Who wants multi-touch? I think I just might.

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Good to see the msalzberg I used to like reading: You've been gone so long I was beginning to wonder if you would ever come back!

But who knows what developers are coming up
with?

Yup, I believe I stated this and I agree. We'll have to see what they can come up with. 2 years with the iPhone and so far we have:
1. A zooming method that requires 2 hands and the iPhone users I've spoken with admit that they never use it, preferring the double tap zoom instead.
2. The ability to rotate pictures and I've yet to find a single iPhone owner who has used this feature.

Maybe multi-touch will need 10 years to flesh itself out like the scroll wheel did for you.

If they were, no one would have to tell you
how to use them, right?

The arrows on the bottom and RHS of the trackpad indicate that the functionality is there. No such thing exists in the Mac world. You may not think the Microsoft and Linux ways are 100% intuitive but one must be more intuitive than the other and the Apple way is less intuitive.

Also, now that the right side and bottom are reserved for scrolling, the already too small trackpad on my Dell(about 2" X 1 3/4") is reduced by about 1/4" in each dimension.

This is factually incorrect and makes me wonder if you have ever actually used this functionality on your Dell. Gestures that start at the RHS of the trackpad and continue vertically are vertical scrolls. Gestures that start at the bottom of the trackpad and continue horizontally are horizontal scrolls. Anything else is a cursor move. If I said that 90% of the new MacBook's buttonless trackpad is reserved for button clicks leaving only the top sliver for cursor moves, would I be correct? Of course not.

With Apple's method, scrolling is completely under the users' control, while with Microsoft's method, it's easily triggered by accident.

Again makes me wonder if you've ever actually used this feature. I've never accidentally triggered a scroll.

For me, it boils down to disappointment, not because I don't care about multi-touch but because it is being so hyped up and today's reality doesn't even come close to meeting that hype on single user consumer devices. Multi-touch is essential for things like Microsoft Surface and was neat during the elections but Surface is a multi-user device and the election coverage example is hardly a shining example of how consumers could use multi-touch. In the end, multi-touch gestures are unintuitive like 2 finger swipes and multi-touch movement of windows like in Minority Report is simply not something that most users will ever have the need to do.; Posted by: NonZealot Posted on: 11/06/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use