DF:
It’s not so much that if Windows 7 were good, it would attract some Mac users, but rather that if Microsoft were driven by technologists rather than sales and marketing guys, they would be hungry to build an OS that wins those switchers back. It’s not that they need those customers, but that they used to drive the industry’s technical agenda, but now they don’t.
The iPhone may have put multi-touch in the limelight, but it’ll be early efforts like HP TouchSmart and now Windows 7 with built-in touch handling that brings multi-touch in computers to a wider audience. Snow Leopard may have touch support, and there will be some sort of tablet (any multi-touch device that’s not an iPhone and with a 7″ or bigger screen) out of Apple within a year, and that tablet will be tremendously interesting, popular and useful. But in Gruber’s sense, that won’t drive Dell or HP to release, or Microsoft to support, multi-touch devices to “counter” it; they already are.
To the extent that Microsoft has ever “driven the industry’s technical agenda”, they’re still doing it with Windows 7. Their “firsts” have been things like SPOT watches and Windows SideShow that never took off; the Microsoft Bobs and Edsels of computer hardware.
Multitouch screens on otherwise normal WIMP desktops are even more useless than Microsoft Surface. At least it’s a big ass table that won’t give you gorilla arm, and has a full-conversion UI for spinning and stretching your photos.
Apple is correct in their approach of doing multitouch on the trackpad, and having it implemented in the mouse driver, with standard gestures represented as effectively extra scrollwheel axes.
By Fred Blasdel · 2009.08.01 00:23
So Microsoft will be first to the multi-touch race for desktops, but do you have any doubt that Apple is the one who is going to do it right?
By Cameron · 2009.08.01 03:55
Cameron: absolutely no doubts. But that’s not what this was about. Re-read the bottom paragraph.
Fred: And in their approach to not bring it, at least now, to their regular Mac lineup, but instead to dedicated products like iPhone, iPod touch and Mysterious, but undoubtedly upcoming, Tablet.
By Jesper · 2009.08.01 11:04