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Marek

Obligatory iPhone thread

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Seeing the UI on the iPhone made me wish that real computers could work that way, at least some of the time. The way you can zoom in on photos by just moving two fingers apart apart (in fact using a mimicry of the exact gesture people do in the air to describe zooming in on a shot when they're talking about a movie with a friend), or flip through a series of album covers in a way representational of how you do that in a record store, or on your shelf at home (only without having to actually deal with a shelf) is so awesome.

I wouldn't want to give up my mouse and keyboard for some tasks (rapid tactile typing, pixel precise image manipulation), but it would be so nice if you could move a window out of the way by just touching it on your screen with your finger, and throwing it off to the side. Or if you could re-sort a list, or drag a clip in a video editor by just ... dragging it. Getting rid of one or two layers of abstraction - input devices and UI and other go-betweens - that sit between your brain and your work would be so appealing. Our natural instinct, if you want to move a piece of paper off your desk, is to just pick it up and move it. It's also a lot quicker than to find its title bar, click, drag, and let go (or to deal with minimizing to a task bar or dock, then hunting it down later).

Then a friend of mine sent me this article about a guy who has prototyped an amazingly elaborate demo of a system similar to the iPhone's "Multi-touch" thing, but this guy has extrapolated a zillion amazing UI possibilities. Check out the amazing video.From crazy showy things like flying around a 3d earth to more practical (and, to me, more amazing) things like database searches, sorting through a collection of video and images, and just browsing around in a windowed interface between a web browser and some files, he covers a lot of stuff.

I hope that something like this is the near future of computers. Maybe Apple will bring some of their user interface concepts from the iPhone to future Mac models, or maybe this guy will hook up with Google or someone, or maybe something totally different will happen... but I want a computer that will let me interact with my data like in that video.

I know at first glance it looks like another geek out over the computer from Minority Report, but this guy's - and the iPhone's - approaches to how a user could interact with their data via touch actually seem like they would save you time, and be more accessible to everyday people than a standard Mac/Win9x-style mouse-driven desktop-metaphor UI.

Also, yes I know this has been circling the web for a week or so now so you probably saw it already. :getmecoat But it's awesome! :fart:

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'tis indeed, and I've been wanting to see more of it since TED released

of the draft table sized demo he gave.

I like that the hardware is so simple too; I hope there's no conflict with the patents Apple are trying to get for the iPhone screen.

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I hope Apple just hires that guy and pays him a shitload to develop MacOS 11 or whatever they'd call it.

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I think that Ron Gilbert comment about Star Trek applies here... WOW!

Of course... it looks good to us, but does it look good when you're 6 inches away from the screen?

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Who cares how it looks? It's a functionality demo!

Just thinking about practicality, you rude bastard.

I don't know about you, but I can imagine standing with my head six inches away from a massive VDU would prevent me from really seeing what's going on... Which is a potential flaw, if you ask me.

Try sticking your head 6 inches away from your monitor now, and then imagine your screen was 6 times as big... Can't see how that would be in any way functional. It'd be like sitting at the front row of the cinema... all day long.

Surely the next logical step would be to allow the user to be further back, so they could see the entire screen in their field of vision... which would require some sort of motion sensing technology, I guess.

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Try sticking your head 6 inches away from your monitor now, and then imagine your screen was 6 times as big... Can't see how that would be in any way functional. It'd be like sitting at the front row of the cinema... all day long.

The resolution of that touch-sensitive video wall would be far greater, not mention of significantly better quality, with individual pixels taking up significantly less actual surface area than your average/cheap/bundled TFT monitor. Moreover it's a far greater surface than your average/cheap/bundled TFT, which would change your approach to working in this way anyway--because you can spread items out as much you want.

So, generally speaking, you're making an unbalanced comparison in my opinion.

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I guess it's a completely different way of using a screen, where your attention is only focussed on one part and the rest holds stuff that has had your attention or will.

More like a worksurface for data than a monitor.

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The resolution of that touch-sensitive video wall would be far greater, not mention of significantly better quality, with individual pixels taking up significantly less actual surface area than your average/cheap/bundled TFT monitor.

Not that I'm calling you a liar or anything, but... how do you know that? Are touch-sensitive VDUs of higher quality that regular TFTs? I wasn't actually talking about quality, though.

Moreover it's a far greater surface than your average/cheap/bundled TFT, which would change your approach to working in this way anyway--because you can spread items out as much you want.

Yep, very true... but it doesn't change the fact that you won't be able to read that text in the top left hand corner unless you step back. Right now I can see everything on my two monitors with minimal effort, meaning it's very quick to work. Being so close to a screen, and this obscuring a large part of it from my field of vision, does not seem practical. (Maybe for such a large workspace some sort of curved VDU might be useful?)

My point is simply that, however cool, it could be impractical in daily application. Fingers crossed that I'm wrong, of course, but it does strike me as a potential problem.

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I guess it's a completely different way of using a screen, where your attention is only focussed on one part and the rest holds stuff that has had your attention or will.

More like a worksurface for data than a monitor.

Yeah, I see what you mean. That's a good way of putting it!

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