It’s official. Windows 7 is to support multi-touch. The Vista Team Blog has more, including a video shown below:
Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7
(Updated) From what I’ve seen so far it looks like it’s going to be true multi-touch. Cool. That’ll give us the industry-standard, two-fingered pinch and rotation gestures plus more. No idea if Microsoft is planning to support multiple users or if this is something applications need to handle individually.
It also looks like the water demo app and the map app are quite similar to Surface programs. Maybe this means some of Surface is being folded into Windows. Sounds like the right direction. Of course, if so, this means that the Surface team–or should I say the Surface team that works with Windows–needs to be lots more open with SDKs and the like.
In a presentation tonight at the D6 conference, Microsoft also demoed the multi-touch technology in a map program, photo viewing app, and Microsoft Paint. The demo was being performed on a Dell Latitude XT, which is capable of multi-touch with upgraded drivers:
No idea if there will be further extensions into the OS, such as the ability to rotate a window, which is something that’s quite natural to do particiularly on a slate held flat. Of course, with WPF this ability can be simulated, which isn’t bad, but it would be nice if it were native.
According to Engadget: “They worked with the Surface team on the multi-touch stuff. Microsoft is re-thinking the whole user interface to better accommodate multi-touch for day to day use.”
I’m hoping to see whether Michael Arrington, Engadget and the others are able to get a private viewing. I’d love to see more pictures. Everything is too sketchy at this point.
In the demo tonight, Bill Gates went on to say that user-interaction won’t stop with multi-touch: “…in the years to come, the roles of speech, vision, ink, all of those will become huge.” Agreed. Microsoft particularly needs to work on its vision features. Intel is way ahead here.
In a Michael Arrington Qik video, a Microsoft rep shows MS Paint in use with multiple fingers:
New coverage so far:
Mary Jo Foley: “I am still a non-believer. Do you want touch on your Windows notebook? I, for one, do not.”
Joe Wilcox says this is the right time to announce Windows 7 multi-touch: Microsoft is capitalizing on the Apple lull to make some Windows noise.
CNet: “the new technology will work with existing touch screens”
MacRumors: “according to Microsoft, multi-touch will be “built throughout the OS””
Gizmodo: “Looks like a LOT of the multi-touch features were culled from the Surface team, and the non-touch features look fairly similar to what’s already in Vista”
Engadget: “The taskbar seems to have been reworked a bit, and the demo was running live on a Dell Latitude XT tablet. Apparently Microsoft is reworking the whole user interface with a multitouch experience in mind.”
GigaOm: “I think if you have used iPod Touch, iPhone and Coverflow, you are not going to be as wow-ed by multi-touch, but I have to admit, that even in its rudimentary form, it looked pretty darn good.”
The Inquisitr: “Apple wooed audiences when it first demonstrated multi-touch via a track pad built into Apple laptops, but Microsoft has now one upped Apple by bringing the hands on experience of the Microsoft Surface to the small screen”
John Tokash: “the thing that excites me most about this announcement is that OS X will most likely follow suit (or preempt).”
Tech Trader Daily: “Kind of cool.”
WordPlop: “I fail to see how it will ever be useful in a Windows operating system.”
TheHoneyCombCollective: “Although super cool remember Apple first introduced the use of multi-touch into the iPhone”
Robert Scoble (Comment on TechCrunch): “I got Windows 7 on video last Thursday with the guy who invented all these surface features at Microsoft Research! Seriously, visit my qik.com/scobleizer channel”
Some tweets:
justinprine: “why bother demoing something that lacks polish when there is nothing to get excited about. what a vistaster”
shawnmolnar: “Windows 7 looks pretty interesting…”
topa: “Windows 7 looks good, I can now think of skipping Vista”
jasonhiner: “I wonder if Microsoft has enough time to get OEMs on board with multi-touch before Windows 7 launches? Plus, can they do it cheap enough?”
kay_k: “nice but is that y people buy a pc”
ankurp: “Nice”
davidgeller: “I played with Win7 briefly and it’s a big improvement over Vista. It’s much faster and has some nice UI enhancements”
jannaro: “Windows 7 animation still looks rather primitive”
pbrooks: “Cool multi-touch stuff in Windows 7”
fbrunel: “That’s all Microsoft can do? Windows 7 = Vista + Multitouch (iPhone rip-off)”
eric_dolecki: “Windows 7 is a yawner so far”
devinger1: “woohoo! Windows 7 does multitouch! This bodes well for .Net 4.0 & WPF improvements. MS needs badly to be more transparent regarding Windows 7. This is a small improvement”
podfeet: “everything they showed in Windows 7 is in the iPhone today”
OK. Time for bed. Lots of commentary tonight from lots of directions about what little bit of Windows 7 was shown.