Comment by mhd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mhd | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's just that I'm damaged too much by resistive touchscreen terminals (rural startup flashbacks…), but I wonder whether this really will be the future. Someone at the BUILD conference mentioned that we'll be looking back in wonder that there was a time when monitors didn't have touch input. On the other hand, didn't we try stuff like that quite a few years ago? If not touchscreen, then lightpen input… "Gorilla arm syndrome" comes to mind.

But just like the recent wave of 3D movies, I'm not sure whether it's a case of "the technology caught up" or "those who don't know history…". Zeus, I sound positively luddite here. Don't get me wrong, I really like my ipad, but the applications, the form factor -- the whole use case is quite different. Well, let's see… Wonder if I'm repeating the words of command line geeks after they first saw a Macintosh in '84…

Didn't want to digress from the post that much. It is a cool project, martythemaniak. With cheap enough screen and support hardware, we'll probably see a lot more terminals in the wild. A bit of sheet metal and plastic, a portrait '23 inch screen and some custom Android-based firmware and you could make some great info and tourism terminals. And if no one's working with them, you'd have a reasonably large area to show ads.

Or VESA mount it, and you'd have a great info panel similar to the Panic Status Board[1], with some direct interaction possibilities.

[1]: http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/

This particular panel is optical touch - inside the bezel it has IR projectors at the top and sensors on the bottom. It is not as good as a capacitative panel, but far, far better than resistive ones.

One reason I like the ASUS Transformer is that it shows, IMO, that touch and keyboard/mouse can be complimentary. As prices continue to fall and touch becomes ubiquitous, I think we'll see more and more of these.

Ergonimics can also go a long way - a large monitor that's sitting at a ~25 degree angle will likely eliminate the bulk of the "gorilla arm" problem.

I can't see how a vertical monitor is helpful. Some of the touch screen PCs that HP and Lenovo have launched tilt back so you can use your hands without gorilla arm syndrome.

I imagine the bigger hurdle isn't the tech, but selling people on horizontal monitors that they're touching all day and the lack of a keyboard (or keyboard as non primary input).

I feel like we're stuck in this middle land of tablets without kickstands and PC monitors that can't turn into horizontal touch screens. I imagine there's a compromise here that'll work. Maybe all-in-one desktops that tilt with hide-away keyboards and tablets with built-in stands and perhaps even little pens for when you're using an app not optimized for tablets or if you need to draw or mark up a document.

Someone will come along in the next 2 years and do haptic feedback right and hardware keyboards will go the way of the floppy drive. There's been a number of patents recently on this front from basic haptics to displays with controllable surface texture.

No.

On even a netbook keyboard I can type at pretty much full dictation speed if I have to, with high accuracy. I can feel if I've made a mistake, I can feel if I've hit two keys rather than one or if my hands are drifting off centre.

I am utterly, utterly unconvinced that that level of performance is going to be available from a haptic touchscreen any time, particularly at a cost comparable with keyboards I can buy for less than the cost of lunch. The patents may well be interesting and have all sorts of beneficial applications, but wholesale replacement of computer keyboards by them isn't one.

So with haptics you should be able to:

(1) type at pretty much full dictation speed if you have to (some people can already do this)

(2) Feel if you've made a mistake.

(3) Feel if you hit 2 soft keys rather then one if your hands drifted.

I don't see what's so unbelievable then; even today the physical keyboard has been removed from the most successful new devices. That's without haptics. Long term I suspect the keypress paradigm itself will fall to gestures which you don't even need a screen or keyboard, a camera can track your finger movements.

As much fun as giant touch screens look (no thanks to minority report) they're not very usable for hours of work. Try it out for yourself, sit at your desk raise one or both hands towards your monitor as if it was a touch screen and see how long you can hold them there. If your hands are above your heart they'll get tired pretty quickly and eventually feel a bit numb.

I would imagine large touch screen becoming more ingrained in our every day life, but not necessarily our personal computing devices. Our desks, replacements for cork-boards, clip boards, etc.

Or maybe; something like a drafting table combined with voice input and kinect-like tracking would be pretty powerful (and cheap, within a couple years).

i felt the same thing but my concern was elsewhere.

my concern is with the "touching" itself. it didn't seem to me that we have achieved what were described in great sci-fi books and movies. it should be this way: a virtual pad/keyboard/etc should popup in the air so you never have to "touch" the actual screen :)

it's the input device that should be improved, not the screen. let's dream about it :)

kinect kinda got it.

We had those laser-based mobile "virtual keyboards", but for something really interesting we'd have to improve the projection technolgy, i.e. full-fledged "holograms", which would apply for both the screen and the input device (if the quality is more "Leia"-like, then the physical screen will stay a while longer). I don't think we're there yet.

But I fully expect to see Wiimote/Kinect-like 3D gesture technology to be incorporated into devices, probably soon after the devices themselves have a (pseudo-)3D display. Tablets already have front cameras, shouldn't be a big jump hardware-wise.

I doubt that either touch or a kinect-style will become primary interfaces. However, I think as the tech develops further and the price drops it will become ubiquitous as a feature.

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