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The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Su

The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface >There's an entire ideology that is anti-intellectual, anti-science and anti-mind at work here. One manifestation of that ideology is support for things like welfare, etc, because they believe that it's just chance that separates Steve Jobs from you and me. (and not hard work.) Actually it's well demonstrated that you need to have money to make money. The few cases you can site as exceptions are exceptions, and for every exception I can point to a thousand (maybe a million?) people who work hard and are barely making ends meet. And each and every one of those exception stories contains a lot of luck. Claiming that hard work == success is insulting to all of the smart people who have failed, and truly insulting to the millions who work hard in ways that you're discounting as "work."

nirvana 15y ago
The Microsoft Surface is not "multi-touch"[1]. It uses a completely different technology. Further that wikipedia article shows that the someone had the idea in 2001. Good for them. The movie Minority Report came out in 2002, and was in pre-production for years before that. Thus the IDEA was not new. Nobody has claimed that the iPhone invented the IDEA. That you make no distinction between someone expressing an idea, and an actual invention of a technology, shows that you're just reaching for excuses to rationalize your ideology. Your attempt to insult my be claiming I denigrated people who work hard is also ... missing the mark. Finally, the surface uses a completely different technology, which is driven by cameras, to the iPhone, and does not have the same capabilities as the iPhone. So, even if the Surface itself had been invented in 2001 (rather than just the idea) it still wouldn't be applicable to this discussion. This comment is exactly why I hesitate to post on Hacker News in the first place, and rarely respond to comments to my posts. [1] this is a precise technological term trademarked by Apple whereby the impact area of a finger is resolved down to a single pixel, and multiple such fingers can be tracked simultaneously. The surface does not do this.
- Pewpewarrows 15y ago
  And they showed off a working version of the product, with multi-touch, at the All Things Digital conference before the iPhone released. For the record, comments to your posts are almost universally pointing out blatant inaccuracies, so I'm not surprised you don't respond.
  - nirvana 15y ago
    Between the time the iPhone was announced and released, Microsoft did whip up a quick demo... as anyone could have in the 1990s if they'd wanted to. Frankly, your claim about the Microsoft Surface false. It is completely irrelevant to this discussion. And actually supports my hypothesis that those who wish to diminish the inventiveness of the iPhone do so out of ideological reasons, not out of an understanding of the underlying technology. The Surface uses a technology whereby an image of the user is captured. It is not a touch screen at all. It does not directly measure touch. If people aren't even addressing the actual technology in question, I find that having a discussion is ... problematic. Plus the preponderance of down votes against my well reasoned points tells me that that a lot of you don't care about accurate or inaccurate, but whether something agrees with your ideology. Which lends credence to my hypothesis that this is ideologically driven.
    - thedeuce 15y ago
      Hmm...ironic I thought it was your posts that make intelligent discussion impossible on Hacker News.
    - AlisdairO 15y ago
      You're bandying around the term 'multi-touch', and shooting down responses that don't reference multi-touch using a capacitive screen. Multi-touch is a technology-neutral term that simply means a system with the ability to respond to multiple touches at the same time, and the Surface clearly qualifies. MSR did a load of useful UI research on multi-touch devices, and deserve credit for that. Apple released the first commercial device with a capacitive multi-touch screen (that I'm aware of), and it was absolutely a leap forward - the technology the surface used wasn't suitable for mobile devices. Apple deserve a lot credit for making an interesting, accurate, and responsive UI using new screen hardware (which, it should be pointed out, was not created by Apple). Surely this distinction isn't too hard to understand.
Samuel_Michon 15y ago
"The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001" It's much older. Multi-touch was invented in 1982, at the University of Toronto [1]. After that, it took quite a bit more research until an actual product was made that consumers could buy: in 1998, FingerWorks' launched its line of multi-touch keyboards [2]. FingerWorks was later bought by Apple, in 2005. As an aside: Microsoft's Surface was announced in 2007 [1] and works with cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen. [1] http://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html http://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html (author works at Microsoft, should be convincing enough to you) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerworks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerworks
- nirvana 15y ago
  Your argument is akin to claiming that whoever invented magnetic audio recording on tapes didn't do anything innovative because Edison had already invented the gramophone. The paper you cite claims that people were working on multitouch at University of Toronto. It is also true that touch panels (not multitouch) predate even that, going as far back as the 1970s. But none of this is relevant, and the fact that the Surface uses cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen is not an "aside", its the smoking gun. Apple (aka Fingerworks) invented multi-touch, which is the method detailed in its patents and used in the iPhone. Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology. I think the problem is that you guys have believed your own propaganda that patents just cover ideas. They do not. Patents cover specific technological inventions, methods and processes. Thus, 1970 era touch panels, the displays at your movie theater, the surface and everything driven with a stylus is as relevant to the invention of multitouch as the gramophone is to the invention of magnetic recording. That is to say, in the same broad field, but not examples of "prior art".
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    >Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology. What about this one? Forward to about 2:30 if you're impatient. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=884017118027634444 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=884017118027634444

nirvana 15y ago

The Microsoft Surface is not "multi-touch"[1]. It uses a completely different technology. Further that wikipedia article shows that the someone had the idea in 2001. Good for them. The movie Minority Report came out in 2002, and was in pre-production for years before that. Thus the IDEA was not new. Nobody has claimed that the iPhone invented the IDEA. That you make no distinction between someone expressing an idea, and an actual invention of a technology, shows that you're just reaching for excuses to rationalize your ideology. Your attempt to insult my be claiming I denigrated people who work hard is also ... missing the mark. Finally, the surface uses a completely different technology, which is driven by cameras, to the iPhone, and does not have the same capabilities as the iPhone. So, even if the Surface itself had been invented in 2001 (rather than just the idea) it still wouldn't be applicable to this discussion. This comment is exactly why I hesitate to post on Hacker News in the first place, and rarely respond to comments to my posts. [1] this is a precise technological term trademarked by Apple whereby the impact area of a finger is resolved down to a single pixel, and multiple such fingers can be tracked simultaneously. The surface does not do this.

Pewpewarrows 15y ago
And they showed off a working version of the product, with multi-touch, at the All Things Digital conference before the iPhone released. For the record, comments to your posts are almost universally pointing out blatant inaccuracies, so I'm not surprised you don't respond.
- nirvana 15y ago
  Between the time the iPhone was announced and released, Microsoft did whip up a quick demo... as anyone could have in the 1990s if they'd wanted to. Frankly, your claim about the Microsoft Surface false. It is completely irrelevant to this discussion. And actually supports my hypothesis that those who wish to diminish the inventiveness of the iPhone do so out of ideological reasons, not out of an understanding of the underlying technology. The Surface uses a technology whereby an image of the user is captured. It is not a touch screen at all. It does not directly measure touch. If people aren't even addressing the actual technology in question, I find that having a discussion is ... problematic. Plus the preponderance of down votes against my well reasoned points tells me that that a lot of you don't care about accurate or inaccurate, but whether something agrees with your ideology. Which lends credence to my hypothesis that this is ideologically driven.
  - thedeuce 15y ago
    Hmm...ironic I thought it was your posts that make intelligent discussion impossible on Hacker News.
  - AlisdairO 15y ago
    You're bandying around the term 'multi-touch', and shooting down responses that don't reference multi-touch using a capacitive screen. Multi-touch is a technology-neutral term that simply means a system with the ability to respond to multiple touches at the same time, and the Surface clearly qualifies. MSR did a load of useful UI research on multi-touch devices, and deserve credit for that. Apple released the first commercial device with a capacitive multi-touch screen (that I'm aware of), and it was absolutely a leap forward - the technology the surface used wasn't suitable for mobile devices. Apple deserve a lot credit for making an interesting, accurate, and responsive UI using new screen hardware (which, it should be pointed out, was not created by Apple). Surely this distinction isn't too hard to understand.

Samuel_Michon 15y ago

"The multi-touch interface was developed by Microsoft Research in 2001" It's much older. Multi-touch was invented in 1982, at the University of Toronto [1]. After that, it took quite a bit more research until an actual product was made that consumers could buy: in 1998, FingerWorks' launched its line of multi-touch keyboards [2]. FingerWorks was later bought by Apple, in 2005. As an aside: Microsoft's Surface was announced in 2007 [1] and works with cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen. [1] http://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html http://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html (author works at Microsoft, should be convincing enough to you) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerworks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerworks

nirvana 15y ago
Your argument is akin to claiming that whoever invented magnetic audio recording on tapes didn't do anything innovative because Edison had already invented the gramophone. The paper you cite claims that people were working on multitouch at University of Toronto. It is also true that touch panels (not multitouch) predate even that, going as far back as the 1970s. But none of this is relevant, and the fact that the Surface uses cameras instead of a capacitive touchscreen is not an "aside", its the smoking gun. Apple (aka Fingerworks) invented multi-touch, which is the method detailed in its patents and used in the iPhone. Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology. I think the problem is that you guys have believed your own propaganda that patents just cover ideas. They do not. Patents cover specific technological inventions, methods and processes. Thus, 1970 era touch panels, the displays at your movie theater, the surface and everything driven with a stylus is as relevant to the invention of multitouch as the gramophone is to the invention of magnetic recording. That is to say, in the same broad field, but not examples of "prior art".
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  >Nobody, that I've seen, has provided an example of a product predating the iPhone that uses this multi-touch technology. What about this one? Forward to about 2:30 if you're impatient. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=884017118027634444 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=884017118027634444