Psst. Heard Anything About Touch Technology Mentioned in Windows 7 Lately?

I didn’t think so. Neither have I – not one thing since mid-May, when it was still not clear how many touch screens would be released before October, when Windows 7 ships.

Perhaps the builders of touch-enabled screens knows something we don’t. At least that is what the InfoWorld story implies.

Touch-based interfaces have captured everyone’s imagination, thanks in large part to the iPhone. With Windows 7, Microsoft joins Apple in bringing touch to the desktop, baking touch capabilities into the OS itself. Whereas Apple quietly added touch to Mac OS X Leopard a couple years back, Microsoft has hyped its Microsoft Surface technology for more than a year. Beneath this hype has been the suggestion that, with Windows 7, a touch revolution is brewing.

Or maybe not.

Two years of avid iPod Touch use has gotten me excited about the idea of touch UIs, so I was eager to try out the vaunted touch technology in Windows 7. My MacBook Pro has touch capabilities in its trackpad, but I usually run the laptop closed when working at my desk, so its touch capabilities haven’t been regularly accessible. The new breed of all-in-one PCs with touch-sensitive screens from Dell and Hewlett-Packard promised to change the equation and make touch on the PC as cool and functional as touch on an iPhone.

The author goes on to state that the really big problem is one of usage – like when we started using mice. Some applications would use it, some would not, and the way in which it was used was not consistent.

Perhaps that is why we have not heard much in the last few months – and may be one more reason to stay with the ‘no adoption until Service Pack 1 policy’.

The author continues, by giving specifics about the deployment of touch -

Issue 1: Touch is not omnipresent

What makes the touch interface so compelling on the iPhone and on quality copycats such as the Palm Pre is that the use of touch gestures are a fundamental part of the operating system and the applications. Just as using a mouse is fundamental and universal in Windows and Mac OS X, touch gestures are universal in the iPhone, Palm Pre, and so on. This means the user interfaces are designed with touch at the core, and typically work intuitively as you put your finger to the screen.

We are then reminded about the many things that are not as precise using a finger to do, as using a mouse would be. Anyone who uses a touchpad in a notebook computer knows this, and has been frustrated more than once by it. It is certainly the reason that we see so many mice that are specifically made small so as to be carried easily with a laptop.

The touch SDK was made available over a year ago, so we can’t blame Microsoft completely, though the article says noting about the ease of implementation of the touch features with the SDK. Microsoft may not have made this easy, or cheap (time-wise, it might be very expensive to retrofit many things).

Issue 2: PC UIs aren’t finger-friendly

In using a Dell Studio One desktop and an HP TouchSmart desktop — whose touchscreens based on NextWindows’ technology are quite responsive — I found another limitation to the adoption of touch technology in its current guide: The Windows UI really isn’t touch-friendly. A finger is a lot bigger than a mouse or pen, so it’s not as adept at making fine movements.

Also, on a touchscreen, your hand and arm obscure your view of where your fingertip actually is, making it hard to actually touch the intended radio button, close box, slider, or what-have-you. It doesn’t help that these elements are often small. And there’s no tactile feel to substitute for the lost visual feedback.

But the issues of using touch gestures go beyond the visibility and size of UI controls. The ways the controls work is often not finger-friendly. Take as an example Windows 7’s wireless LAN setup. It has some big buttons to select a desired network, so it’s natural to just press the desired one. And sometimes that works, but often these visual buttons are really the equivalent of radio buttons — item selectors — and you then have to tap the Next button. That’s not the kind of direct stimulation that touch assumes. When you work with something on your hands, the manipulation is direct. But most apps are designed for interaction with keyboards and mice, and aren’t so direct (to prevent accidental selections and the like, since it’s really easy to move a mouse unintentionally).

I have not used touch with Windows 7, but I would have thought that was what the cartoon-like, and Mr. Magoo-like, changes to the desktop in Vista was for. I always thought that was the point of making things look as though they were designed for the sight-impaired – it would make it easy to touch the separate icons and launch applications with the touch of one finger. No swiping, no gestures, just a simple touch.

Issue 3: Gesture-based computing needs a better surface

I was surprised to discover a third issue: the touch surface itself. I love using the touchscreen on my iPod Touch, but I usually did not like using the touchscreens on the Dell or HP.

The issue wasn’t the screen per se, but its location. A monitor is in front of you, a good foot or two away. That means holding your hand and arm out, raised and extended. That’s not comfortable for long durations. Try this: Move your mouse under your monitor, then see how long you can stand it. It also means a lot of ungainly arm movement to get to the keyboard, which few apps let you ignore. (Windows 7 does have a handwriting app that is OK to write with, but impossible to edit with. And writing more than a dozen words at a time is likely to make your fingers and arm hurt.)

There’s also the issue of the parallax effect: The layer of glass above the LCD’s crystals creates a slight gap between what you touch and what you see. At the edges of a screen, the distance is enough to throw off your hand-eye coordination — a reason that so many iPhone users have trouble typing on the virtual keyboard’s side keys such as Q, A, P, and L. Over time, your brain adjusts, of course.

Although I had not thought of this, it would make for a very ATM-like experience, and might make the idea of a Surface computer much more natural. The Mac uses the touchpad, and perhaps we might like to see some larger touchpads, such as those used by artists, with divided sections, making certain functions much easier.  Alps has a touchpad, with this capability, but the touch surface is still very small. I am thinking that a tablet size (8.5″ x 11″) would be almost perfect, with perhaps a row of function keys on top. It might take some time to get used to, but the speed difference could be amazing, once learned.

The original author goes on about the prospects of improved touch, and I suppose it can be great. However, I still think that, with the processor speeds attained now, and the number of cores available, a much more natural interface, voice, should be the prospect we are working on. Very seriously.

All we have to fear is fear itself… and homonyms!

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Martians use voice technology, why not you?

the voice enabled browser!