Comment by spiralganglion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spiralganglion | Hacker News Reader

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I have made a living as a musician, as a 3d animator, and as a software dev. My parents are both teachers. I did a lot of research in my University days.

In all of these areas, I can see the potential for multitouch-based applications that go far, far beyond what we're currently seeing, or have ever seen on a traditional mouse/keyboard computer. In fact, in my current line of work as a developer, I'm pursuing these very things.

If you're in a line of work where you're attempting to push the boundaries of what's possible with a computer, I find it hard to believe that you aren't fully aware of the realized and unrealized potential of multitouch devices.

Just because the iPad feels like a toy right now, doesn't mean it's limited to that sort of usage for all people, from now on. I just don't see Amazon playing any role in pushing user-facing technology forward. Silk is brilliant, but the Fire doesn't really enable anything that wasn't previously possible, and I don't see that changing. The iPad did.

I'm pretty sure by "feels like" you mean "is".

Maybe multitouch will make all kinds of exciting differences. Maybe it won't. As long as you agree that you can't point to any of these exciting results yet, we're on the same page.

One example: http://www.blogher.com/ipad-nearmiracle-my-son-autism

..and all the stories about grandparents getting iPads. These are all anectodes of course, and we'll have to wait for the peer-reviewed papers to come in some years from now.

You can call the iPad a toy all you want. I'm sure some Delta and United pilots will disagree (hopefully they don't allow games on the iPads they have).

Lots of people called the first Mac a toy with its silly mouse and GUI when it was released, yet here we are.

The problem with touch interfaces is that they're low-resolution. Most "professional" software allows manipulation of a large number of parameters. With a keyboard and mouse you can do this fairly efficiently but you just can't pack that many widgets onto a touch screen unless you make it much larger than 10". Compound gestures may be more expressive than mouse clicks but they're also more error-prone and much less discoverable.

  > much less discoverable

That's not necessarily an issue if we're essentially talking about power users. If the app is worth its salt, then professionals that can make use of it will learn the ropes (so long as there is sufficient material -- help docs, tutorials, screencasts, etc). A good example is to look at text editors like Vim or Emacs. Much of their functionality isn't very 'discoverable,' but the power locked inside drives people to learn. Especially if you plan on diving into a particular profession. You want to use tools that make your job easier, even if there is a steep initial investment of time to learn the system.

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