The Microsoft ‘Touch Windows 7′ show
p2pnet news | Products:- “Microsoft demonstrates Multi-touch.”
That’s the header to a post on the WindowsVistaBlog.
Wow! The future is here!
The post goes on >>>
Last year, at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Bill Gates introduced a groundbreaking new computing experience called Surface. Surface harnesses touch and multi-touch capabilities to provide users with a natural way to interact directly with computing devices. Expect to see the table-like Surface devices in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.
Touch is quickly becoming a common way of directly interacting with software and devices. Touch-enabled surfaces are popping up everywhere including laptop touch pads, cell phones, remote controls, GPS devices, and more.
Like the One Laptop Per Child project, perhaps?
When Mary Lou Jepsen left OLPC to spend all her time at her new company, Pixel Qi, it, “has a new take on the future of the computing,” she said. It wasn’t not about the CPU or the OS.
It was about the screen.
“We contend that new displays, with integrated touchscreens, and wireless capability are the future,” she said on the Pixel Qi site in January, and she went on >>>
They are essentially motherboard-less and don’t need much an operating system at all. We are currently in a world of $10 CPUs, next year they will be less expensive. We see the future of the portable electronics as simply the display with embedded electronics eventually right in the display glass itself. This is the future laptop, the future cell phone and the future PDA.
Instead of focusing on more and more Megahertz and Gigabytes, we focus on displays that we can read, as easy as paper – indoors and out – with battery life measured in days not hours. We are talking about displays that can also display HDTV quality movies.
Meet the OLPC XO-2, aka XOXO which is essentially an all-in-one PC with displays developed by Pixel Qi and looking like an ebook.
‘Damn if it doesn’t look pretty slick …
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer used the D: All Things Digital conference last night to reminisce about the good times they had during their college days, Microsoft before it was Microsoft and the Windows to the future, Windows 7 featured in notebooks, “all-in-one PC’s, as well as in external monitors,” and, “the great work and investments we are working on in Windows 7.”
Microsoft’s Julie Larson-Green showed Walt Mossberg how a few of the multi-touch innovations first previewed in Surface will ultimately enhance the next version of Windows,”says the the WindowsVistaBlog, pointing to a transcript of the demo on All Things Digital.
Among other things —- many other things —- Larson-Green explains how Microsoft is using some of the multi-touch technology from Surface (from D5 last year) to enhance Windows 7.
The transcript continues >>>
* And there it is … well, damn if it doesn’t look pretty slick. Clearly the Windows dev team’s been busy with more than just Vista service packs. Quick side note: Windows 7, like other Microsoft OS’s before it, seems to have borrowed a thing or two from Mac OS X. This time it’s Apple’s Dock, which Microsoft appears to have borrowed. Multi-touch and a Dock. In Windows. Steve Jobs must be so proud.
Bill Gates at D6
* Larson-Green pulls up a brand new app, ‘Touchable Paint.’ She uses all 10 fingers to draw a tree. Then, she brings up a photo gallery. Noting that multi-touch makes it faster and easier to manipulate photos, she demonstrates … well, she demonstrates a lot of features that anyone who’s ever used an iPhone will already be familiar with: two-finger zoom, flicking through a slideshow, single finger panning through thumbnails.
* Moving on to photo management. With Windows 7, Microsoft hopes to create a more life-like photo experience, one that allows users to interact with digital photos as they would with their analog counterparts. New photo applications developed for the OS will allow users to arrange and examine photos as they would on a table. Also allows them to write on them and rotate and zoom them. There are some nice 3D slideshow, grid and scatter views as well.
* Here’s a mapping app that was modified from the Surface team’s own Concierge application. Like Concierge, it calls up data from Windows Live Local and Microsoft Virtual Earth.
* Nice little pan/zoom on our current locale, Carlsbad, Calif. ‘Search for Starbucks,’ says Kara. My God, there are 83,000 Starbucks here and the city’s just 7.5 square miles. (Kidding.) Pushpins appear on-screen indicating locations. Flip over a pushpin and ba-da-bing, you’re on your way to wherever it is you’d like to go. You can conduct more specific searches, as well. Application offers both ‘road’ and ‘aerial’ views. You can conduct more specific searches, as well. Searching for Seaworld now. The app can provide directions as well.
* Larson-Green notes that what we’re seeing is an app that *might* be developed for Windows 7. This demo is all about showcasing Windows 7’s potential.
* Walt asks if multi-touch is built throughout the OS. Larson-Green says it is.
* Then, another app: Well this is sweet. A multi-touch piano. Seems very responsive.
Dog and pony show over.
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May 28th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Gee, have they stopped trying to pretend that Vista is anything other than a major flop yet?
May 28th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Well as far as them dreaming about computers with just a touchscreen, it may be OK for checking your email, but I seriously doubt that you are going to be able to play games like GTA IV when it comes out on computer! LOL!
May 28th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Touch screens have been available for years; just look at retail stores and bars. It’s not a new technology. It’s most certainly useful for iphone / ipod type devices where simplification of the interface is a priority, but I can’t see this working on laptop devices; at least not until the interface is very mature.
Has anyone noticed that M$ are now using gimmicks to sell each new revision of windoze? Vista’s gimmick was aero, which is pathetic compared to compiz-fusion on GNU / Linux. Revision seven appears to be using touch screen technology. If these are the best features which M$ can come up with, then I think we will all be switching to Linux / OS X.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I’m pretty sure MS and Apple are stealing things from Linux… maybe not all the things, but just about anything that’s been created by either of the two companies, its been made a good deal better by open-source… when will people stop bring stupid and realize that MS and Apple are failing?
May 28th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Parts of Microsoft are failing. Others are increasing. Apple is doing very well in a world surrounded by people who care about sleekness over function.
Where does Linux have touch screen support?
Josh, even though I like Linux a great deal, your comment is blatantly false.