10 comments

Exactly what Apple wouldn’t do!

Can you imagine Steve’s face if he had to hold the screen with his other hand?

Look for MultiTouch on a tablet long before it comes to laptops (unless they are convertible laptops).

Cheers,
Ashley.

Ashley, on November 22nd, 2008 at 12:17 am

I begin to understand why Jobs stated that ‘for notebooks we haven’t yet been able to get convincing added value of multi touch interfaces’ or something like that. This looks clumsy!

Martijn, on November 22nd, 2008 at 1:52 am

LOL, it looks terrible. I take my at off to Apple for thinking out-of-the box yet again and introducing their “touch” features through the glass TrackPad instead of producing something like this hokey HP effort. No really, this guy doing the video, he must be trying to make it look bad, mustn’t he? This could not possibly be an effort to make the HP machine look good, it is way too bad.

Keith Thomas, on November 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 am

That video isn’t going to sell any laptops. Time to pull it.

The essential illusion that must occur for touch to be a success, is when you “touch”…something happens. Not a moment later - but immediately!

Otherwise you get either the frustrated second attempt, or the user thinks the touch action doesn’t work at this point in the the interface.

Immature.

Marco, on November 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 am

It’s interesting to see just how useless the multi-touch laptop is. A lot of suckers will buy this because they think the idea is cool. Unfortunately the execution isn’t.

They should have called it the TouchDumb.

Harvey, on November 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 am

From the video, all the multi-touch gestures look slow. On the iPhone, it zoom, pans, scrolls, or rotates WHILE I am doing the gesture. In the video, it looks as if the laptop reads the gesture and then performs the action. Given that is the case, I would write the whole thing off as gimmick.

kc! Bradshaw, on November 22nd, 2008 at 11:15 am

Now that was stupid.

Having to hold the screen still with your left hand, while touching the screen with your right.

Yeah, right. Steve Jobs will love that idea (not!).

Getting the screen oily is also going to be enjoyable. You’ll have to keep a cleaning cloth handy.

The touch response is also slow. That is not up to Apple’s standards.

Looks like a loser to me.

James Katt, on November 22nd, 2008 at 3:53 pm

Not terribly surprising - touch interface technology for laptops and desktops simply isn’t prime time yet, regardless of what HP’s Touchsmart PC commercials tell you. Sure, it can be useful for scrolling between photos and controlling a media player’s play/pause buttons, but good luck trying to do anything a bit more detailed.

That being said, I’m still of the mind that multi-touch/keyboard combinations will eventually prove to be the future of displays and computing outside of the office. We just need to watch the technology evolve a bit, and I think Apple’s got it right so far.

phoenix, on November 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm

The touch-screen should be okay in tablet mode, but needing to possibly use two hands to swipe and tap in notebook mode is just a bit too much. What’s odd is that it looks like it still has a click pad, so the touch-screen input is just an alternative means. It might be fun at first, but I would think it would get tiresome fairly quickly. Those screen hinges are definitely not tight enough if everytime you need to make a pressure gesture the screen tilts back further.

Touch input in fine for devices that lie flat, but I don’t see it as being useful to have to keep raising your arm constantly to input commands on a vertical surface. A multi-touch pad right below the keyboard wins hand-down.

I don’t think this is going to be a big seller and I think users will have quite a few complaints about having to repeat touch commands.

iphonerulez, on November 22nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm

Well I’m not surprised a room full of Mac fan-boys shit all over what looks to be a decent lap top just cause there isn’t an apple on it. I suppose of you had to operate the thing with only your hands the touch would be a problem but using combination of keyboard and screen you would be able to navigate quickly. The video also fails to mention the whole “tablet” part of the lap top which allows you to get a stylus out and take notes etc. You don’t have to hold the screen in tablet mode, where I’m assuming the touch would mostly be used… look I’m not saying it is the end all be all, but lets give credit where its due and take into account ALL the features of said product. If you ask me you are just pissed there is no multi touch Mac laptop, if there was you’d all be saying how useful it was and how smart Steve Jobs is for coming up with a cool idea.

Seth, on March 25th, 2009 at 7:44 am