http://gizmodo.com/393568/windows-7-features-revealed

Here's what Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer revealed about Windows 7 at All Things Digital a few minutes ago. The biggest "feature" is the touch and multi-touch integration, which takes many of its roots from Microsoft's Surface Table, and will be available as an interface options for other apps. Here's some more stuff they pulled out, which we captured in photos here.

• There will be a OSX-like dock, though how OS X-like is yet to be seen.
• Multi-touch gestures in photogalleries like two-finger zoom, flicking, and panning. Think of the photo app on the Microsoft Surface table.
• Multi-touch paint program where you can draw with 10 fingers (again, think of what you've already seen in Surface)
• Multi-touch piano app
• In-depth mapping application that pulls from Microsoft's Live Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth

Looks like a LOT of the multi-touch features were culled from the Surface team, and the non-touch features look fairly similar to what's already in Vista (based on the video above). Those apps are demo apps only, and will be revised/rewritten/reworked before the final version of Windows 7 is available. All this will be yours in about 18 months.

funny I was just about to post this - but your link is better!

evidently MS was the highest bidder to Jeff Han

yay, finally beat u on SOMETHING on this forum lol

the odd thing about this announcement is the multi touch bit. Surface doesnt do multitouch like say the Lemur does, it works by laying an infra red layer under the table and then registering the reflections from your fingertips.


from the wiki

"Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a table, topped with a 30-inch reflective surface in a clear acrylic frame. A projector underneath the surface projects an image onto its underside, while five cameras in the machine's housing record reflections of infrared light from human fingertips. The camera can also recognize objects placed on the surface if those objects have specially-designed "tags" applied to them. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by placing and moving tagged objects. Surface has been optimized to respond to 52 touches at a time. During a demonstration with a reporter, Mark Bolger, the Surface Computing group's marketing director, "dipped" his finger in an on-screen paint palette, then dragged it across the screen to draw a smiley face. Then he used all 10 fingers at once to give the face a full head of hair."

well it seems that the connection between surface is less about the hardware and more about the software.

in the video in the link they show screens from elo touchsystems that allow multi touch in a lemurish kinda way..

wtf? vistas only just come out

well thats a different ball game then. ive been hanging for multitouch to get mainstream for a looong time.

i cant stop laughing at that ballmer pic. the man is off his freaking rocker. and so.....sweaty.

edit: Ok NM the video I thought was real turned out to be fake...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=B5D43p4_qcY <--- would be nice.

yep, the approach is called FTIR, also shown by the now-famous Jeff Hahn videos. Downside: Usually infrared light sensing is pretty damned sensitive to daylight.

-like sweetjesus said, the ability alone to input multiple pointers through the standard OS will open up a LOT of possibilities for all multitouchers, and for weird OSC operations, too. I'd love to have a look at what kind of hardware applications would be possible.

well yeah it should be great for us music types

DIY Lemur anyone?

this goes waaaay beyond what the Lemur can currently do. Think of the hardware for this as like a Lemur with a vga input - allowing you to directly interact with what's going on.

But in terms of diy the biggest challenge will still be the hardware, I think. Right now you can build a multitouch box for, like, 50€. The projection is the big killer.

MS has some tech which uses a web cam on top of a standard LCD screen to work out multi touch..

the thing is, for the most part theres very little usage for multi touch except in vision, media and games.. but where its quite revolutionary is that this will create what i am gonna call 'touch culture' where a sequential input from a mouse is no longer the standard way of obtaining user input and touch is not an afterthought.

18 months is more than enough time for Apple to trump it, or actually 3 years when you consider getting the thing to actually be stable.

The now almost polite battle between Microsoft and Apple means nothing but great things for us consumers.

I can't view this video at work, but I predict (want) a lemur-like mousepad which will be just as essential as your monitor and reasonably priced.

be aware that the technology apple holds multi touch patent for is only capable of 2 point multi touch.

Said the dude that is secretly designing his own personal Star Trek style command booth

This year I'm gonna refrain from reposting any (very recent) Apple multitouch rumors.
That tablet is the new "powerbook G5"...
WWDC is in less then 2 weeks. Probably gonna be all about the iphone and itunes sales (again).

Anyway. Great news. Since Microsoft will have to introduce or suggest some hardware to run it on. Its only a Max/PD object away from being compatible with most if not all current OS' out there.
Masayuki Akamatsu to the rescue!