Did you buy an expensive mouse or keyboard lately? Good! Take good care of them, because in less than a decade, they may become vintage pieces of hardware! Multi-touch is the way of the future, and today I have to tell you just a few - but very interesting - things about it. Basically, it's about Apple's patent pictured below...
...but first, a little bit of history! Back in 1982, the University of Tokyo developed the first finger pressure multi-touch display, and only a few months later, Bell Labs and Murray Hill published a work which is probably the first paper discussing touch-screen based interfaces. Two years later, Bell Labs did it again, by setting up a touch screen able to manipulate images. In the same year, Microsoft began research in that area, but it took 7 years for a significant breakthrough to occur. In 1991, Pierre Wellner published a paper on his multi-touch “Digital Deskâ€, which supported multi-finger and pinching motions, later to become key elements in products such as the iPhone or the iPod Touch. Finally, in 1998, a Newark-based company called Fingerworks and run by University of Delaware academics John Elias and Wayne Westerman, produced a line of multi-touch products including the iGesture Pad. Now, let's move to 2008, shall we?
Moving to the present, there's nothing more left to say than a question, and its answer, so... who's the owner of the "Multi-Touch" trademark? Answer: Apple!
I hardly wait to see the next-gen Windows operating system, coming with multi-touch support, and nicely having the text "Multi-Touchâ„¢ is a trademark of Apple Inc..." So, what do you think about this? Feel free to unleash your thoughts, no matter how unorthodox they may be!