The first public showing of Microsoft's next major Windows update reveals an operating system with a familiar-looking dock and a more than slight emphasis on multi-touch displays.
Similar to what was demonstrated a year ago with the Surface table — as well as applications preloaded on the iPhone — the operating system will let users zoom into and rotate photos or maps using natural finger-based gestures, including pinching and flicking. Users can also draw multiple points at once a new version of Paint.
There will also be hooks for multi-touch throughout the entire Windows interface, Microsoft's Julie Larson-Green has said while demonstrating the technology, although none of these have been demonstrated at this early stage. The software is being built with multiple simultaneous users in mind now that touchscreens and other peripherals free users from being tied to a keyboard.
"In the next few years, the roles of speech, gesture, vision, ink, all of those will become huge," adds Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.
The technology to implement the feature outside of the multi-thousand-dollar Surface is already getting close, according to Larson-Green. An example Dell Latitude XT modified to recognize multiple inputs can already perform some of the functions with reasonable accuracy, while a larger desktop LCD smaller than the Surface is closer to Microsoft's intended experience.
While such technologies are expected to ultimately filter into most computer technology over time, their appearance at D6 effectively begins a race between Apple and Microsoft to commercialize a fully multi-touch desktop operating system. Apple is the first of the two to put any multi-touch product into the market with 2007's iPhone, but the Mac maker has so far limited its computer support to an enhanced trackpad for certain MacBooks that has only a handful of uses in Finder as well as some built-in apps, such as iPhoto.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based firm has all the same taken early steps to develop and patent forms of multi-touch that would extend to a whole software platform, including pressure-sensitive screens as well as unique advanced multi-touch surfaces that would be used for typing in addition to gesture input. The iPhone by itself has over 200 associated patents, many of which relate to its multi-touch display.
Whichever of the two wins the contest for touch interfaces, Microsoft may also have to explain a more conventional similarity in Windows 7 when it arrives as soon as late 2009. The still very young operating system features a revamped, more colorful taskbar and the conspicuous addition of a Mac OS X-like dock for quickly managing apps.
"Multi-touch and a Dock. In Windows," comments the Journal's John Paczkowski. "Steve Jobs would be proud."
106 Comments
Imagine a virus being able to steal your fingerprints or give you an electric shock, Ladies and Gentlemen...Welcome to Windows 7
Imagine a virus being able to steal your fingerprints or give you an electric shock, Ladies and Gentlemen...Welcome to Windows 7
Imagine a virus being able to steal your fingerprints or give you an electric shock, Ladies and Gentlemen...Welcome to Windows 7
hahaha very funny
i love how the lady kept on referring to the iphone, made me feel good knowing i own several apple products
Anyone who would use anything Microsoft makes unless they absolutely, positively had to must be nuts, or, retired with too much time on their hands. I dream of the day when the two programs I need for my work become web based and I can finally take my copy of Windows out and put a bullet in its brain.
Mind you, I'm surprised the demo went off at all, I saw the demo on their speech recognition software, THAT was hilarious!
When MS starts hyping a feature you know it's become passe.
The race to make a fully multi-touch desktop is absolutely absurd. Geez thanks
you've turned my computer into a Kiosk. I'm impressed.
Tell me why I would rather reach up and take two fingers and pinch or extend them to resize a picure when a mouse click in the area and a scroll of the mouse wheel could do the same thing with less effort?
Is this really what "innovation" has come to? You mean to tell me that the thousands of 1500+ SAT Comp Sci students over the years have put their thinking caps on for this?
Clearly MS has lost their minds and if Apple is trying to push the same absurdity they've lost theirs as well. Multi touch desktops are an anathema to ergonomic computing if you're talking about computing on a vertical surface. It's just a horrible idea.
Someone today with a rotator cuff injury could still compute. They certainly couldn't multi touch on a vertical screen without severe pain.
Multi touch is fine on a small portable device where you want to eschew a keyboard and mouse but makes absolutey NO sense on a deskop.
"Have IQs suddenly dropped while I was away?"
Lt Ripley