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."

Wonderful...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because finger marks all over my monitor is just what I wanted!

Pie menu?

[bennomatic]

Mmm... pie...

Is Someone Hungry?

[FurtiveGlancer]

"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.

Re:great

[0100010001010011]

Betting pool anyone?

This feature will be announced as removed March 2009.

Here lies the body of Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista, b. 2007, to William and Steven Gates-Ballmer. Laid to rest in 2008 by his parents after a long, painful illness and stunted childhood. Survived by his older brother, Windows XP. May God rest his soul.

How they will break apple's multi touch patents

[goombah99]

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:multi touch

[Anonymous Coward]

rubbing your computer in an erotic manner with both hands does not constitute multi-touch in the technical sense.

-S

Re:multi touch

[willyhill]

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:Pie menu?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Multi crash

[192939495969798999]

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.

Re:Pie menu?

[amnezick]

mmmm "Apple" pie

Re:Slow

[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.

Re:really

[clampolo]

Fat fingering.... lol.

You make it sound so dirty :(

Re:Pie menu?

[Lars T.]

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:why?

[2nd Post!]

Multitouch is the new mouse. Did you also dismiss the mouse as too consumer and not business friendly?

Without multitouch, Windows is limited in where it can go, and as Apple has already shown, multitouch is not superficial but fundamental to making certain form factors work.

Not enough hands

[dreamchaser]

Most people here already use one hand for typing and one for...well...other things. That leaves NO hands to use the touch interface!

Re:what they should be doing

[Red Flayer]

Looking forward to the next Windows, I have doubts that Microsoft can do anything at all, except make it worse.

So what you are saying is that Vista is a perfect OS that can't be improved upon?

Sheesh, that's some pretty subtle astroturfing there, Steve... masquerading as a good-ole-fashioned Slashdot MS detractor, but subverting the message to include how perfect Vista is... I'm impressed. And frankly, I didn't think you had it in you.

Re:Pie menu?

[LtCmdrJoel]

The cake is a pie.

Re:Wonderful...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would any of us put up with 1/2-second lag in a mouse-driven GUI?

You mean, use GNOME?

Not vaporware!

[Dystopian Rebel]

This is not vaporware. Microsoft has been multitouching my wallet since the early 1990s.