What is Digg?179 Comments
- quirkie, on 05/28/2008, -2/+88New research confirms: "Touchscreens dirtier than toilet seats."
- uselessexpert, on 05/28/2008, -32/+102Here we go!
All the Apple fanboys are going to start bad mouthing Windows again.
Nothing Windows does is never nice, or good for most of them. - IFEice, on 05/28/2008, -11/+72That's some pretty interesting stuff, although I can't help but think that, why would people bother moving entire arms, when they could simply move their wrist?
Still a wonderful addition. - colincornaby, on 05/28/2008, -13/+57The point of multitouch is it works well on really horizontally oriented systems. Handhelds, tablets, tables. Yet, for some reason, Microsoft is trying to shoehorn multitouch into laptop and desktop displays. I don't want to have to reach forward onto my vertical LCD and get my fingerprints all over it. Work on fixing your Vista problems, Microsoft. Setting up sharing shouldn't be spread over 3 sections of the network control panel. Multitouch should be a side release, much like the tablet edition of XP, not a major release.
- ozroy, on 05/28/2008, -7/+41You are right. Just look at the thread on Macrumors.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=49002 ...
Of course if this was OSX then they would all be gushing praise. - nymphetamine, on 05/28/2008, -2/+36Interactive porn.
- acidbathfan, on 05/28/2008, -5/+33It'll be great for people like me who use software to make music and don't really like using hardware mixers.
- 3leggedHorse, on 05/28/2008, -11/+33Gimmick
- killbert24, on 05/28/2008, -1/+18Man my arms would get tired fast if I had to keep them up and moving all day long at the monitor. It would only be good for laptops.
A mouse and keyboard seem more efficient even though this is "cooler" and "prettier". - cquinnd, on 05/28/2008, -0/+16From whom?
Touch Screens have been around for decades. Even variants like Surface technology and iPhone like interfaces stand on prior art. - KMartSheriff, on 05/28/2008, -2/+17Who gives a ***** who did it first. I love using the multi-touch on my MacBook Pro, but that doesn't mean I get a hard on for Apple. I'm so sick of this "Apple/Microsoft did this first! Macs/PCs suck! LOL" childish crap. Grow up.
- mikephimikephi, on 05/28/2008, -6/+19Microsoft, please start innovating again!
The progress of modern computing slows when Microsoft continually works to keep up, rather than offering something new and exciting.
Sony spent years trying to catch up to Microsoft in the sphere of online gaming. I want an industry where Apple and Microsoft go toe-to-toe delivering new revolutionary technologies. - qbthemc, on 05/28/2008, -13/+26I do not care about having touch abilities in an operating system frankly. I would want to see more videos of Windows 7 compared to its predecessor operating systems dealing with faster boot up, applications, Internet etc.
- skoles, on 05/28/2008, -5/+17Loose lips? More like building up hype to keep people from getting curious about what OS X was offering already compared to what Vista was promising at the time.
I was a PC user from Window 95 to 2k and I felt that Win2k was their best OS to date. After I saw the keynote from Jobs showing what Tiger was bringing to the table I made the switch and haven't regretted it.
I love how people say XP is the best compared to Vista, but lets remember how long XP sucked before it got "better". Microsoft really needs to rebuild and streamline their next OS from the ground up. Screw legacy support to try and squeeze an upgrade out of every user still chugging on a PIII or Celeron, you have your old OS for that.. Start fresh and make it work with computers no later than the previous 3 years. - iofthestorm, on 05/28/2008, -6/+18So you want to watch youtube videos of a computer starting up? OK... FWIW Vista starts up and launches programs faster than XP on a machine with a good amount of RAM (2GB or more) because everything is cached in RAM.
- Morghin, on 05/28/2008, -13/+23*****, touch screens are coming. Whoopla. What a surprise, and how new, novel, and wonderful! Like I care more about a touch screen than I care about the rest of the OS.
Now get rid of the 500 layers of buggering DRM and control, slim the OS down, and make something NEW damnit. Stop being the ape that only mimic and evolve a bit. Please. Stupid M$ is getting increasingly left behind.
Sure they bring out new tech, and lots of old tech that mimics others, but do they use it for our good? No. Gogo Linux and MacOS for innovation and consumer-centric software. - Zodiachus, on 05/28/2008, -1/+11Like so many others in here, I will have to refer to Jeff Han. He has been doing this for years before it was even hinted at by either Apple or Microsoft.
As far as I can tell, his implementations (hardware and software) are superior to what Apple or Microsoft has to offer as well. Observe: http://www.perceptivepixel.com/ - dullnation, on 05/28/2008, -0/+9I believe he meant he doesn't like physical dials and buttons all over the place.
- thecosmicpope, on 05/28/2008, -1/+9It's an operating system, not a design pack.
- ozroy, on 05/28/2008, -1/+9They just demonstrated it on a touch capable laptop. Remember MS don't make the computer hardware.
I imagine this will be used in tablets. Possibly in tablet/laptop combo machines.
This should not be a seperate product. Why have multiple product lines? As long as you can use the OS in the "traditional" manner then why care if you can use it as a touch screen as well. Besides there will be applications where this would be useful, like photo manipulation etc. - quikboy, on 05/28/2008, -1/+8I love the Virtual Earth demo too. Looked nice and great for multi-touch.
I wouldn't say that was Live Maps though. It didn't really have the Live Maps UI. To clarify:
Live Maps - consumer-oriented online mapping service
Virtual Earth - the geospatial mapping technology behind Live Maps. (and can be utilized by other companies) - MacSuxWindozSux, on 05/28/2008, -1/+8If they started to compete with Adobe, they would probably be immediately fined by the EU for anti-competitive practices.
Lets not forget they were a hair away from being split in two for simply including a web browser in Windows. At the time Netscape charged 70 Dollars for their web browser.
They were almost fined about a billion dollars because they wanted to lock the Vista kernel to prevent security breaches. The Anti-Virus companies complained to the EU.
If they included something as good or near to Photoshop in every copy of Windows, Adobe would have a hard time selling Photoshop for 1000 Dollars. They would complain, Microsoft would be heavily fined, or banned from Europe. If they managed to make it through, Adobe would be ruined even with a better product.
What they could do instead is offer the software as a free download. - JQP123, on 05/28/2008, -1/+8The touch screen hardware is not new. The user interface (i.e. the software) they're building around this hardware is the "new" part.
- adderx99, on 05/28/2008, -2/+8interactive screens are cool all of 15 minutes. and then the novelty wares off. google a guy named Johnny Chung Lee, hes done basically the same thing with existing hardware and a wiimote. hes got a bunch of videos on youtube, and im pretty sure its open source. its fun for 15 min, and then your arms get tired, and you decide to go back to the mouse.
- FKnight, on 05/28/2008, -1/+7And before anyone bitches about Vista caching stuff in RAM and how that "uses all of your memory" -- remember, the Ubuntu folk thought it was so cool they implemented that too.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 05/28/2008, -2/+8Vista better judges what programs to Pre-Cache or pre-load better than XP or MacOS. (Don't get angry Apple is always improving stuff).
The idea before was that you'd start the computer. Launch an Application, it would take a long time. Then if you launched it again while it was running they'd share memory and if would launch fast. If you launched it again without already running instances, the OS would still already have it in memory and it would launch faster.
This behavior is easily seen on MacOS and WindowsXP, you can test this yourself. What Vista does, is tracks your behavior, and pre-loads your Application without you doing anything. So it can have it load fast the first time you launch. Clearly it won't load all Applications fast all the time.
People complain that it's using more memory. That's because of this feature. When a program needs more memory, it overwrites this cache. This doesn't take extra time because the memory doesn't have to be flushed, just overwritten.
Plain and simple that's what's really going on, when people say Vista is faster. - modusop, on 05/28/2008, -5/+11I can't believe people are impressed by this - it's the same demo Jeff Han has been giving for years. I know, it's on a laptop - we all knew this was coming though.
- deslock, on 05/28/2008, -1/+7What cracks me up is all the Mac fans saying
1) how tired their arms will get (weak arms?)
2) they don't want to get fingerprints on their screen (OCD?)
3) how OS X will get it first and better (penis envy?)
Bahahaha. Love em. - ninetimes, on 05/28/2008, -3/+9Personally, I'm more impressed by the fact that Microsoft seems to have *finally* updated MS Paint. At least that might actually be useful.
It's not impressive to me that they have multi-touch technology, or that it's in something as small as a laptop. It already exists in consumer products that small. The question is, can you as a software vendor come up with good uses of the technology that will actually help people get things done. The fact that Microsoft has people manually arranging photos and playing a virtual keyboard answers that question with a resounding "no". They have not come up with anything new that people can use.
We've already seen the tech used for sorting pictures (which is neat looking but not that useful as far as I can tell) and navigating Google maps. There would be obvious uses for applications like Photoshop/illustrator, and I could imagine some for video/audio editing software. Also it could make sense for tablets where you don't have a keyboard/mouse. But if Microsoft is trying to "show off", they're doing a piss-poor job by showing someone performing a bunch of absolutely useless tasks using a technology we've all seen before. - msmearcheck, on 05/28/2008, -11/+17They still can't come up with anything better than MS Paint?
Awful. - MacParrot, on 05/28/2008, -1/+7A good idea is a good idea. MS showed some of this with Surface, Apple has showed it with some of the iLife programs. A touch interface addition is hardly ground breaking and neither company has pushed to have developers make exclusive versions using it with their software. The last thing that Apple or MS (or digg for that matter) needs is another excuse to slam each other.
Why not just be happy that both are working on some cool additions to their respective operating systems? - ozroy, on 05/28/2008, -1/+7What is that supposed to mean? Linux does have some multitouch in development
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co3FONI6kHU - MWeather, on 05/28/2008, -2/+7We say it's nice that Windows has added yet another feature Linux already had.
- estvir, on 05/28/2008, -3/+8It's mud/dirt.
Go outside your mother's basement once, you'll be amazed what's out there. - KMartSheriff, on 05/28/2008, -2/+7Wow. Talk about underwhelming. Multi-touch? Sure, one day. But is that really all they have to show so far?
- fugazied, on 05/28/2008, -0/+5Yeah it seems the technology really suits portable devices and tablets. For desktops, the mouse seems more efficient, and ideally a mouse incorporating multitouch would be the winner. A mouse where placing your fingers on a certain point changes the way the UI operates could be cool.
- worminater, on 05/28/2008, -0/+4Fanboyism (or anti-fanboyism?) entertains me. Microsoft implements a feature that exists somewhere else; and gets trashed for stealing it and never innovating.
Microsoft does something new? It's a testament that windows needs a complete core rewrite. If Apple demo'd this? I bet everyone would be *all* over it as the next big thing.
Hypocrisy at it's finest (written from ubuntu 7.10). - assassinmaids, on 05/28/2008, -1/+5Microsoft has always pushed for handheld tablet like devices, UMPC, origami, laptop/tablet combo so this would be a natural progression for the OS to build on.
Remember this is just a feature of Windows 7, it doesn't mean that you have to use it if it doesn't suit your needs. - clubdirthill002, on 05/28/2008, -2/+6I think this was designed for tablets, not your desktop PC. That wouldn't make sense.
- diggitmofo, on 05/28/2008, -0/+4BLARRRRRRRRRRR NEGATIVE WINDOWS COMMENT ALL CAPS!!!!!
Multi touch is ***** cool! - MacParrot, on 05/28/2008, -0/+4Back in the mid 80s while Apple and MS were creating windowing operating systems, the old school DOS guys were saying much the same thing about the command line interface.
Eventually the mouse will go away as a way of managing what's going on or about to happen on your screen. Will it be a touch interface or voice commands or some combination? I have no idea but kids in 20 years will laugh at people still trying to interface with a computer with a mouse. - Magnus150, on 05/28/2008, -1/+5They don't really develop suites for that, they let 3rd parties do so.
- doshindude, on 05/28/2008, -9/+13Why is every single company proclaiming touchscreens like they are some new thing? They've been around for 15+ years!
- xaeon, on 05/28/2008, -5/+8...exactly, and what does that tell you? Windows needs a complete core rewrite, not a flashy gimmick that no one will find real uses for. Touchscreens aren't innovation, I'm afraid.
From what I'm seeing of Windows 7, it's going to be the same old same old with a few more bells and whistles. That's not what I want. - silverj, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3As far as I remember, it got one with vista
- estvir, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3Yes, because UNIX AIX is comparable to a consumer version of Windows..
- aliguana, on 05/28/2008, -1/+4yeah... 30 years of school, college, university, 24/7 geekery, and I'll be able to go back to kindergarten fingerpainting....
- ThirdPrize, on 05/28/2008, -1/+4Same as voice recognition. Most people won't need/use it. It is only certain applications, in certain environments, in which it may be useful.
- worminater, on 05/28/2008, -7/+10works to keep up? And who else has a multi-touch desktop OS by chance?
- aliguana, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3I wouldn't say Linux is consumer-centric (other than the price). Geek/dev centric maybe.
But yeah, Microsoft and Apple are so close to each other, dispite everything, that there is little apart from the skin to tell the OSs apart. Linux just tries its best to be like MS and Apple, instead of trying something new. And no, rotating Beryl desktops isn't what I'm talking about... -
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