Jazzmutant's multitouch tablet works with a stylus as well

The Jazzmutant folks have been doing multitouch since way before it was in vogue, with patents reaching back to 2004 and some nifty tech to back it up. They spend most of their time on the Lemur and Dexter media control surfaces, but they've been playing around with Tablet PCs, and their first prototype is a beauty. The main advantage of the tech is that it not only can handle unlimited points of contact, so you interact with your apps using as many fingers as you'd like, but it can also accept simultaneous Tablet PC pen input, with precision and pressure sensitivity to boot. They've got the tech retrofitted on a 12-inch Fujitsu tablet at the moment, which they showed off last week at the Siggraph Emerging Tech conference in San Diego. Things are a bit bulky at the moment, but hopefully the tech -- which can be scaled from portable devices to 60-inch LCDs without breaking a sweat -- will be finding its way into real tablets before long. The video is after the break.

[paul petty @ Aug 17th 2007 2:01PM]

I hope it has enogh presure sensitivity for artists.

[johnnyg0 @ Aug 17th 2007 2:09PM]

As cool as it looks, I hope it won't cost the 3000$ a Lemur does.

[Birgo @ Aug 17th 2007 3:38PM]

This is so impractical. Who wants to carry around a small tablet? Microsoft's big-ass table is so much better.

[Axel @ Aug 17th 2007 6:49PM]

"It seems multi-touch is mostly good for resizing pictures. " Actually you can do two things at the same time with that technology, draw AND select a new tool for instance (or change the opacity of a layer), which seems great for productivity for any drawing application IMO. Zoom and rotate are just the cool stuff, here it seems to show practical applications besides that.

[heyguy @ Aug 17th 2007 3:49PM]

It seems multi-touch is mostly good for resizing pictures. That'll stop being cool and start being useless pretty fast to most people, I think.

[Axel @ Aug 17th 2007 6:55PM]

On a tablet PC, multitouch is important for a simple reason : when you use a stylus for drawing, you usually want to lay your hand on the screen, just like you would on paper. Do this on a monotouch screen, and the rest of the screen becomes useless for the rest of your fingers, since the palm is detected as the only point of contact.

On a multitouch screen, you can rest your hand while drawing, and use the other hand to access toolboxes and menus. You don't have to go back and forth between the drawing and the tools !
As a graphic designer myself, that's what I'm mostly excited about in this multitouch/stylus combination. The zoom and rotate things are just to show off like Apple and Microsoft, I agree it's growing kinda boring...

Anyway I'd love to see some more videos of this prototype at some point in the future !

[Alex @ Aug 17th 2007 4:10PM]

If it can do pressure sensitivity well, this could be great for artists. I'd love something like this.

[hackedbyjoe @ Aug 18th 2007 11:10PM]

This is huge news for the UMPC. One of the major problems with current UMPCs is that if you actually want to use it for anything useful (like taking notes) your palm has to do a gravity-defying act in order to use the stylus. If UMPCs came out with this technology on it, I bet you would see much better sales for them.

[hackedbyjoe @ Aug 18th 2007 11:16PM]

Nevermind, he doesn't actually rest his hand of the screen when he uses the pen. I guess I should finish watching the videos before I write my comments. JazzMutant = FAIL.

[Axel @ Aug 19th 2007 6:44PM]

Check this video out, that actually has cuts from the Siggraph demoes they gave : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Do3hB7jQA
Don't know why Engadget linked to the shortest one...
The guy in the video definitely lies his hand on the screen !