Right off the bat Paul says, “I don’t think this usage model is going to be particularly compelling for most people.”
However, he continues, “when you’re sitting in front of a traditional PC display at work, a mouse and keyboard will almost always make the most sense. Move into a meeting room, however, and a touch-enabled Surface-based interactive wall might offer the best way to get your point across. And while standing in line at a Starbucks or grocery store, you might want to quickly triage your email using a chiclet keyboard-based phone or a touch-screen enabled iPhone. None of these interfaces replace each other. They just complement each other and form the pieces of what will be a very pervasive relationship between you and the various computing resources you do and will regularly access.”
Agreed 100%.
I don’t know exactly what Microsoft is thinking in terms of multi-touch, but here’s part of my interpretation and how Paul’s commentary fits in with what I think Microsoft is actually doing.
First, what I think where Microsoft is going with multi-touch is not to suggest that most users will switch to it. I don’t think that’s the case at all. However, there are cases where multi-touch is reasonable and for these cases, we’ll now have a standard model (hopefully) for interacting with devices via multi-touch techniques. This is a big win. Standardization counts.
Small devices, like the iPhone, where screen real-estate is a premium is one good place for multi-touch. Very large devices are too, such as interactive whiteboards or horizontal surfaces, like a display built into a conference table. Multi-touch also makes sense on a Tablet PC where there might already by single point touch support.
Might more notebooks support multi-touch gestures, kind of like the new Macs are with their touchpads? Sure. But like Paul says its unlikely that this feature will blow people away in most cases.
So this part I agree with Paul on.
Where I think he’s missing something “new” is with respect to multi-user interaction. For all practical purposes we don’t have this yet. If I understand where Microsoft is going with this, multi-touch will enable more than one user to interact with a whiteboard or with a display built into a table or even a touch-enabled game on a notebook folded down.
With multi-user support there are going to be some interesting new types of programs. I think it also will encourage Microsoft to step up and free the restriction that windows have to be only in one orientation.
Finally, there are some apps where multi-touch just makes sense. Ever thought about how limiting current onscreen keyboards are because they don’t support multi-touch? Control keys and the like have to be toggled because you can’t press more than one thing at a time on the screen.
And yeah, there are some virtual instruments where multi-touch makes sense too. You may not be enamored by these, but take a few minutes to think of various types of virtual gadgets and the like that make more sense if there is multi-touch. Hint: Think games.
Are all of these reasons to dump your existing models of user interaction? No. Like Paul says multi-touch will be another option. I’m betting it’ll also enable some richer apps in some cases, richer collaboration in others, and convergence in interaction behaviors across a variety of devices.
Put together multi-touch is a compelling addition to Windows. Did Microsoft make the case for it at the D conference. Nope. The demos weren’t fresh, people had seen this stuff before, and many of the areas where I think multi-touch makes sense weren’t presented. Well, at least people walked away with the impression that Microsoft was arguing that multi-touch was going to catch fire on notebooks. Hopefully, developers will fill in the void and once Windows 7 beta starts shipping begin to come up with some creative uses for multi-touch.
Lora shares her thoughts too on where multi-touch fits in as it will become one more form of natural interaction that we can use with our computer devices.