10/GUI

The basic idea of having a second touchscreen that matches the first is an obvious one to anyone who has thought about the problem for a few minutes, and presenting it as something innovative is pretty laughable, especially as it doesn't mention nor address the biggest problem with the idea, which is the lack of physical feedback, something a traditional keyboard and mouse combo is extremely good at. If the idea is to solely replace the mouse, then you either have to reduce the size and therefore reduce the accuracy compared to a mouse, and I don't think that's a poor trade-off as it makes many tasks harder (from painting to even using icons), or move the keyboard into an uncomfortable position, which also isn't a good tradeoff as many tasks are much quicker when you're able to use your keyboard and therefore your muscle memory.

I'm also far from convinced by the GUI mock-up.

A taskbar or dock isn't visible at all times, and this is huge step backwards. Having to scroll left/right or use a gesture every time to switch applications will get tedious extremely quickly, and there's no flexibility in how you use your windows which may preclude certain tasks. I also think the author overstates the 'sorting through the pile' problem, especially since you generally know where your window is in the taskbar/dock, and various ways to mitigate the issue already exist (most notably Expose and live thumbnails).

I also think the 'menu' paradigm is something that OSes should be getting away from, let alone touch-based OSes where a Microsoft-style Ribbon would work wonders, so I can't help but splutter about the idea of a mass of menus hidden away. In addition, their implementation makes worse an OS X-ism, which is hiding menu items before the window is active, only in this case hiding it until you've pressed a magic button. We have big screens and plenty of resolution these days, there's no excuse for hiding things away.

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878115

Much more commentary here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=877535

That's great. But I want it:

A) without the stupid pad. I want to have two wristbands (they would look like a wristwatch band) for each hand that would pick up muscle movement when I press/move my fingers and translate that to the equivalent of the pad, but I can use it with my hands resting on my lap, for example.

B) the left / right margins are great, but make the bottom pull up a keyboard layout so I can type, and the top margin pull up a keychord/movement assistant so that I can type whole words/sentences with combinations of movements.

Are there any touchpads currently on the market that would support this?

I think I'd like to see the touch elements on each side of the keyboard rather than below—the positioning seems more natural and having to raise your arms to type seems like it would get really annoying.

Other than that, this looks like a novel idea for liberating ourselves from the tyranny of the mouse and window clutter.

When some people still can't even use a mouse properly (taking 10 seconds to close a window etc), I wonder how they expect people to learn to use more than three fingers in coordination. Most of us don't even bother using mice because it's so inefficient anyway (unless you're doing something graphical). Nice demo though.

Pretty interesting way to use multi-touch and control the ui, however, I have to wonder how having a flat surface will go over ergonomically. I wish they would have demonstrated typing.