Beeblebrox, how can you possibly say that iMovie projects would be harder on a Multitouch screen? The move toward direct manipulation of data has taken a *huge* step with Multitouch, completely obsolescing previous (single-point) touchscreen systems. I can't wait to be able to move clips around in iMove with my hands, or *physically* lay out a new page design. How much more intuitive (and useful to a wider audience) would Aperture's (or is it Lightroom's?) light table feature be if you could manipulate it like a real light table, *in addition to* the benefits of having digital images? Let alone the opportunities for interaction that we haven't conceived of yet ...
The way I see it: 1) iPhone runs OS X, essentially making it a (admittedly closed) Mac nano 2) iPhone is just the beginning. Not the beginning of a new line of iPhones, but the beginning of a new way of interacting with computers for the average person - as if they were tools (unthinkingly). The point of the iPhone (and the Mac) is to remove the thinking involved with computers (How do I save a new contact?) so that people can just get on with their lives. Just like the iPod took off by letting people worry about their music and not their MP3 player.
I am so sick of this tactile feedback nonsense. Are you people crazy? Do you really use a computer so that you can push nice-feeling keys? I didn't think so. Tactile feedback is *one* way of communicating to a person that they have done something. In this case, you push a keyboard button and can sense the resistance the button has to being pushed, confirming the push.
Apple has given you a multitouch surface for the iPhone ... what now? Apparently to a great many people their first instinct is to try to make a physical button out of a software button. Surprisingly, for them, this sort of solution tends not to work very well. What if we try a little harder?
Let's say tactile feedback is worth 20% of your keyboard efficiency ... how can we get that back? One solution would be to change the virtual keyboard. How about a Dvorak layout? I bet you could get some speed from using a more efficient key layout (frequently used keys on the home row). Or how about a virtual keyboard that watches everything you type and continually refines the layout for efficiency?
Another idea is getting rid of traditional keyboards altogether. Why do we use keyboards? Not because they bring us joy, intrinsically. They let us get words into the computer. We could very well do that in other ways with our hands. How about a Morse code-type system? Or chording with two hands? Or a kind of sign language variant? Gestures? I am absolutely confident that there will be, at a minimum, zero loss of efficiency moving from physical keyboards to multitouch interfaces.
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