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Windows 7 to feature multi-touch interface
Play the piano on your monitor. No, really .
If you’ve had a play with Apple’s hype generation machine, otherwise known as the iPhone, then you’ll know that multi-touch displays have already moved from the realms of sci-fi films to real life. However, now Microsoft has demonstrated a multi-touch interface with its forthcoming operating system, Windows 7,and it looks very good indeed.
The interface was recently shown off by Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows Experience program management, Julie Larson-Green at All Things Digital’s D6 conference. During an interview with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Larson-Green stepped in to show the new interface and said that the new operating system would use some of the multi-technology used in Microsoft’s interactive coffee table project, Surface.
During the demo, Larson-Green showed a new Windows app called Touchable Paint, where she used all ten fingers to draw a tree, and also noted that the multi-touch interface makes photo manipulation much easier. As well as this, she also showed the familiar two-finger zoom function that can be achieved with the iPhone. Impressively, she also then went on to demonstrate a multi-touch piano app.
You can view all of the features in the video below, and it looks very impressive. Also shown is a globe that you can spin with your fingers, and then zoom in on your area of choice. Of course, having it in the operating system is all very well, but you’ll need a brand new screen to take advantage of it. However, the demo was run on both a Dell Latitude laptop and a desktop PC monitor, showing that the technology is already available.
‘We’re at an interesting junction,’ said Gates on the subject of the interface. ‘In the next few years, the roles of speech, gesture, vision, ink, all of those will become huge. For the person at home and the person at work, that interaction will change dramatically.’
Is multi-touch just a flashy gimmick, or could it be the next big thing? Let us know your thoughts.
Check out the video of the Windows 7 multi-touch interface in action below.
