Connect with us

Featured

GBM Shortcut: Surface-Like Apps for the iPhone

Published

on

Today at PDC2008 we’re going to see info about Windows 7 rolled out and we’ve known for some time now that adding multi-touch capability to Windows 7 was going to be part of the package. That’s great but the question that is asked most often is what applications are going to take advantage of multi-touch? The same can be said of the iPhone on some levels. Intriguingly there is some software that offers Surface like multi-touch capability, all though I’d call them curiosities more than I would applications. But then I think the majority of the apps you find for the iPhone are curiosities.

In this GBM Shortcut I take a looka at a couple of these curiosities that mimick Surface like capability. The first one is Micro Surface and it allows you to draw on the screen with up to four fingers (not easy to do on such a small screen) and also rotate, stretch, and group pictures.

The second app has been around for awhile and it is called Koi Pond. Basically you can create ripples in water and send some gold fish swimming away from your fingers.

I also take a look at two apps that aren’t really what I would call multi-touch centric.

WritePad offers some hand writing recognition for notes and the like, although my fumble fingers make this look more like a curiousity than an real app. But if you don’t like the onscreen keyboard and need to scribble out a quick note, it might come in handy.

And lastly, I take a look at TouchType, and app that allows you to enter text in landscape mode with the onscreen keyboard, which could be a boon to those who need to do so for email and such. The best part of this is it makes it easier to tap out an email.

Again, most of these show off promise and potential. The question will be when we see applications that can really take advantage of the capabilities afforded with multi-touch on this platform, and of course on all those laptops, notebooks, and Tablet PCs that are going to have capacitive digitizers. We are going to see a lot of those, right? Hello? OEMs? Anybody listening?

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.