Windows 7 Multitouch Demonstration

Starturtle writes "Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have shown a small snippet of the upcoming Windows 7 at Walt Mossberg's D: All Things Digital conference. It seems like the Windows team have switched their focus for inspiration from Mac OS X to the iPhone OS. Multitouch is the biggest addition, and will appear system-wide, usable anywhere. The most interesting part of the touch UI is not the eye candy, it's the Task Bar, which seems to have morphed into a pie menu."

great

[pak9rabid (1011935)]

Another feature that will probably become vaporware. Trying to get the shareholders happy are we?

Re:great

[0100010001010011 (652467)]

Betting pool anyone?

This feature will be announced as removed March 2009.

How they will break apple's multi touch patents

[goombah99 (560566)]

Apple has been patenting a lot of aspects of multi-touch. I assume this is possible because they purchased the right to do so from the original "inventors".

IN any case when asked how Windows7 will support the "pinch" feature they demoed without violating apple's patent, the spokesman said that like Longhorn, windows 7 won't arrive till those patents are well expired.

Re:How they will break apple's multi touch patents

[Tufriast (824996)]

I see one problem with all this: Where's the beef? It is nice to see that we're moving forward with the GUI - but does it do anything good? I've used a wide variety of OSes and I can say without a doubt this does little to advance the GUI as I see it. I think that touch interfaces are great on non-desktop oriented environments, but beyond that...I'm not so sure touch SCREENS really make sense. I'm not going to be touching a 24 inch monitor - plain and simple. It's big, expensive, and I would hate for it to look all finger-printed and messy. I want to see a touchscreen "panel" or "keyboard" or "control pad" - not this.

Re:How they will break apple's multi touch patents

[travbrad (622986)]

Yeah, I agree. I think a mouse is faster and more accurate anyway. It has the "cool factor" but it's not really that practical. Plus my puny geek arms would get sore holding them up all day ;)

Re:How they will break apple's multi touch patents

[Tom (822)]

I want to see a touchscreen "panel" or "keyboard" or "control pad" - not this.

Google for "TouchStream" - they created a multitouch keyboard five or six years ago, if I remember correctly. I own one, great technology especially for that time. They went bancrupt because it was too early (and the stuff was too expensive for a mass market). Make a guess who bought them up?

That's right, Apple.

Ans: M.A.D.

[itsdapead (734413)]

Apple and Microsoft must have attained Mutually Assured IP Destruction by now - if they open the silo doors on their patent portfolios and press the red buttons then it won't be over until its Microsoft's patent on the universal Turing machine vs. Apple's patent on "representing information via a system of symbols"** and there's nothing left but the cockroaches. (What's that? the cockroaches have been nibbling on GM grain and are now owned by Monsanto? Darn!)

(** I seriously hope that I am making this shit up, but the way things are going...)

Re:How they will break apple's multi touch patents

[klubar (591384)]

It's the same old question, are you moving the window or the frame?

Why is this modded flamebait?

[zeromorph (1009305)]

Why is this modded flamebait?

If we take the history of Longhorn/Vista into account, it's very much possible that it will never be realized on a real production level. Disclosing it now, is clearly a move to stay in the news, which is mainly relevant the stock market.

Come on, what were the last great news from Redmond? They clearly need some publicity, so yes it might be vaporware.

What Kind of Fund Manager

[mpapet (761907)]

would take this stuff seriously? The problem is most will.

1. Sure microsoft delivers above-average returns and that's enough reason for hanging onto it. But stock prices have some -future prospects- built into it. I see none at Microsoft. Zero. Especially when they flush dev resources down the drain for their forthcoming knock-off iPhones that probably won't see the light of day for a decade.

Off-topic

My gut feeling is, there's a growing reality distortion field that most of the people/groups managing funds are working in. If I had to guess, I'd say their math/quant models are wrong because these are a relatively new set of economic conditions. News disguised as PR fills this gap nicely and brings some sense of equilibrium back.

Meanwhile some hack on ./ can be laughed at for calling some dev groups blood, sweat and tears, and management's gravy train broken.

Flame on!

Pie menu?

[bennomatic (691188)]

Mmm... pie...

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

It appears that you are trying to choose a pie. Allow/deny?

Re:Pie menu?

[sm62704 (957197)]

It saddens me that Microsoft is using the pie menu before open source did it. The pie menu is something I've been after for years. Perhaps we'll see it in Gnome or (preferably IMO) KDE before Windows 7 is ever released?

Re:Pie menu?

[Lars T. (470328)]

Perhaps we'll see it in Gnome or (preferably IMO) KDE before Windows 7 is ever released?

Well, that should be easy. Just wait a couple of years, then start working on it.

Re:Pie menu?

[LtCmdrJoel (1115635)]

The cake is a pie.

Is Someone Hungry?

[FurtiveGlancer (1274746)]

"The most interesting part of the touch UI is not the eye candy, it's the Task Bar, which seems to have morphed into a pie menu."

Emphasis added.

First donut universes, now candy bars and pies. Just go to lunch, you insenitive clods.

makes no sense...

[jgarra23 (1109651)]

Why 2 articles so close about what WON'T be in Windows 7 and now what WILL be in Windows 7... ? Maybe I'm not seeing the forest for the trees but what kind of marketing tactics are these?

For instance in the movie industry... in a highly anticipated movie, let's say a book-to-movie one, you never hear about what they've LEFT OUT until the reviews start pouring in. OTOH, we hear "all about the great scene from the book that's also in the movie"... well before the reviews in the previews or buzz...

Or with Apple announcements we hear at best rumors about what will & won't be in it...

and then we hear from Microsoft a while back (forgive me for not recalling the article) that there won't be much external buzz about the contents of Windows 7 & that development will be much more "sealed" or "internal" for lack of better words...

so why the change of heart? Why are we hearing so much about what will & won't be there? There has to be more reason to this than to just generate some sort of overall interest via marketing in this respect, and I'm wondering beyond the typical answer "...because their last OS sucked ass" mainly because that answer doesn't really answer anything... any more insightful ideas?

Re:

[owlnation (858981)]

Why 2 articles so close about what WON'T be in Windows 7 and now what WILL be in Windows 7... ?

What it does is allow us to see that there's no lessons learned from Vista. In the previous article we learned that meaningful and useful features would not be included. In this article we've learned that there will be even more eye candy.

Sound familiar?

Next they'll be telling us Windows 7 is delayed... (count on it)

Re:makes no sense...

[Jason Levine (196982)]

In Microsoft's defense, there's a thin line they have to walk here. People already aren't enthused about Vista. If they hype up Windows 7 too much then they lose Vista sales to people who would rather wait for Windows 7. Plus, they run the risk of having to cut features, thus bursting the hype bubble, disappointing those people who waited through Vista for Windows 7, and losing more customers to Apple (and possibly to Linux as well). If, however, they don't hype Windows 7 enough, then people will see Vista as Microsoft's only option and will seriously look at Apple (and possibly Linux as well) for their future upgrade paths. This scares Microsoft as it is harder to convince an "Apple convert" to come back to Windows than it will be to convince XP holdouts (like myself) to upgrade to Windows 7.

Useless

[VisceralLogic (911294)]

The vast majority of people aren't going to be using touch screens... this is just for show. There's a reason this doesn't already exist in OS X.

Re:

[oahazmatt (868057)]

The vast majority of people aren't going to be using touch screens... this is just for show. There's a reason this doesn't already exist in OS X.

I agree. I was wondering if this was a case of "innovation for the better" or "innovation for the sake of innovation". I keep leaning towards the latter.

Re:

[clampolo (1159617)]

It seems pretty cool. Could be fun to program in an editor that will take advantage of it. My worry is with having to buy an expensive new monitor to use it.

why?

[evilkasper (1292798)]

why would they add multi touch? Does windows need this feature? My main gripe with Vista is that it is not a good platform for business. I was really hoping Windows 7 would be more of a corporate OS, but with them showcasing all these superficial eye candy features I am inclined to think that we will see something more akin to Vista on roids.

Pie menus again?

[jandrese (485)]

Pie menus are one of those things that get a lot of attention in academic circles because they have some obvious advantages (menu choices are always the same distance away), but in the real word they always run into problems. The first and biggest problem is scaling. How many items do you have on your start menu right now? How big would the pie get to accommodate all of them? Other problems include what do do when someone clicks on the edge of the screen and how to make it so the user can browse through submenus if they have to (a common operation when you're not sure where something is and you have to hunt for it).

None of these problems are impossible to deal with, but I've yet to see a pie menu system that even attempted to. I would be surprised if Windows 7 ships with pie menus, at least for the start menu.

There are cases where pie menus make a lot of sense, but those tend to be cases where the number of options are relatively small and never change, like in drawing programs.

Re:Pie menus again?

[Nodlehs (860786)]

It seemed to me the task bar was the way it has always been in the initial portion of the video (The entire time he is manipulating photo's is a normal taskbar. Then they went to the full screen map program, which looked like a pie menu for the program options (IE: toggle satellite view, etc). I don't think their normal taskbar is going anywhere, I think the wired article got it wrong.

Practically possible?

[esarjeant (100503)]

An interesting extension of the multi-touch, although it tends to make more sense on something like Surface or the iPod Touch where keyboard input isn't possible.

I'm not sure how practical this configuration would be. Desktop computers and laptops currently rely on the keyboard and mouse input paradigm, while it may be possible to learn another skill (touching your screen) this will be even more time consuming than moving between the keyboard and the mouse.

Maybe some kiosk applications and the tablet edition of Vista will be viable, I just don't see how this can be deployed to the desktop in a practical fashion.

More tech without design

[StreetStealth (980200)]

The real problem here is that Microsoft is just regurgitating what we saw from Jeff Han two years ago.

Draggable freely-resizeable photo viewer? Amazing, MS, welcome to 2006! Pinch-zoom map viewer? Again, good to see you MS engineers watched Han's TED presentation on Youtube; I liked it too!

So they can integrate a (laggy) version of the tech into the OS. Step 1, done.

Now, how about some actual design? Copying two-year-old TED videos doesn't count; let's see some insight into how this tech can be used to make managing files easier, make navigating data relationships easier, and so on. Seriously, fire half your UI "design" team and replace them with the folks who built Photosynth; maybe bring in some of the Zune embedded UI team too; they might figure out how to actually make a decent multi-touch UI for Windows 7.

Or will Ballmer be content to just have "OH LOOK PHOTO SORTING" on top of a slightly less stable and slightly more DRMed future Windows release?

If history is anything to go by...

Re:Practically possible?

[noewun (591275)]

I was about to post something similar: I think this is another case of MS mistakintg form for content. The important thing isn't the multitouch interface which, as been pointed out, have been around in one form or another for almost twenty years. The point is to make a multitouch interface which is both usable and to package it in an environment in which is makes sense to use it. The iPhone/iPod is a perfect example: it's a small device on which real estate is at a premium, and the multitouch interface allows Apple to combine browsing, typing and a number of other features in one place. And, as has also been pointed out, since the iPhone/iPod rests in your hand, using the interface with your fingers is both easy, non-tiring and largely intuitive.

The interface doesn't make any sense on a laptop, though. My laptop already has two perfectly good interfaces, the keyboard and the trackpad. Given that these interfaces allow me to keep my hands and arms in a relatively restful position, why would I want to add another interface which makes me take my hands off the keyboard and away from the trackpad to do things I can do without using it? Put another way, unless the multitouch interface allows me to do something unique, which I can't do without out the keyboard an dtrackpad (or which are cumbersome with them) it doesn't make using my laptop any easier. It just adds some bells and whistles which I don't need.

Nothing interesting here...

[binaryspiral (784263)]

Multi-touch isn't going to help me do my job any easier and I really don't want users pinching and dragging their dirty mits around the new LCD monitors...

In the end though, these features will be in the Ultimate Uber Windows 7, not the version I'll be getting for our desktop users due to costs. We'll end up with yet more of the same features, renamed, and shuffled around in the OS just enough to justify retraining.

So what does that leave me with Windows 7? Looking for desktop alternatives or hoping they extend the XP licensing and support for a few more years.

Offtopic: Why do graphics still suck?

[JustinOpinion (1246824)]

Okay, this is slightly off-topic, but: Why is it that even with our modern hardware, graphics are sometimes still very laggy?

If you look at the start of the video in TFA, you'll see a demo where images are being dragged around via multi-touch. The thing that really bothers me is that the movement of the image is lagging behind the person's finger. My question is: why? Modern hardware is very fast and powerful. The demo computer probably had awesome specs, including a dedicated high-end graphics card. I have trouble believing that this kind of hardware can't update an image position at video rates.

The obvious answer is that the code isn't good. Perhaps it just hasn't been optimized (maybe it's just a tech demo). But frequently even in final implementations I see this kind of behavior.

One of the main ideas with multi-touch displays (and dragging to scroll, zoom, etc.) is to generate an "intuitive" interface that responds in a very "natural" way. But in my opinion, you totally ruin the desired natural immersion if the display cannot keep up with your actions. After all, the idea is to somewhat simulate physical interaction (e.g. shuffling papers)... but in physical reality, we don't experience any kind of "lag" waiting for physics to catch-up.

So, I think more effort should be put into cleaning up those kinds of things. It may seem like a trivial point, but those kinds of details can subtly but crucially affect the user experience (and can mean the difference between an interface that seems to respond to your thoughts, vs. one that is frustrating). I should note that this is an area where Apple has frequently done the right thing. They seem to put a lot of effort into making display transitions very fast and smooth.

Re:Offtopic: Why do graphics still suck?

[TechyImmigrant (175943)]

The obvious answer is that the code isn't good.

Got it, first guess.

-jcr

The trouble is, when you put together an unoptimized, unscalable, hastily coded demo to prove the feasibility of something or to make a stopgap before the real version is available the code *lasts forever*. The real version doesn't come and hack is laid on top of hack to make the demo the real thing and you own it.

Hence the quickie stopgap I put together in shell scripts and python in three months is now production code critical to a multi billion dollar business and it regularly demands attention from me and only me. The team of programmers didn't arrive.

I expect this will be no different.

OLPC pie menu?

[feranick (858651)]

The XO has exactly the same type of pie menu to switch from one application to another. Nothing new.

And glass cleaner sales go through the roof...

[ivanmarsh (634711)]

I have no interest in touching my screen until they invent technology impervious to fingerprints.

Drivers

[Telvin_3d (855514)]

Multitouch? This is the big thing that will sell the next windows? This is not a OS feature. This is a driver for a specific class of hardware. People with Wacom Cintiq tablets have been doing the exact same thing for years now.

Not to mention that there is no support for this. After all, how many people/corporations buying commodity windows hardware are going to pay the premium to get all their screens with high quality touch?

Also, pie menu is interesting, but problematic. Does it float over the other windows or sit under? Can it be moved around? Will we have to alt-tab to get to the Start menu? How nice will it play with multiple screen setups and other non standard desktop layouts?

Re:Drivers

[dgatwood (11270)]

I'm losing my chance to moderate so I can reply to this. Yes, it is an OS feature. Simple gesture support for devices is easy to do in a driver, but is nowhere near what you really want out of multitouch. An ideal implementation should allow applications to deal with multiple simultaneous touches, drag events, etc. simultaneously. For example, an audio editor application should allow me to use three fingers to push three sliders simultaneously up and ride them while a finger on my other hand touches a mute button on channel 3 to pull it out of the mix because I'm planning to cut that 30 seconds out but haven't had a chance to do it yet.

To handle such things, the application must be able to simultaneously get multiple touch events at different locations that indicate that a finger has gone down at a particular spot and now is moving in a particular manner. These finger events must then remain individually trackable. To handle this correctly requires significant extensions to the event system of the host OS, probably on an opt-in basis to avoid confusing applications that only support simple events like click/drag or lightweight touch events like zoom in/zoom out. Therefore, it pretty much has to be an OS feature.

The only way I can think of to do this without OS changes would be to allow an application to capture the device and take exclusive control and communicate with it directly outside of normal OS channels (e.g. a user client). Those sorts of designs are okay for specialized devices like tablets that only one or two apps will ever care about, but they are hardly ideal for input devices that are intended to be general purpose.

Slow

[wonkavader (605434)]

I notice that this machine redraws on zooms quickly, and creates a travel route quickly. That means the box has some real horsepower.

And yet, the dragging is way behind the finger, the responses of input and menu popup is slow -- it looks like running a modern paint program on an old machine.

This is not going to make for a pleasant user experience. Why is that stuff so uncrisp?

Re:Slow

[by Anonymous Coward]

I notice that this machine redraws on zooms quickly, and creates a travel route quickly. That means the box has some real horsepower.

And yet, the dragging is way behind the finger, the responses of input and menu popup is slow -- it looks like running a modern paint program on an old machine.

This is not going to make for a pleasant user experience. Why is that stuff so uncrisp?

It is still a early pre-release. Give Microsoft time and they can slow down the redraw and zoom also.

Multi crash

[192939495969798999 (58312)]

Multi-touch will be accompanied by multi-crash, where Windows tries to compete with multiple apps for kernel priority at the same time from you trying to touch multiple things, and then they will all independently crash! yay.

Flamebait?

[Facegarden (967477)]

Umm, guys? Can we be a bit more professional in the article and not include flame-inducing comments like "It seems like the Windows team have switched their focus for inspiration from Mac OS X to the iPhone OS."? The whole MS sucks, or Apple sucks, or MS is copying apple, etc thing is really annoying for us non-fanboys, and the least you can do is let some annoying commenter make those references, it's really annoying to see it IN the article... -Taylor

Re:Correction

[peragrin (659227)]

Given that apple probably spent 2 years working on their own touch system for the iPhone before it was even announced you might want to check your dates.

Besides touch tech has been going back to the 1980's it just is starting to become practical. personally there are a lot of interfaces that are perfect for touch input methods.

Telemarketing call centers, restaurants are already using it, retail POS, kiosks, etc.

multi-point touch is going to be a key third input method. the mouse and keyboard are the first two.

Re:Correction

[NothingMore (943591)]

I Agree with your assessment, the touch display will be the third major input device. Touch still has a way to go (mostly price wise) before it reaches the end consumer as a household product. As you stated touch already has a big presence in the commercial world (and i expect that the touch screen will continue to make large advances in that area). This particular demo by microsoft seemed to lean towards the consumer when in reality this is a feature they will more heavily market toward (and be most useful to) commercial organizations.

Re:Correction

[by Anonymous Coward]

Given that apple probably spent 2 years working on their own touch system for the iPhone before it was even announced you might want to check your dates.

What dates? No dates were mentioned in the original comment, just an observation that Microsoft was working on their own technology before Apple introduced the iPhone and therefore, probably didn't steal the idea from Apple. But FWIW, Microsoft was working on multi-touch at least as far back as 2003.

There seems to be an assumption that if Apple introduces a technology first then any other company introducing similar technology is just stealing the ideas from them. While Microsoft has certainly been guilty of this, they don't always do so.

Re:multi touch

[MobileTatsu-NJG (946591)]

"I was using multi touch on my MAC 4-5 years ago. "

Not like this, you weren't. The closest you might have come is if you've used an iPhone. Even then, what Microsoft showed was fancier. Watch the video.

Re:

[willyhill (965620)]

I was using multi touch on my MAC 4-5 years ago.

John Titor! I just *knew* I'd run into you on Slashdot. Eventually.

Re:Alias/Wavefront the patent holder?

[jcr (53032)]

A/W may have gotten a patent on a particular form of pie menu, but Don Hopkins invented it.

-jcr

Re:

[krzy123 (1201507)]

There is none. It's just marketing.

Re:Wonderful...

[sm62704 (957197)]

Ever play Megatouch?

They're in all the bars. Small one piece computers loaded with games, no keyboards. Older ones have CRTs, newer ones have flat screens. A very few have joysticks, most don't. The only input devices are a coin slot, a dollar bill slot, and a touch screen. Despite the fact that dozens of people a day have their hands all over the screen (since that's the only way to play them), they in fact don't have fingerprints on them.

BTW, they run Linux as their OS, as I saw one day when a bartender accidentally unplugged one.

I wonder if "megatouch" is where they git the "multitouch" name. It's the same thing, only Windows instead of Linux.

Re:Wonderful...

[Bombula (670389)]

I can handling wiping off finger marks, but the lag on that demo is totally unacceptable. Unless it was running on a 5-year-old celeron-based laptop with 128MB of RAM, or unless the whole demo was running in emulation, that interface is simply DOA. Would any of us put up with 1/2-second lag in a mouse-driven GUI? No way.

Re:Wonderful...

[ceoyoyo (59147)]

It's funny, before I bought an iPod Touch I made sure I went and played with one because every other touch interface I've ever used has had lag and sensitivity problems. The iPod handles pretty much everything really well. So why the lag in that demo?

Re:really

[clampolo (1159617)]

Fat fingering.... lol.

You make it sound so dirty :(