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iPhone will change the PC world
Tuesday. 2.20.07 7:40 pm
According to Macworld, iPhone will change the PC world.



iPhone adds new hotness by taking a radical leap forward in UI technology.

1. Multi-touch: A lot of people now think Apple invented multi-touch—the idea that a touch-screen can respond to two or more points of control at once. In fact, researchers have been developing multi-touch technologies for more than a decade.

Multi-touch on a PC user interface is as powerful as “multi-touch” in real life. Imagine if you had to go through life interacting with the world using just one fingertip. Dialing the phone would be OK, but picking up the receiver would be a problem. Multi-touch lets you ”pick up” on-screen objects, turn them around, resize them and do other useful things.

2. Gestures: Current generation touch-screen devices already have rudimentary gestures. In fact, even the Apple Newton, one of the first personal digital assistants, supported gestures. If you circled text while writing on the Newton, the circled word would then be “selected.” That’s a gesture. Interestingly, multi-touch amplifies the power of gestures by an order of magnitude. For example, you can put two fingers on the left and right side of a photograph, then use the gesture of moving your fingers apart to instantly enlarge the picture.

3. Physics: Second-generation UIs have folders, trash cans and documents that represent physical objects. But they don’t act like physical objects. They don’t move like they have weight, mass and momentum. When you slide a folder across your Windows desktop, it doesn’t slow down gradually, but stops the instant you release the mouse button. When you crash an icon against other desktop objects, they don’t scatter like bowling pins. If they did, your mind would more readily accept them as real objects.

4. 3-D: Some UI objects in both Vista and OS X have 3-D properties. For example, you might be able to turn a document around and see what’'s on the back, or look at cascaded documents from the side, which helps you select and organize them. For the most part, however, current generation UIs are profoundly 2-D.

5. Minimization of icons: Icons are the central element of today’s operating systems and represent folders, documents and applications in their closed state. When you click on them to open, the icon is still there, but clicking opens the item and loads it into memory. Next-generation operating systems will make items in their open state—not their closed state represented by icons—the central element. You’ll be able to shrink or grow just about any object almost infinitely in either direction, but size will be fluid, rather than binary—items will be shown in degrees of largeness, rather than either open or closed.

The combination of these elements means that the UI practically disappears. And so does the learning curve for basic use. A child will be able to walk up to a third-generation PC and start playing around with it.

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2 Comments.


re
it's a great movie!!! over the past weekend i was fortunate enough to actually meet the real Erin Gruwell. that was an awesome experience. i have a personally signed copy of the freedom writers book and since i started reading it i wasn't able to put it down. 150 entries from 150 students about one class and one teacher. it's mind blowing.
» DraGoNeaTSusHi on 2007-02-20 08:35:19

Ooh...
About the infant walking up and playing with the pc--Er, I don't think we'd want that. They have NO idea what damage they're causing by deleting entire databases. I shudder at the thought.
» Silver-dot- on 2007-02-20 08:54:45

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