink friendly with TEO?

Outside of the Office suite - when Microsoft released their XPS file format to compete with Adobe's PDF format - why did they not release a reader application that would let you write on an XPS document and re-save it ala PDF Annotator?

Will Microsoft learn from this?  Adding support for multi-touch won't fix the problem if there are still no applications that leverage the new feature set.  Natural Input won't change the way we work with computers if the applications running on them don't change a bit, too.

The fact that you can touch two points on an iPhone screen is not exciting in and of itself - it is the software running the iPhone that captures those two touch points, interprets them and translates them into an experience that is natural and intuitive that makes it exciting.  Come on Microsoft! That is the kind of software we need from you for the Tablet PC.

Or maybe LPH's take on this could be the winner - any venture capitalists out there?

A startup company, though, could blow away the market. It would take a huge burn rate for the first 12 months and plenty of blogger interactions to push the pen the right way - no hybrid keyboards, half written code for using the pen's advantage, etc. - But it is possible. The company would need software and hardware developers PLUS a team of evangelists who listened to the community and pushed to move the market quickly.

- Warner Crocker

We’re certainly seeing a lot of discussion these days about user interaction with computers, a good deal of it centered on multi-touch, but regardless of the specific technology it all comes down to what Bill Gates and Microsoft calls the Natural Human Interface. That includes everything from touch and multi-touch to voice, to the pen, to interesting thoughts about controlling computers with brain reading devices. Mike Elgan at Datamation writes an interesting article looking at this called “The Mouse is Dead,” where he agrees with a Gartner analyst who says that within 2 to 4 years we’ll see the dominance of the mouse fade.

He points to Apple’s advances on both the iPhone(and other handhelds) and multi-touch on its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, as well as advancement in gaming devices as evidence.

I think Mike is on to something, but timing is everything, and I think we’re probably further out before the mouse becomes a second class interface citizen. There’s no question we’re seeing advances in how we interact with our computers, but we’re also seeing reactions against these advances from some who, for whatever reason, aren’t embracing change in its early forms. Certainly the mobile set will lead this wave (unless you’re talking about Microsoft’s Surface Table or Touch Wall) but even on the mobile front, with the current race to create a winner in the low cost ultra-mini-sub-net-low cost portable class, we’re not seeing touch or multi-touch as a major push just yet. The priorities at the moment in that space are different. But that too will begin to shift, most likely as Windows 7 approaches.

In my opinion, I think the evolution will happen similarly to what’s happening with email. So many of the younger set don’t use email, according to the data that keeps pouring forth, opting instead for text messaging of some sort or the other, but then you’ve got an entrenched set who couldn’t imagine letting go of their email addiction. Of course the big key on when any evolution begins is going to have to deal with point of sale. These Natural Human Interface developments are all about touching, feeling, speaking, etc… If consumers can’t get “hands-on” with them, it will push the adoption rate out further along the time line.

An intriguing side read to this is James Kendrick’s recent piece where he says “Forget mult-touch, it’s time for the Instinctive Interface.”

So, what do you think GBM readers? How soon before the Mouse becomes a second class interface citizen?

 

 

- Sierra Modro

I got the opportunity to play with the new HP Touchsmart IQ504 when I was in Berlin and took some videos of people interacting with the system. It was definitely the hit of the show. Everyone wanted to touch it, and once they touched, they stayed and played.

With the Touchsmart, HP has taken simplicity to a new level. When I think about why I love my iPhone, one major reason is that it does exactly what I expect it to do and does it well. The Touchsmart subscribes to that same philosophy. HP wrote a custom interface that lives on top of Windows Vista, and that interface just works flawlessly. And it's totally intuitive. It's nearly impossible to convey an "aha" moment through words, but when I was using the Touchsmart, I felt like it was a very useful system that I could see being a household staple in 10-15 years, like the microwave or the TV.

In my opinion, the Touchsmart is unlikely to be the only computer in any household. It's designed to be a central repository for family communications - from electronic "sticky notes" left for other family members to playing music and viewing photos, this is designed to be in the main hub of the home not in the den. It has much more of an "appliance" kind of mentality. This is not a system where I expect people would sit down and write the Great American Novel, although the specs are definitely beefy enough to do that and much more. It's more likely where you look up a recipe online or show photos to a visitor.

Would I buy one? Seriously considering it. At $1250 on special from HP, it's a great deal. It could replace many of the systems I have scattered around my living room and kitchen. (Yes, I do have many systems scattered around.) It has a simplified browser that is ideal for touch as well as all of the other applications that I typically use when I'm not on my "main" Tablet PC. I was far more impressed with it than I anticipated based on seeing pictures and reading specs. It's another case where you just have to touch it and find out for yourself. It uses many gestures familiar to iPhone users and it does support at least 2 finger multi-touch as you'll see with the photo editing.

Keynote Introduction

(40 sec)

 

Keynote Commercial

A real, honest-to-goodness TV commercial for a touch based product. (50 sec)

 

 

Showcase Demo

Warning: the video was shot in the showcase and the audio is pretty noisy. The video is about 2 minutes long.

 

- Rob Bushway

While meeting with the Surface team yesterday, I got an inside look at how the team stress tests their applications using automation tools and robotics. Testing a multi-touch system presents a lot of challenges, especially simulating lots of fingers interacting with the system at one time.

Robin Lim and Ritchie Hughes, Software Dev Engineers in Test on the Surface team, demo a few of those things for us in this video:

- Warner Crocker

Try this on for a concept. At the fourth Microsoft sponsored Next-Gen PC Design Competition, Avery Holleman, a student took home first place. His design is described as a “multi-user, multi-interface, modular computer designed for creative professionals to collaborate and bring their greatest ideas to life.”

The interface is very simple. Some pens and some napkins. “When powered by the pen the Napkin is multi-touch input display that responds to human touch as well as the pen.” Check out more here.

Via News.com

- Warner Crocker

HP is having a show all to itself in Berlin and Sierra seems to be having quite a time there and she’s already brought us news on HP’s TouchSmart All-in-One. But here’s some other interesting news on the touch front. According to HP’s Kevin Frost, we won’t have to wait for Windows 7 before we see multi-touch on laptops. And according to another Kevin from HP (Kevin Wentzel) the obstacles aren’t hardware related but in developing suitable software.

via Laptop Magazine

 

- Warner Crocker

Asus isn’t just buying vowels. Looks like they are working on some interesting concept (read non-production at this point) multi-touch screen devices. Slash Gear has some pictures that show a device that looks similar to the OLPC2 concept with two multi-touch panels with one used for a keyboard.

And then there’s this concept multi-touch slate. Note the DVD image on the right side. Supposedly that shows up when you insert a disk in the drive.

 

- Warner Crocker

Microsoft will be putting Multi-touch into Windows 7, but you’ll need a monitor equipped to handle it right? Albatron looks like they may be first out the gate with a desktop monitor to do the trick, with a 22 inch (1680 x 1050) monitor. Albatron uses a sensor on each side of the screen and says that the cost will only be 20% more than a non-multi-touch monitor.

Via tgdaily

- Rob Bushway
Sumocat has been talking up a storm in our Multi-Touch Scenario article, and went a bit further and penned this fantastic essay talking about multi-touch possibilities in Outlook. Sumocat does a really good job strengthening the argument that multi-touch can indeed be a great tool for business users.

Sumocat wraps up his essay with this closing thought, which I am in total agreement with (emphasis mine):

Multi-touch is a great advancement in user interface technology, but the key words there are “user
interface”. Microsoft needs to explain how this enhances the existing user interface, not show us how it
works in new applications we’re not using. Making ripples in a virtual pond is fun, but I’m not using a
virtual pool now. I use stuff like Outlook. Show me how multi-touch can improve Outlook, then I’ll be
interested in seeing what else it can do.

- Rob Bushway

James Kendrick says he has yet to have anyone give him a single usage scenario where multi-touch on a normal sized device, like a Tablet PC, makes sense.

I can give him plenty that don't involve the traditional picture zooming:

• Math - interacting with clocks, manipulating objects for counting / sorting
• Modeling scenarios - cars, clay modeling, CAD, 3-D animation
• Practicing music where two or more notes need to be played at the same time to form a chord - guitar, piano, trumpet, etc. A person could practice the notes on a trumpet without having to put one to their lips. Heck, a 5" - 8" screen would be perfect for this. Think about holding an OQO in your right hand, with the three keys on the trumpet displaying, and being able to practice some music.
• Writing music and then wanting to test it out quickly on the screen with your fingers.
• Game playing with two people - play dough type of games for younger kids would be awesome. Take two fingers across the screen to form a string, then twist it with two fingers. Imagine the things kids could build. What about Legos - grabbing two or more pieces and putting them together, then manipulating them with your fingers. Picking up a bunch of Legos with your hand and moving them to another spot.
• Geography - manipulating maps . Imagine putting your hands on a map, then pulling your hands a part like you are digging in to the picture to see more depth of what is underneath- multiple pressure points could allow that.
• Science: grabbing several types of digitized chemicals with different fingers and joining them together to make something or form a different substance.
• Painting - mixing colors from two or three different palettes
• Imagine multi-touch that sensed torque, leverage, etc, from multiple points, and the kind of learning scenarios that would encourage around physics
• What about engineering possibilities- roads, buildings, etc where moving things with multiple fingers, or activating pressure points on objects caused events to happen to test fault tolerances.
• What about role playing for insurance - reenacting accidents with cars ( manipulating two cars with fingers on different hands ).
• What about cartoon manipulation for artists
• What about mirroring a common action for paper note-takers: you are inking a note in Journal or InkSeine, when you decide that you hate the idea that you've been working on. You take your hand and scrunch up the piece of "paper" in to a ball and throw it away. That brings the experience of note-taking even closer to mirroring real life, thanks to multi-touch.

These are all usage scenarios I could imagine conducting on my 12" Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC or even smaller devices like an OQO Model 02.  The potential of multi-touch on a laptop / tablet pc screen is huge in the education space, and I think it is one of the most exciting things to develop in a long time.   The 12" screen is perfect for all of these scenarios because they allow the student to take the device with them and use it a home, school, the lab, etc. Usability possibilities around multi-touch and laptop screens abound.

- Rob Bushway

Thanks to BetaNews.com, we just learned that Microsoft's newly unveiled PDC 2008 web site features some special sessions geared just for Windows 7. It looks like Microsoft has decided to begin talking about Windows 7, after all.

There are four Windows 7 sessions listed that will be of interest to a lot of developers, and folks generally interested in learning more about Windows 7.

Of particular to interest to our readers is a session geared toward touch computing and their API support.

I think I need to be planning to attend PDC 2008!

Windows 7: Touch Computing

In Windows 7, innovative touch and gesture support will enable more direct and natural interaction in your applications. This session will highlight the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explain how you can leverage them in your applications.

 

Here are the other Windows 7 sessions being offered:

Windows 7: Graphics Advances

Windows 7 enables you to advance the graphics capabilities of your applications while carrying forward existing investments in your Win32 codebase, including GDI and GDI+. New enhancements to DirectX let Win32 applications harness the latest innovations in GPUs and LCD displays, including support for scalable, high-performance, 2D and 3D graphics, text, and images. Also learn how to leverage the GPU's parallelism for general-purpose computation such as image processing.

Windows 7: Optimizing for Energy Efficiency and Battery Life

A single application can reduce mobile battery life by up to 30%. Windows 7 provides advances for building energy-efficient applications. In this session we will discuss how to leverage new Windows infrastructure to reduce application power consumption and efficiently schedule background tasks and services. 

Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code

Windows 7 introduces a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code. This session will discuss the programming model, interoperability aspects with other implementations of WS-* protocols and demonstrate various services and applications built using this API.

 

- Warner Crocker

Yesterday was a fascinating day if you pay attention to the PR battles that rage around the mobile devices and technology we all love. And make no mistake, yesterday was more about PR and hype than it was about anything else. Yes, Microsoft released some “snippets” of information on Windows 7 featuring the inclusion of a multi-touch interface. For those of us who’ve seen the promise that this can deliver that is some great news. And of course there are many out there who are still skeptical of the entire multi-touch thing.

But this year’s D: All Things Digital announcement was in effect no different than last year when it comes to impact. Last year, Bill Gates unveiled Surface on a table, this year we’ve got Surface on a laptop. Both announcements were aimed at chipping away at Apple’s iPhone hype machine. Last year it was the first launch of the iPhone. This year, it is the 3G launch (or so we all believe-wouldn’t that be a big disappointment if it didn’t happen?), and possibly some word on yet another Apple Tablet possibility. There is some solid speculation that Apple will be making some noise on that front soon, perhaps at WWDC, perhaps this fall. (Robert Scoble has an interesting aside on this.) Microsoft might have just tried to one up Apple with last night’s announcement if that proves to be true.

The intriguing wrinkle in all of this, is that last night’s announcement of the inclusion of touch in Windows 7 came after a morning blitz from Microsoft’s Steve Sinofsky talking about why Microsoft wasn’t going to be talking about Microsoft 7 in the same way they did about Windows Vista. Taking a cue from Apple’s super secret methods, Sinofsky wants a tight lid on any info going out. It might just be that Jobs flushed Microsoft’s plans out in the open sooner than they were ready to disclose.

If you read the coverage of Microsoft’s multi-touch announcement last night you’ll see an interesting theme emerge. Everywhere you look, the interface is being referred to as iPhone-like. That can’t make the folks in Redmond happy this morning, simply because the multi-touch announcement, given the clamp down on information, is targeted at keeping that from happening, or at the least grabbing some mindshare.

Fascinating to watch from that PR perspective. But, if there is some real news beyond the PR battles to take away from this it is really simple. Both Apple and Microsoft are working hard to bring multi-touch interfaces to all makes and models of devices. There’s a race on for that mindshare and to bring these things to market, but in the end, some time in the future, we’ll see multi-touch on a range of devices and consumers won’t care who got there first.

- Warner Crocker

From the Windows Vista Blog

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Update: This seems to be playing fine in IE but not in Firefox.

 

- Warner Crocker

More as it comes, but here’s a picture of what Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are demoing at D6. Multi-touch in Windows 7.

Pictures via Engadget

- Rob Bushway

If Mary Jo has her sources right, we might be getting a glimpse of touch and gesture support in Windows 7 courtesy of the D6 conference. More thoughts on touch and tablet here on the Between the Lines blog.

Stay tuned as we follow this....

UPDATE: It's true. The D6 blog is reporting that Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates will demo Window 7's new user interface.

- Warner Crocker

Microsoft researchers are showing off their stuff at the 4th Research Road Show, and as a part of the fun, Andy Wilson showed off a new multi-touch system that is based on a low-cost infrared camera and lasers that are used to track how a user touches a screen. Supposedly this is an inexpensive system although no prices were put forward on the research project, which of course comes with the same caveat as the TouchWall. There are no immediate plans to make this into a product yet.

Rob and I got to meet with Andy Wilson on our recent trip to Redmond, when we talked about another of his projects, Microsoft Surface.

Picture and link via CNet’s News.com

- Matt Faulkner

Engadget is reporting that AU Optronics is bringing out an 8 inch multi-touch display in a few months. Sounds promising if they can slap a digitizer on there as well so we can have some good inking!

Unlike the current touch panels in the market, AUO’s in-cell multi-touch TFT-LCD integrates touch function features into the TFT manufacturing process without adding an additional glass. In addition, it has superior anti-glare properties to retain proper image color saturation and readability in direct sunlight. AUO’s in-cell multi-touch technology has been successfully applied to 4.3-inch products and will be in mass-production in Q2 2008.

Or, could this be for a different OS than we normally think about using ink with...  humm  multi-touch 8 inch screen.  Only thing I see against it being in a Mac is the fact that it's an untested product.  I don't think Apple would do that.

- Warner Crocker

No, this isn’t from Apple. Christian Moore has hacked up a full screen mutli-touch device running OS X. He’s calling it Lux and he claims it will run under any platform, including a web browser. Gizmodo has a short interview ith Moore about Lux.

 

 

- Warner Crocker

Here’s a video of TouchWall and Plex in action.

And some more info from CrunchGear:

TouchWall consists of three infrared lasers that scan a surface. A camera notes when something breaks through the laser line and feeds that information back to the Plex software. Early prototypes, say Pratley and Sands, were made, simply, on a cardboard screen. A projector was used to show the Plex interface on the cardboard, and a the system worked fine

And also, Microsoft doesn’t have immediate plans to turn this into a product. Let’s hope that changes. Think of all those CSI labs that are just waiting to file those budget requests.

- Warner Crocker

Microsoft is hosting the Microsoft CEO Summit beginning today for 115 CEOs from around the world. In the keynote, which will be given by Bill Gates, it looks like they will unveil TouchWall and Plex. Described by TechCrunch as “superficially similar to Surface,” TouchWall is the touchscreen itself in this Minority Report-like setup, and Plex is the software to run it.

Since the only info scheduled to be shared outside of the CEO Summit is the keynote, perhaps we’ll get to see some of this in action later. Note that from the TechCrunch articles TouchWall and Plex seem to be different from Surface in one other interesting way as well. To “turn almost anything into multi-touch interface” they are talking “hundreds of dollars” as opposed to Surface’s $10,000 price tag.

Interesting Note: Chris Pratley, who for a long time was one of the Wonders on the OneNote Team, (I used to call him the OneNote Wonder) seems to be involved with TouchWall and Plex.