I Believe in Multi-touch

March 7, 2007

As we know, the iPhone's killer app is multi-touch, which allows you to use both hands to adjust on-screen elements. It lets you do cool things like resize photos and easily navigate contacts, emails or whatever. It's pretty cool.

Last week, Steven Berlin Johnson, who happens to be an author I quite enjoy, dreamed up a beautiful Apple rumor — multi-touch everywhere. I'll let you read his post, but the gist is that the new Apple monitors, that are rumored to be released soon, will be touch-screen enabled. Steven's rumor makes tons of sense as it explains a ton of old rumors and hard facts.

Some folks, specifically Gizmodo's Brian Lam, think multi-touch is dumb. Brian says, "I like my trackpad. I never have to take my hands off the keyboard to move my pointer." The post is almost certainly tongue-in-cheek, but if this rumor comes to fruition there will be plenty of people who cry foul, saying it's too big of a change.

I am here to preemptively tell these people to shove it, and here's why. As LCD prices get cheaper and our use of computers for entertainment viewing increases, we'll start using larger and larger screens. Those who have used large screens know that dragging a mouse from one end to the other is slow and a pain. Multi-touch would solve this problem for many applications.

Paradigm shifts are never easy, but I think multi-touch will greatly increase productivity. iPhoto still doesn't compare to having a stack of photos spread out on a counter top and I'm confident this new technology will make daily computing tasks more, not less, intuitive.

For those that need a little more convincing or background, watch this video for examples of multi-touch in use.

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