Touch Laptops
codinghorror.com
codinghorror.com
But I am wondering if a reasonable or even better solution is an appropriate touchpad or even Android or iPad touchpad app.
Right now there are two (maybe three) touchpads quasi made for Windows 8 that I would like to try.
* The Logitech Wireless Rechargeable Touchpad T650 -- a huge touchpad with Windows 8 gesture support
* Splashtop Win8 Metro Testbed for Android and iPad
* Unified Remote for Android and Windows Phones
I haven't used Windows 8 more than three minutes, and I haven't used these alternatives to a touchscreen monitor, but I like the idea of having a 4" to 7" phone or tablet screen that mirrors the Windows 8 screen but lets me keep my finger flat on the table, pointing to a smaller screen now in remote touchscreen mode and able to get feedback to where my finger is either by seeing a "mouse pointer" move on the screen, or just by looking at the phone or tablet my finger is on and seeing the screen there.
These things keep being repeated as if they're showstoppers, and it seems usually by people without any experience in the matter. I have been using a laptop purely by touch screen for 1-8+ hours a day for two years, and here's my experience:
- Gorilla arm simply doesn't exist. I use the laptop in a variety of setups and haven't had any problems. Yes, if your desktop PC suddenly accepted touch you'd probably want the screen much closer, likewise some laptop users with good eyesight (which I don't have - relevant since it makes me close already).
- Screen bounces do exist, but I haven't noticed them since a week or two in. I usually use the laptop with the screen up and facing backward (I don't use the keyboard), so I definitely get them. The Surface form factor does seem better for touch in a laptop, but I haven't tried it yet.
- Smudges do exist, especially if you use an on-screen keyboard so they accumulate, but in most indoor lighting they are not a problem at all. Then again, they don't bother me on my desktop screen either - if I'm looking at the screen content I don't see them.
I'm excited to see what possibilities Leap Motion provides, but at this point I think it's unlikely I'll buy a non-touch screen again. In the meantime, I'd quite like something like your last idea, and have thought about making a program to do it.
That's a pretty strong statement for an anecdote of precisely one person.
I realized that sort of the 'ideal' setup here is a keyboard, and then behind the keyboard a really wide and not too tall multi-touch display, and then vertically in front of me 1, 2, or 3 IPS high density displays. That would move the richer expression of touch gestures to a place that was halfway between my keyboard and my screens.
Like Jeff that opened me up to the notion of a 'hybrid' interaction model. Prior to that experience with the 'all-in-one' style machines was just frustrating. The conflict between wanting the large monitor set back, and then having to reach out and touch it was a challenge.
Amazingly far from 25 x 80 characters on a green (or amber) screen :-)
The mimo site is a bit too timecube for me to quickly parse -- it is a very expensive touchpad at $329.99 but perhaps there is something similar for less. :)
But yes, I really don't want people touching my expensive, clean screens, I don't want my finger to obscure the detail of what I am drawing, and I don't want to swing my arms through six feet of three 24" monitors.
I'm not sure I would want a 13.3" tablet on my lap or in my hands. There must be a reason the standard letter page size is 8½ × 11", right?
The diagonal on the standard letter is 13.9". The evidence Jeff cites completely undermines his point.
I'll just assume it must have been a really long time since he actually held a piece of paper.
> The American Forest and Paper Association argues that the dimension originates from the days of manual paper making, and that the 11-inch length of the page is about a quarter of "the average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman's arms". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_(paper_size)
All non-touchscreen laptops are, to my mind, instantly and sadly obsolete.
Note that for a desktop, I see no advantage to a touchscreen, as the mouse is just fine.
Have you used a macbook running OS X before? I find the touchpad handling much better in OS X than I do in Windows so would be interesting to know what sort of touchpad you're comparing to.
I suspect its a combination of better hardware and better software (I bet Microsoft doesn't write the touchpad interpretation code, its done by the individual hardware makers and so will be total crap).
The various PC vendors have control over the hardware and software for the trackpads; they could make them good if they wanted to, or if they knew better. They just aren't "detail oriented" on a corporate scale.
For actual usage I definitely prefer a mouse or a trackpoint.
(I worked at Synaptics until late 2006. It's possible that my information may be outdated.)
The problem with the touchpad is suppose I want to scroll. I have to carefully position the mouse over the scroll bar. Then click, or click and drag, whatever, which is just freaking awkward with a touchpad. (It's no issue with a mouse.) Yeah, I know that the right side of some touch pads acts as a scroll bar. But that depends on the right window being the "top" and I often get that behavior mixed up with the other regions of the touchpad. I also have problems with accidentally brushing my palm over the touch pad and "what the hell just happened".
With a touch screen, this all becomes natural and trivial.
I know, I see people using touchpads all the time like it was an extension of their hand, and they have no issues with it.
But I do. I like that touchscreen for my laptop. It is transformative. No other word for it.
As for a desktop with a big display, I don't need a touchscreen except for one case - where you are working with someone and are both hovering over the screen. The touchscreen is real handy for that rather than passing the mouse back and forth.
No, you drag two fingers up or down, with the cursor anywhere in the area you want to scroll. Recent versions of OS X don't even show scrollbars unless you put two fingers on the touchpad.
Not on OS X
>I also have problems with accidentally brushing my palm over the touch pad and "what the hell just happened".
Palm brushes don't register on OS X
That's why I wanted more clarification on what you're comparing it to. The only positive I can see of a touch screen compared to a __good__ touchpad is that you can see the content below your fingers as you interact with it - I wager it's the difference between the Intuos and the Cintiq.
I don't know if that's a big enough difference for most people to have to deal with all the negatives that using a touchscreen on a computer monitor comes with. For me it's not.
Have developers write applications in C# or any other language supported by the CLR and let .NET work out the x86/ARM differences.
I'm sure there are valid technical and possibly political reasons this didn't happen, but I still find it very strange that Microsoft went to the trouble of developing this entire platform/framework/ecosystem just to ignore it when the opportunity arises to actually make good use of it.
But they did. .NET is the platform of choice when it comes to Win8/ARM development. Any standards-compliant .NET code (more on this later) will with very little work build on ARM.
> "Have developers write applications in C# or any other language supported by the CLR and let .NET work out the x86/ARM differences."
This is exactly what's happening, though with a few caveats.
Note that all of this is from about a week of playing with the Win8/Windows Store SDK, so it may not be entirely accurate or complete.
The main problem with developing for the Windows Store (and, consequently, Windows RT) is that it badly fragments .NET. Very basic classes (like System.Collections.Hashtable) are not available for inexplicable reasons, even though they are in full-fledged .NET.
So sure, theoretically if you wrote your app in C# it will still build - unless you were calling parts of the API that are for some unknown reason unavailable in WinRT. Lots of the API has disappeared, and many, many parts of the System namespace have been replaced with equivalent-but-not-quite classes in the Windows namespace. All of this is very confusing and creates a huge fragmentation problem that will make even the most hardcore Android developer blush.
So yeah, conceptually MS is right there with you, but execution-wise that remains to be seen.
I note that the date of his blog post is the international-friendly “November 19, 2012” rather than the American numeric “11/19/2012”. But internationalising dates like this is easier than providing measurements in dual units.
It's almost like MM/DD/YY is the abbreviation of "Month DD, YYYY"
01/02/03 can be January 2nd or February 1st, and often there's not enough context to determine which was meant.
That, and also Atwood's popularity among American readers gives him a great opportunity to encourage them to use metric.
In the meantime, use http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4751410 :).
I've been on plenty of flights where displays and cockpit announcements were in metres (altitude) and kilometres (distance + velocity) - as well as Celsius for outside temperature.
My trip computer does litres per 100km. I drive a Citroen C5 and it has kph on it as well as mph. My satnav usually reminds me if I'm driving too fast (in kmh which is handy) and that results only in me watching out for speed cameras and the fuzz :)
I don't fly - I drive if needs be. I frequently drive around Europe as it's easier than dealing with flights and a damn sight more comfortable, reliable and cheaper than flying. I can drive to Leipzig from London in about 10-12 hours.
If you fly a plane (not just on a plane), those are nautical miles, not land miles. And speed in knots. And rate of climb in ft/min.
I'm in a country that uses the metric system, and have never cared about learning the exact equivalent of screen sizes. I just intuitively know, (from using and looking at them in the office or the store) what a 13", 15", 24", 40" etc screen is like -- and I never bothered to do the conversion at all.
It wouldn't even really help, because even if a knew the measurement in metric units, it would mean very little to the actual feeling of the screen, especially considering the variety of aspect ratios and that the display size measures the diagonal.
>The trip computer on your car will tell you miles per gallon.
All trip computers I've even seen can be set to show metric units.
>Even if you ignore speed limits, your speedometer gives you your speed in MPH :)
Still no need to do any conversion. I've travelled thousands of miles in the US (Route 66 and coast to coast several times), and I never wondered "Hmm, how many km/h are 70 mph?". I just needed to keep an eye on the speed limit signs to keep below that, and drive as fast as the car/road called for. Intuitively, not by translating to metric units.
Being able to say "I'm 45 miles away from X I'll be there in 45 minutes" without having to do recalculate each time you pass a road sign makes trips all the more pleasant.
This would save gas too.
I get 2.83l/100km or 83mpg in old money out of that if I don't drive like an asshat.
But ... there it is. There really are such cars out there.
If you're doing 60mph, you're probably on a relatively obstruction free A-road where the only energy required is to offset friction to maintain speed. I have driven from London to Leeds (195 miles) with not one single change in speed (apart from to take a piss and get a Burger King at Leicester Forest services!)
Also roads are a hell of a lot smoother and have less friction in Europe compared to the US. That makes one hell of a difference!
For ref, my car is a 1.9l diesel as well. These Citroen engines are super-efficient which is why I own it. I also have low rolling resistance tyres which make a 2-5% difference.
American cars are poorly designed guzzlers usually, even the ones they ship to Europe.
As opposed to multiples of ten, in the metric system? Huh?
Or do you mean that it's difficult to know how to draw a third of a meter?
Why, is drawing a line that's one meter, or one yard, or one foot any easier?
Without a measure I can't draw accurately any of them.
But intuitive understanding of certain lengths is certainly not limited to the Imperial system. I frequently use A4 paper for measuring if I don't have a ruler at hand. I know the span between the tip of my thumb and pinky is pretty much 21 cm and so on. 8.2 inches probably wouldn't be much handier either.
Temperature: Either
Building Materials: Metric
TV Sizes: Imperial
Beer: Imperial
Soft Drinks: Metric
The problem with the MCO disaster wasn't mixing up units, it was a sub-contractor failing to follow a specification properly, which can happen for any number of reasons. Also, it's not the only way that such missions can fail. Let us remember that since the mid-90s there have been 2 failed US Mars missions as well as a failed European mission (the Beagle 2 lander), a failed Japanese mission, and 2 failed Russian missions. As well as one and only one successful European mission and 8 successful US missions.
Apple was ready to have new products that cannibalized the old ones. If Intel had the same courage, they'd be in a far better position today.
Seriously, this post-season quarterbacking helps nothing but your own karma. The people in charge of Intel are intelligent, incentivized, and they've given the problem a lot more thought than you have. I realize our economies are ludicrously inefficient, but a single comment on HN is not going to outsmart an Intel board member.
>I assume you shorted or put INTC to profit from your insight.
Just because you realize a company has made a big mistake doesn't mean you're in a position to short it. I realized MS had a vision problem after hearing Ballmer speak in person years ago, yet shorting MS at that point would have hurt me, not them. It's taken years for his lack of vision to begin to be a problem and even now no one sees it as critical as I do.
>The people in charge of Intel are intelligent, incentivized, and they've given the problem a lot more thought than you have.
You have no idea if any of that is true, you just assume it is. The people in charge of Intel could well be blinded by something they need to be true that isn't. If people at the head of companies are so infallible why does any company ever fail?
>I realize our economies are ludicrously inefficient, but a single comment on HN is not going to outsmart an Intel board member.
Now apply that logic to human nature and tell us what you intended with your hateful comment?
Touch should completely negate that. Just touch what you're looking at; you should be able to do that without requiring any higher brain activity.
I am firmly in the know thy shortcuts camp and find anything that forces me to move hands away from the keyboard has a negative effect in terms of my productivity. With a mouse and keyboard at least your hands are moving in the same plane.
Although it can be tricky to know what is actually going on during a "non-deliberative" task, I am fairly sure I start moving the mouse, then my brain's motion-detection circuitry very naturally tells me where the cursor is.
One of the reasons I believe that is that I remember a few times choosing (or noticing that I prefer) to make a vaguely semicircular arc rather than abruptly reversing direction. (If I did what you describe, I would probably not have reversed direction often enough to have such memories. In contrast, if I'm right, then I would've reversed direction half of the times that I had no idea initially where the cursor was relative to the target.)
Touch is great because it enables extremely mobile computing devices - anything built without that in mind might as well not have touch. The Yoga is within eyeshot of dozens of comparatively razor-thin tablets at Best Buy, so even attempting to pitch it as a "PC plus a tablet!" seems like a stretch when you've just palmed an iPad mini. This stuff is kind of cool, but I don't think it's going to make anyone I know upgrade their PC any quicker, which is the measure of MS's success.
Don't want to do it.
Maybe I'm to old or something but It just don't feel right fingering around on my monitor. Even if it would be flat and part of my desk (which would also be horrible because I eat, drink and smoke at my desk at home). I want to have my head up, look straight and don't have the screen right before my nose.
There are tabs and smartphones. I have those. Touching their screens feels right. It's the small thing you do on the road, in the plane, do small things or have fun. But I just don't feel like I could work with that at work or at home.
But if it gets to the point where all laptops have touch screens then I won't complain - it might work well with some UIs (like XBMC). I'm just not willing to pay extra for it.
But I'm wondering if my minimal processing requirements (I'm doing web development) mean that I could buy an Asus Transformer tablet (complete with keyboard) and install Ubuntu on it. It would make the portable even more portable, but retain a good workstation setup when I'm sat at my desk.
If you don't want to read opinion posts written by people who are partial towards one platform or another, you're going to cut yourself off from an awful lot of potentially interesting writing. (E.g. Jeff Atwood & Ed Bott, John Gruber & MG Siegler, Jon Corbet & Bruce Byfield, to pick two fans each respectively of Microsoft, Apple, and Linux).
(Of course, the worst thing is to only read blogs from people whose biases you share, under the delusion that they're the only objective ones...)
http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/yoga/yoga-1...
Isn't the distance the screen is away pretty much dependent on the height of the screen? I know I don't see many laptops that the base is larger than the screen. Occasionally the back sticks out a bit for a larger battery but I've never seen a laptop where the keyboard/trackpad were not completely covered by the screen when closed.
It may feel a bit weird at first, but really, it's sorta like reading webpages of a normal A4 sheet of paper. And we should be pretty used to that. The iPad haven't been around for so long.