Microsoft Highlights First Unique Windows 7 Feature: Pervasive Multi-Touch

Microsoft on Tuesday publicly demonstrated Windows 7 for the first time, showing off a new OS feature that will allow users of the upcoming system to control touch screen-based PCs with their fingers. A simplified version of this feature actually exists in Windows Vista today, but Windows 7 will take this functionality to the next level by providing multi-touch capabilities that will work everywhere in the system.

According to Microsoft, touch displays are just part of a movement to evolve how we interact with PCs. "Today almost all [PC] interaction is keyboard-mouse," Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says. "Over years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink--all of those--will be huge."

Demonstrating Windows 7's multi-touch controls, Microsoft corporate vice president Julie Larson-Green showed an electronic version of finger painting called Touchable as well as touch-enable photo organization and mapping applications. She also showed off a virtual piano that played music as she tapped the onscreen keys.

Microsoft isn't alone in its pursuit of multi-touch controls. Apple's vaunted but slow-selling iPhone utilizes multi-touch controls, and a selection of newer MacBook Pro laptops offers limited multi-touch capabilities in certain Mac OS X applications. For Microsoft, however, Windows 7 multi-touch is a chance to leapfrog the competition, and it builds on work the company pioneered in earlier versions of Windows and in its Surface smart table. And as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer notes, while Apple gets a lot of press for its work, that company plays in a much smaller market. "We'll sell 290 million PCs this year and Apple will sell 10 million PCs," he said in a "do the math" moment. "They're fantastically successful, but so are we."

Microsoft has been very careful to not reveal too much information about Windows 7 because of the debacle that occurred after it over-promised on Windows Vista and then repeatedly delayed the product, all while paring down the feature-set over time. Despite rumors, however, Vista continues to outsell its predecessors, both with consumers and businesses. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it has sold over 150 million licenses to the OS since it first appeared in late November 2006.

You can get more information, photos, and a link to the multi-touch demo on the SuperSite.

End of Article

"Apple's vaunted but slow-selling iPhone..."

Now just what was the purpose of the phrase "vaunted but slow-selling" in that sentence?

KWRussell May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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How about a link to the demo or info from MS?

Mahoney May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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@KWRussell...

I believe the answer to your question is "flamebait". Or "link-baiting" will work too. I'd love to have a "slow-selling" business like iPhone for myself. 5 million+ units at $400+ a pop in a new market in under a year. That's the kind of "slow selling" Motorola would have loved.

johnpapola May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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You can get more information and a link to the Multi-Touch demo from Paul's SuperSite blog:
http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/05/28/windows-7-to-feature-pervasive-multi-touch-fun
ctionality.aspx

grodcay May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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Vista Reported Sales mean little when taken with the fact most businesses then wipe it off their new pcs and install xp instead. I know we do. That's 100 sales of Vista Business that mean nothing i guess.

chrismulhall May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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Multi-touch means nothing when only a couple of companies make touch screen monitors and they sell for around $500 for a 15" LCD. Lastly except possibly on a tablet and again only if the price didn't go up at all could I even see a use for it.

pmfjoe May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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Perhaps MS could create several sites like Dell's "Idea Storm" to obtain suggestions from different key groups such as home users, corporate users, IT administrators, VARs, application developers, etc., about what they would really find most useful in their new client-side OS. I found myself wondering if touch screen functionlaity would be at the top of a corporate IT administrator's list of most desired new features?

jonmca May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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"in a new market"

Yeah, the smartphone market started when Apple made the iPhone... sure...

But back onto the real topic here...

Why in the world is there this push for "touch", I can bite on the phone stuff... I can sort of bite on the tablet PC even though I think a person "taking notes" with a pen is an idiot when he has a keyboard. But with a desktop PC? Why? My monitor is 4 feet away from me, and 40 inches wide, and if some greasy fingered idiot tried to touch it, they'd get a swift tap in a sensitive place.

Ingraining touch into a desktop OS is a waste. This seems like MS trying to pacify the sheep. Stop listening to sheep, if they knew what they were doing they wouldn't be sheep, let them go to Apple and mutilate an OS nobody cares about.

will84 May 28, 2008 (Article Rating:

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@will84

Well, obviously, you care a lot about Apple and Mac OS.

BTW: Your limited world view and comprehension ability makes sheep look like independent thinkers..

MysterMask May 30, 2008 (Article Rating:

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Good God, Reading Thurrott talk up Microsoft vs. Apple is like listening to Rush Limbaugh endlessly talk up conservatives vs. "liberals." His near absurd biasness bleeds through every word. I hope he considers himself an "entertainer" like Rush does and not a journalist.

Apple will be on OS 10.6 before Windows 7 is even scheduled to be released. OS 10.5 is already considered to be technically ahead to Vista, so, really then, who is doing the "leaping ahead" here. Windows 7 looks to be nothing but another product full of "me too" features.

Here is a company that, public relation-wise, is on the ropes after the Vista debacle and what do they choose to showcase presumably to stir some much needed excitement? "Me too" multi-touch. Great, so Windows three years from now will have all the innovation of last year's iPhone. Is Microsoft out of ideas? What happened to things like WinFS? Even a questioner asked them whether they were wasting time diluting themselves chasing "search" rather than having a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal." Who doesn't sense that Steve Jobs has a long-term plan, but does Balmer even have a clue? Jobs is right: when the marketing/sales guys take over from the engineers then the company is doomed to stagnate. Balmer is more concerned with chasing markets to exploit rather than creating exciting products.

And that quote about selling 290 million PCs? Originally Balmer said 270 million in the interview but then inflated the figure another 20 million literally a few sentences later. But see, Microsoft, with the possible exception of the shoddily produced Xbox, does not sell PCs (but Apple does). It licenses an OS to HP, Dell et al. -- companies that don't have much of an alternative ,,, except to downgrade to XP.

It'll be entertaining to read Thurrott talk up Microsoft as Apple's iPhone, iTouch surpass Windows Mobile, its "iTablet" (out later this year) surpasses Tablet PC, its growth in laptop and desktop accelerates even more and 10.6 arrives.

wlow3 May 30, 2008 (Article Rating:

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