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Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

So, I guess part of the story we're supposed to take away here is that the tablet and the smartphone should be no different, right? Laptops/desktops will be replaced by smartphones and tablets, right? History repeats itself right?

The difference I see is that the smartphone and the tablet all use laptop concepts (keyboard, visual display, etc). People literally went from not knowing how to type (which is NOT intuitive) to typing on a keyboard. The biggest difference now is multi-touch. But the reason multi-touch caught on, was because it was a intuitive interface to computer-human interaction. I had to take a course in grade school in order to use a keyboard, I don't for multi-touch.

In other words, the laptop (and as people have pointed out, actually the desktop) was a revolution in technology. Mobile devices seem to be much more an evolution.

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"The biggest difference now is multi-touch"

You should try using a single touch keyboard. Keyboards are very much multitouch.

I am yet to see a more useful reason for multitouch to exist than text input. Not that one gesture everyone has now been imprinted with. Something else that's not gimmicky.

Please give me an example, because despite being part of the touchscreen and multitouch early adopters (I had a Palm, five different WinMo devices, and imported a G1 before Android phones came to Europe), I am yet to see one thing I (or anyone else) can do faster on a multitouch panel than I can do with a keyboard and mouse. I'm not saying these legacy input devices are perfect, but stupid simple glass panels are definitely more cumbersome for this aging mind.

"I am yet to see one thing I (or anyone else) can do faster on a multitouch panel than I can do with a keyboard and mouse."

Slice through a banana, pear and pineapple at the same time on Fruit Ninja.

Not exactly the same game, but Osu! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K31BYeLNJ0 for a gameplay example) is a fangame of Ouendan AKA Elite Beat Agents in North America.

The game was originally touch (or stylus) based, but the best scores are all done through mouse to aim & keyboard to press. This game involves swiping, pointing, spinning, and more accurate following of drawn cursors on screen. I think to line up your draw, and make an accurate motion, the mouse will still win.

Edit: Correction: Stylus is also just as popular, but the keyboard is still used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch

Are we talking about the same multitouch?

I do agree with you about "I am yet to see a more useful reason for multitouch to exist than text input." to an extent.

Three examples that are much easier on multi-touch:

1. Google Maps (pinch, zoom, pan)

2. Images (pan, zoom, slide-next)

3. Scrolling large lists

You're listing these vs. a mouse?

1. Scroll wheel is faster and more precise than pinch, panning by dragging the mouse is about equivalent for panning.

2. Again, panning with the mouse is about equivalent and zoom is easier. A gesture like slide-next can be done with right click + flick.

3. Flinging the mouse wheel is as easy as flinging a finger once. If you want to scroll really far you can middle click, move the mouse down, and wait, vs. flinging over and over.

Have you ever used a modern Mac trackpad? They're amazing little devices. I don't want mice anymore.

1. Scroll wheels only let you scroll in discrete steps, which the human visual system is bad at handling. It pales compared to inertial touch scrolling, which actually works exactly like objects in real life, the kind we've been evolving to look at and track for ages. You get instant analog feedback. It also lets you scroll in 2D rather than on one axis. Infinite canvas apps like graphical tools are far easier to use with multitouch than with separate pan and zoom controls.

2. I've found two-finger panning far easier on the wrists than click and drag. Add in three fingered swipes (i.e. switching between virtual desktops horizontally, zooming out your windows vertically) and it's ridiculously easy to get around. On Windows, task switching was always a pain. On a Mac, I have a dozen windows open easily at any given time.

3. Flinging over and over is not a big deal because a) there is non-linear acceleration on the gestures and b) after flinging twice, the third fling will have vastly increased speed. It is much faster than waiting for that middle click thing. The middle click thing is also limited by where you click. If the window is near the edge, you can't go as fast.

Finally, multitouch gestures can be combined, and Apple has done an amazing job in the drivers for this. I can click on a file with my thumb to start dragging it, and then while holding it, do a two finger scroll or a three finger flick to another desktop or window at the same time. It works so well, you just do it naturally and only realize later how damn clever the code is to be able to disambiguate your touches.

I tried using a "multi touch" Samsung laptop too. It was a complete piece of crap, which would constantly detect phantom gestures, and was entirely context independent. For example, it would trigger rotation in apps where it made no sense at all (e.g. the browser), and the trackpad surface was so sticky my finger skipped over it constantly.

Don't knock multitouch until you've tried an actually good implementation, with software designed to make it shine.

Continuus zooming has nothing to do with multitouch. It only has to do with the fact that classical mice and APIs implement scrolling through a stepping/button mechanism. I have a Logitech mouse that can do continuus scrolling just as good.

It's worth mentioning that the original mouse wheel API by Microsoft was explicitly written to support analog wheels. But it never took off, and it was actually the applications themselves who were ignoring the analog input and just converting it to a step.

Having used a mighty mouse which has a miniature trackball for a mousewheel though, I'd disagree about it being equivalent though, for the simple reason that dragging fingers on a small wheel or ball with real inertia is more restrictive than on a large free flat surface with simulated inertia. Particularly being able to fling at high speed and then catch it again, stopping on a dime, is actually a really fast way to get around.

Of course, it's only the confluence of good hardware, drivers and applications that makes this shine, and on that point we agree. But it's undeniable that Apple has an amazing lead on this, and using a magic trackpad on OS X feels like the biggest upgrade to how I interact with a desktop since Exposé.

"So, I guess part of the story we're supposed to take away here is that the tablet and the smartphone should be no different, right?"

I think that's a pretty big assumption. But you are completely correct about touch and intuition.

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