Under Pressure

Having a stylus (as a peripheral, or as part of the MacProTouch), is a good idea initially. You open a world to the user of drawing, writing, and possibly painting directly onto your computer.
Except for one small problem: pressure. Pressure is vital to all these forms of communication, because it allows for a subtly and various in pen/brush strokes that can not be replicated by a plastic supposed to be a pen.

Some styluses (?, stylusii?) use proximity to the surface to indicate pressure, but this has an unnatural feeling to the process and the user has to relearn the technique.
Nothing beats the pressure you feel as you place a pen against paper, how the paper responds to your every stroke. So the question is: should a touchscreen try and replicate this behavior?

I think it absolutely should. This for me is the key 'game-changer' of touch screens. The ability to draw/write naturally and then EDIT those sketches, is something that has never been done before.

Imagine Van Gogh painting sunflowers on the touchscreen the way he would on a canvas, furiously, naturally, the truest connection between man and canvas. Now imagine he can change each individual stroke, reuse it, animate it, delete it even. It opens up a new level of artistic expression and artistic perfection never before seen in the real world or virtual world of computing.
Imagine taking a sketch of a concept car and converting those lines to a 3d dimensional rendering which you can 'mould' in Autodesk. Gestural working a mould of clay on a 2d touchscreen connects the brain to the z axis in a new and exciting way, and ups the stakes for everyone. Now Photoshop and Autocad have entirely new software paradigms to construct.

A simple concept of pressure, can fundamentally change the software industry.

I should be able to take an actual paintbrush and use it on the MacProTouch. For every hair in the brush to be recorded, the pressure I use in the stroke, the speed. Then MacProTouch goes from entertainment system to a truly mindboggling system.

Microsoft Courier

By now, most of you have seen Microsoft's concept touchscreen laptop at gizmodo.

There are some great, and not so great ideas in here.

First, I have to say making it look and behave like a normal notepad, just makes me realize how fantastic and enduring the notepad and pen is! But I do like the use of the pen, and I think this could be an important peripheral for MacProTouch (I will describe the design in detail)

Second, the hinge........sigh, the hinge. Basically this is a laptop, on its side, with two touchscreens.
And then there's that hinge, stealing some valuable real estate, and mercilessly cutting my large touchscreen on which I can watch a movie in wide screen, into two smaller windows.
Well I guess I could watch two movies at the same time!
But yes, not a big lover of the loss of screen size to hardware.

Also the swiping from one part of the screen to the other...........why? WHY!? OK, i get it, its supposed to be more a journal than a large drawing tablet, but still, I feel a bit cheated on that one. Surely the UI is small enough and well designed enough to collectively order my work in the appropriate way. I am not sharing a file from one screen to the other, I'm simply moving it, seems a bit pointless.

One thing I love is that the camera is at the back of the laptop, so you can take pics of what you're looking at, this is something I did not consider in the MacProTouch, but now an infinite number of possibilities opens up. Record videos of your holiday with your laptop then send them to your friends........perhaps that's too much power!

The UI is good, but i think it is a little unintuitive, in fact it seems messier than what I would actually do in a journal. (make this project my homepage? - apparently we still live in a single-tasking world where consultants only work on one project a time, heaven!)

But still, I'm amazed Microsoft is thinking this way, its great actually, and any innovation is better that none.

But, oh........that pesky hinge.

Wouldn't it be simpler to have a single screen and include a 'journal' software program that splits the screen into the Courier style design? No loss of features OR real estate!

Gestural computing

Touchscreen is one thing, but how does this experience really differ from using a tablet pen, or a mouse? It's all just point and click, whether it be by arrow, or by finger.

If you look at an Apple keyboard you'll see icons representing some commands outside of a typical interface. e.g.dashboard, or expose.

The idea is simple, rather than put these on a touchscreen keyboard, use simple dashboards to indicate what you want.

E.g. a circle pops up dashboard, a square: expose.


Of course this means a few problems:
Gestural commands can be easily misinterpreted. A square with soft corners, could be perceived as a circle, for example.
Gestural commands have to be quick. No drawing the sun to indicate brightness, it would take too long.
Gestural commands might be limited initially.

But the potential of this new world of gestures, changes computing from a simple display to something truly interactive. You can 'speak' to your computer with simple signals, and really its the next step of evolution in computing: binary entry, command line, point and click, signal with natural gestures.

Imagine this new wave of sign language computing, and the possibilities. Application and game developers can create custom signs for their programs, users can interact with their computer and with each other, through simple gestures. Imagine your web cam even understands simple gestures. Now you can talk to your friend online, and signal to HIS computer activities you want to do. (share a document, send a smiley face, anything!)

It elevates how people interact with computers (badly) and puts us in the drivers seat because we can teach computers gestures they can learn from.