I was showing my five year old daughter panoramic photos of different cities when she started to touch the screen to make it do things, ala my iPhone. Her efforts only put finger prints on the screen, but had no measurable effect on what the computer did of course. I think Steve Jobs assertion that no one would want to use multitouch on a laptop/notebook screen is one that will get reconsidered in a year.
4 thoughts on “I think Steve Jobs got this one wrong”
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Hey Jamie, It’s Amy (of Dan Melnechuk fame), here, and I think what he meant was that your arm gets so tired after a more than a few minutes that a vertical orientation for a touch screen is not user-friendly. Not that you don’t want to reach out and touch a screen, especially if you’ve used an iPad or other touch screen. Get your kids an iPad! But not till the next one comes out, it will have a camera for Facetime.
Hi Amy!
I am not sure that people would be using multitouch gestures for minutes on end for many applications (except games, perhaps), so I don’t think that Jobs’ rationale holds up. While I have not used multitouch on a mac, it does seem rather limiting.
My view is that notebooks / laptops should do both. I like the iPad as a device, but writing & cut/paste are just faster and more accurate on a physical and not virtual keyboard. Of course, even iPads may be replaced by iGlasses and a VR interface in five to ten years so who knows for sure.
Hi Jamie, The iglasses I tried on years ago at a trade show were a headache machine. But that was then, I am sure they’ll be a lot lighter and better in the future. And I guess that all the fingerprints I have cleaned off over the years on my regular monitors show that people DO want to touch.
There are some cool augmented reality apps on the iPhone that if they were in normal glasses could be helpful once the ui kinks are worked out. Of course then ads will popup everywhere. We’ll see how iGlasses goes in a few years, I guess.