| Sunday, April 12, 2009 |
06:25 - BYO Multitouch
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/maximum_pc_builds_a_multitouch_surface_com
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The iPhone isn't the first multitouch device out there—just the first to get widespread recognition and show up in everyone's pocket. Microsoft (!) had that "Surface" tabletop PC thing going right about the same time. Whoever holds any patent on the technology, it's got to have prior art going back to the dawn of touchscreens (because honestly, who could conceive a single-point touchscreen and not think about multi-point variations?). And now, via JMH, Maximum PC has built their own, along with detailed documentation.
There is, it turns out, a whole community of very smart folks out there on the internet perfecting the art of building DIY multi-touch surfaces. The process isn’t exactly simple, but the results we saw were stunning: multitouch surfaces with responsiveness rivaling Microsoft’s $12,000 offering, built in a garage on a shoestring budget. “Future UI article be damned,” we thought, “we’ve gotta build one of these for ourselves.”
Truth be told, I've found the fact that the iPhone's touchscreen is limited to only two points to be sorta limiting from time to time—it's hard to zoom a map or a web page with one hand, and frustrating not to be able to pull two fingers apart at a weird angle and then add a third finger to zoom in still further. This solution appears to have that limitation dealt with.
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Brian Tiemann
