Chad Sapieha has a write up/review of his family’s experiences with the HP TouchSmart over the course of a week. By and large, it seems that his family quite liked it. In a rather unique twist, it seems like the TouchSmart can be used to increase a couples sex life, although that is just speculation on our part.
Archive for September, 2007Now, a warning is in order. The following multi touch table demo is powered by Apple hardware, but is not an Apple product. Why is this warning important? Well, if your impression is anything like ours, the product just does not stand up when compared to the rest. Take a look at the demo over at Gizmondo. MarketRecon has an interesting outlook on the future of the iPhone now that the iPod Touch is out. There is some thoughts shared about the price drop, and the affect it had on some of the early adopters. However, what was more interesting was the following statement:
I do not endorse the authors comments, but he does base it on a valid point. As always, it will be interesting watching how multi touch products evolve in the next couple of years. This looks to be a fantastic piece of technology. Sharp has announced a new LCD screen that not only allows for multi touch input, it also acts as a scanner. A user could, for instance, put a business card on the screen and scan it in. With a bit of refinement, fingerprint authentication should be possible as well. All this is possible due to an optical sensor built into each pixel of the screen. Such a design eliminates the need for touch sensitive films within the screen, allowing for thinner designs. Sample shipments are scheduled to start this month. It would seem that such a design could be blended with Microsoft’s LucidTouch, to streamline its finger recognition abilities, eliminating the need for an external camera as currently prototyped. The press release can be found here.
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2007
Does the iPod Touch bring us closer to a touchable Mac?Posted by: Drew in Commentary, Multi-TouchThere is little doubt that Steve Jobs has wet the public’s appetite for touch interfaces. Barry Collins over at PC Pro has some thoughts on the likelihood of a touch enabled Mac or tablet device from Apple. Statements are made indicating that OS X is inherently better suited to fingertip operation than Windows is. I do not think that is true at all. Both OS’s are currently mouse-centric and it will take a refresh of the OS UI to really bring out the multi touch goodness. However, the point is valid that the upgrade to OS X, Tiger, may include substantial support for a touch UI. I hope his January prediction proves correct, as it will be a great day for computer enthusiasts everywhere. Yesterday Apple announced the long rumored iPod Touch. It is essentially an iPhone without the phone, with the same design, and most of the same features. Its reliance on flash memory enable it to be thin, 8mm. However, it also is limited to 8/16GB of memory, which may put off some potential buyers. The fact that it will be priced more affordably than the iPhone (which itself got a substantial $200 price reduction), yet retains wifi and browsing abilities, gives it wide appeal. Also, the audience of the iPod Touch is not artificially limited to AT&T customers in the US, it will be launched worldwide by the end of the month. Apple also launched some new services available only to the iPod Touch/iPhone, but how well received they will be by consumers remains to be seen. The ability to browse and buy from the iTunes store online is certainly interesting, and many have longed for such abilities. The other “feature” is a deal with Starbucks that will, over time, give users of these two devices access to listen to some music for free, and browse and buy from Starbucks’ music selection when near a Starbucks store. |
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