If you've absolutely, positively got to have a multi-touch display system right this second, look no further than the Germany company Lumin and its creatively named MultiTouch. For an undisclosed price (available on request) you and your loved ones can be pawing all over the 42-inch, 1024 x 768 display, which is powered by a Mac Mini and can be coupled with Apple's wireless keyboard and mouse. The screen -- which is quite similar to the LG.Philips display
we got our mitts on at CES -- is driven by Lumin's proprietary software, and allows you to do all
Surface-esque manner of tricks, like zooming, rotating, and panning with various finger / hand combinations. The company also appears to be offering rear-projection, front-projection, and "shaped" screens, though none of those seem to be sporting touch capabilities. Check out the super-cool video after the break and see what's happening over there.
[Thanks, Mike]
posted January 27th 2008 1:20PM
How about copyright infrigement? Apple Legal, GO!
Infrigement? Not at all. So see, what some people don't know here is that when you file for a patent you often patent for a a method, technology or construction rather than an idea. All Bimmers and Benzes you see on the roads are protected by over a thousand patents but yet the cars from both brands can do the exact thing.
With that being said, Apple doesn't "own" the idea of Multi-touch.
Copyright infringement for... what?
No, I think Apple is in the clear on this one. For once they actually paid the inventor.
My infrigerator doesn't hold copyrights...
if they use the name "multi touch", they may be in for trademark infringement, but that's about it.
There must be only one......Apple Multi-Touch.
Not that it means much anyway. I don't like the idea of putting my fingers all over a screen while I'm eating my fried chicken and french fries. There might be a tendency to degrade the display with grease all over it.
True, Apple doesnt own the patent on mutli-touch. Multi touch in a hardware sense has been around for years, MIT have had working samples for over 4 years.
This idea has nothing to do with Apple, it was in development at NYU By Jeff Han and allegedly at Microsoft as far back as 2000/2001 years before anyone at Apple even heard of "multitouch"
I found that video annoying, I have no idea why
same here. music reminds me of the old 90's commercials
Because it's just some people doing some random things on a big gray stand.
42-inch, 1024 x 768 display ?
i thought my 17" crt doing 1280 X 1024 is doing bad job !
"am i the only one" ?
I thought that at first but after thinking about it it is still higher resolution than 720. Still surprised it's not widescreen though.
720 is 1280x720, so this is less (horizontally) than 720i/p.
I agree that on a 42" screen, that resolution would be intolerable. Especially at close range, as you'd need to touch it.
I know it is less horizontally hence my comment about it not being widescreen. But yes it would look pixelly up close and personal.
What kind of bone-heads design a 42 inch display with only 1024x768 resolution? Hell I bet they had to have the LCD custom designed to get one that runs that resolution and be 42 inches big because who the hell would make a display like that in the first place? Not sure what the exact width and height of their screen is so my math isn't exact, but 1024x768 on a 42 inch 4:3 screen would work out to be somewhere between 25 and 30 PPI (pixels per inch, also incorrectly called DPI). It wouldn't look too bad if you were like 10 feet away, but at touching distances the pixels are going to be huge.
Not only is it low resolution.. but the screen doesn't look very bright in the video. In fact, it's as dull as a old projector in a brightly lit room. It's almost as if the engineers are trying to destroy our eyes.
Why not give your readers the real english Homepage: http://www.lumin.de/multitouch/index.php?lang=en
I like how even in the promotional video the product looks flawed. When the Womens using Google Earth it doesn't react anything like you think it should.
From the comments above, it seems that many readers are not aware of the long history of multi-touch. Things like the pinching gesture were demonstrated by Myron Krueger in 1983. The first multi-touch surface that I am aware of that used a camera behind the display (such as this one appears to be doing) was written up in 1982. For a quick history of the technology, see:
http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html
None of this is to suggest that people like Jeff Hann, or Apple haven't made contributions. See:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2008/id2008012_297369.htm
But I suspect that discussions would be more valuable if they were framed in the larger context of interaction and the history of the technology and the respective design and technology issues.
*yawn*
Let's see, I can sit at a desk, and with one hand, zoom in and out of a map with the scroll wheel, or I can stand on my feet, leaning slightly forward (goodbye spine) and do it with both ARMS... hmmmm.
But it's... THE FUTURE! Maybe we'll have spine replacements in the future too.
Maybe that paradigm doesn't work in an office, but it might under other conditions. Oh what could those be...
WTF, why does it seem like pinch-zooming and moving your picnic pictures around in a black void is the only thing you can do with a multitouch screen? Every time, that one demo.
In any case, Jeff Han's demo over at Perceptive Pixel is still the coolest multitouch demo I've seen. Check it at http://www.perceptivepixel.com/
I'd buy that in a heartbeat... if i owned a company where all the employees ever had to do sort through 8 pictures at a time, and periodically look at Google Earth.
what a silly commercial. At least Jeff Han's demo looked like there may be some useful applications for multitouch. (or at the very least, some fun stuff.)
Wow, draw application (downloadable from nuigroup.com), photo application (downloadble from nuigroup.com) and a broken/stottering google earth.
The guys at multitouch.nl (NUI) their software (including touchEarth) is way cooler, their hardware seems better as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD-SacHOKqc
http://www.multitouch.nl/?page_id=70
When are they going to realize we don't spend our lives resizing photos and zooming in on maps...
What do YOU do in your spare time? Sheesh.
I saw the CNN election report program and see a multi-touch big screen with election statistic diagrams. Does anybody know CNN's software and hardware solution?
first!
first!
Apple legal is getting ready