Talk:Multi-touch

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[edit] "Multi-Touch" in Minority Report

The "Multi-Touch" in Minority Report has *nothing* to do with Hans FTIR-Multitouch. As you can plainly see, the user has to wear a tracking device on its hands (with some visible-light LEDs) and doesn't even touch the screen but gestures around a lot (like pointing to a snippet in the far side of the screen and moving the index finger to the center in order to make it move there).

And gesture tracking is nothing new, the movie represented just the technical reality -- at the time of its making! todays trackers for example work without the special device and recognize plain hands.

apart from this, multi-touch is not hans invention (though multi-touch with FTIR is. and of course those nice apps), microsoft research for example has built "touch light" 1-2y earlier and invented the scaling technique Han uses for moving/scaling/rotating images with one motion (but it's very easy to make up by yourself as soon as you know what you want). and there are some non-transparent approaches, also (plus apps, but not as cool).

So maybe the article should lay off its "fanboyish" attitude to multitouch and list up the facts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.129.243.120 (talk) 20:15, 17 January 2007

____ I agree. I removed the ref to Minority Report once, and pop, it is back again. I have no interest in bouncing it back off and on. But there is simply no reason for it here. If you want a real Minority Report type interface, then go back to 1983 and references to Myron Krueger and Videoplace. Minority report was not even the first movie to demonstrate that kind of gestural interaction. But that's not the point. It is a trivial reference, contributes nothing, and adding material about the 25 year history of multi-touch would be a far more useful way to spend time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wasbuxton (talk • contribs)

[edit] Grammar

At present, part of the article looks like this: "FingerWorks has since been purchased by Apple, who has incorporated the technology into its iPhone. The firm Tactex Controls is one supplier of multi-touch pads."

I fixed this once, and someone (perhaps the over-sensitive original author of the article) has changed it: for anyone vaguely interested, look at the history:

Apple, who have incorporated the technology into their iPhone...


Anyway. I suggest that the latter is better. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.152.82.198 (talk) 16:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

It was reverted by Justanother with the edit summary "2nd time on this one. Grammar lesson: Companies and corporations are collective nouns. Collective nouns take singular verbs when referring to the collective nature of the group." -- intgr 19:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] multi-touch keyboard?

FingerWorks produced a line of keyboards that incorporated multi-touch gestures.
I'm having a hard time imagining how a multi-touch keyboard would work. Can anyone provide an example or a link where I can read up on it? -Pan Sola 15:09, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Check out chordic keyboards Pan Sola. Some of the first computer keyboards made, the BAT which was a part of Engelbert's original augmentation system, where chordic. --Rektide 16:27, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
I think they just have a multitouch pad as part of the keyboard, kinda like a laptop Fry-kun (talk) 01:35, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

I suggest replacement of most of the links, to meet with the Wikipedia policies, by this page:

An overview with demo videoclips related to touchscreens. A page about Jeff Han, TED conference, Microsoft Surface and lots of other touchscreen related stuff. -- KumpelBert 13:40, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. There was an excellent interview with Bill Gates regardin Microsoft Surface on the NBC Today Show today (Saturday, 2 June 2007). /Blaxthos 14:11, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for cleaning up the links, but how is this interview related to the problem of external links? -- intgr #%@! 14:18, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
It's not... it was just an aside/comment I placed there for convenience. /Blaxthos 15:17, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing Information

This article seems to not enough information about Apple's implementation of multi-touch with the iPhone and iPod Touch. It mainly describes the history of multi-touch. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Destin (talk • contribs) 13:24, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

This is because, in an encyclopedia, references to products that use a given technology is not necessary. For example, if you look up "plastic", you don't see a list of products that are made of plastic. Just because Product-X mentions using Technology-Y, that doesn't mean Technology-Y's article must also mention Product-X. Logically, multi-touch may become a commonplace among electronic devices, so it is assumed that the list will become quite lengthy in about a year or so. Therefore, we shouldn't be mentioning specific products today, and then a year from now put a stop to it or place some sort of rule on what products should be kept in and left out. Groink 00:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

How about the german company Balda who is making the multituch to Apple —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.226.71.112 (talk) 20:07, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MacBooks and MacBook Pros

The MacBook Pros already have MultiTouch (before the MacBook Air), but i'm not sure if the standard MacBooks have MultiTouch. Could someone verify this for me? Chris 02:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

To be fair, until today they didn't precisely have multi touch as I understand it...it could just tell a small touch from a big touch. My friend and I messed around with his and we got it to the the two finger scrolling with our knuckle. With the latest updates the two do have real multitouch though. Bassg☢☢nist T C 14:52, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] need disambiguation for IBM multitouch screens

If I understand correctly, some IBM tablets have "MultiTouch" screens - but in their case, it means you can either use a wacom pen or a finger. Nowhere do they boast multi-finger recognition (so it's a different technology) Fry-kun (talk) 01:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed - this needs clarification. Both WACOM and N-TRIG are marketing devices as multi-touch which are becoming popular in a number of 'convertible' laptop/tablet PC's. I had thought that in these cases the term multitouch referred to multiple touch input methods rather than the ability of the hardware to recognise multiple simultaneous points of contact, but there's a video here http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GeWN2p6jYaA showing a VP from N-TRIG demoing true multitouch and claiming that it's the same technology used in current OEM applications. I suspect the limiting factor here is not the hardware but the operating systems. Perhaps we'll see a Vista patch and updated driver that'll integrate some of the Microsoft Surface OS features in the not too distant future... (Sircompo (talk) 21:18, 22 May 2008 (UTC))