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It has taken some time, a decade or two in fact, but interaction between human and machine is finally on the cusp of a mini-revolution.
These days, it's no longer just about pointing and clicking with a mouse, pushing buttons on a keyboard or twiddling with an (occasionally) unresponsive joystick.
Now, we interact with digital objects by a simple flick of a finger across a glossy screen.
Touchscreens are not new, of course. Many would remember tapping coolly on the screen of a Palm PDA (personal digital assistant) with a stylus back in the '90s when "PDA" was a revered acronym. You might also have scrawled on one of those tablet computers that woefully interpreted your fine penmanship as chicken scratch. And almost every one has poked at the touchscreen of an ATM machine, only to be warmly greeted by indiscreet beeps and blips.
Touch technology has come a long way. The touchscreen of yesteryear could only recognise finger pressure at a specific point on the display. Now, we have what is dubbed multitouch — you can perform multiple gestures anywhere on the screen and it can read the meaning behind those subtle motion.
Steel yourselves for the brave new world of the uber-smart — and fingerprint-friendly — touchscreen.
Magic Screen
It's tough to talk about multitouch without bringing up the divine company that is Apple. Steve Jobs and Co clearly showed the world what multitouch could do with the iPhone and the iPod Touch: Pinch two fingers together on the screen to shrink an image or webpage, and draw them apart to enlarge. You can also "flip" through your album of photos and your library of songs by swiping a finger across the screen.
Apple has since implemented some of these multitouch actions in the trackpads of its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks. Apple fanboys around the world are clamouring for multitouch to be baked into the entry-level MacBook as well.
Before you kowtow to Lord Jobs, note that Apple did not invent the technology. Academics have been experimenting with it almost as early as the days of the 8086 CPU chip, and that's a long, long time ago.
Stodgy academic researchers aside, Taiwan-based phone-maker HTC unveiled on June 5 last year a smartphone called Touch after two years of development. It has a multitouch interface (not unlike Apple's) called TouchFlo and is the first commercially available phone sporting such advanced interface technology — iPhone was out on June 29.
The reason the iPhone and iPod Touch got everyone's attention was because Apple got it right. The gestures feel natural (you don't question why they are performed that way) and the screen is suitably responsive to your touch — not too sensitive to trigger random actions with an accidental brush, nor too inert to require a heavy hand.
TouchFlo devices, on the other hand, demand a strong, insistent jab and swipe, and gestures that are markedly less intuitive. You have to draw circles to zoom in and out, for example, while image rotation calls for semi-circles, unlike the automatic rotation built into Apple's handhelds.
Why Touch?
One reason why more device-makers are eschewing alphanumeric keypads and Qwerty keyboards for a slab of touch magic is linked to consumers' strange obsession with Lilliputian-sized gadgets.
Keypads and keyboards take up precious real estate and add to the weight and bulk of a device. To cater to a size-conscious society, manufacturers are dutifully replacing unsightly buttons and keypads with a smooth, shiny touchscreen. Without physical controls, there's more display space — a boon especially when it comes to multimedia applications. Who wants to squint at pictures and movies or surf the Internet on a screen the size of a postage stamp?
Of course, for heavy text-input users, nothing beats a mechanical Qwerty keyboard. A key merit of the BlackBerry lies in its physical keyboard, which enables users to type quickly and with minimal mistakes, sometimes without even looking at the device.
Touchscreen antagonists also contend that the beauty of a physical keypad is that you know when you've clicked on the keys. Real buttons are just more tactile compared to a frigid touchscreen, they say.
The good news is most touchscreens today feature relatively sophisticated tactile feedback technology (generally known as haptics) that simulates the feel of physical controls quite beautifully. Tap on a screen and a localised vibration is emitted instantly to inform you that, yes, a tap has been registered.
Touch everywhere
As we whiz through the digital age, more sophisticated touch and gesture recognition technologies will be thrust onto us, whether we like it or not.
A peek at some of the patents Apple recently filed unearths interesting gems: Soon, you might be able to tweak functions like screen brightness with a quick swipe of the pinky on the screen. Yes, touchscreens are becoming so intelligent they can distinguish the pinky from the ring finger. You might even be able to manipulate 3D objects on the screen using five fingers together.
Microsoft has a new product called Surface, essentially a computer laid flat like a tabletop and relies on multitouch to manipulate virtual objects such as photos, maps and menus. It's an incredibly intuitive way of accessing digital applications — for example, you can drag virtual photos around as if they were physical photo prints — and several people can use it at one time.
And Synaptics has announced notebook touchpads sporting what it calls ChiralMotion, which lets you scroll rapidly by moving your finger in a circle on the pad, and Momentum, which emulates a trackball and moves the cursor on the screen when you flick a finger across the pad.
The trouble with various device-makers implementing different touch technologies is that you might end up having to remember a range of gestures to use on your arsenal of gadgets. There's talk that universal standards might have to be drawn up to avoid confusion among consumers.
Wink, Wink
Touch technology is only one of a variety of approaches aiming to give users an innovative alternative to traditional interfaces.
Last week, a researcher at Osaka University in Japan unveiled a prototype device that lets you play, replay, skip and pause songs on your iPod by winking.
Targeted at what we suspect to be the terminally lazy, the so-called KomeKami Switch, or Temple Switch, is attached to your spectacles or headphones and uses infrared sensors and a microcomputer to detect the movement of your eyelids.
Different combinations of winks trigger different actions. For example, you can wink to rewind a track or close both eyes to pause and play it. Fascinating, we know, if you don't mind appearing like a twitching lunatic. We'll stick to multitouch, thank you. - TODAY/fa
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