6 ms·

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 i

by 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.
    - nirvana 15y ago
      The key problem here is that people are conflating technologies that work on a completely different principle and don't have the same capabilities with the iPhone touch technology, and saying that their existence proves that nothing was invented for the iPhone. However, this is obviously false, as the technologies work using different methods and have different capabilities. Multi-touch is a trademarked term[1] Apple uses to describe its technology for resolving the amorphous blob a finger makes when in contact with a screen into a single pixel. Notice that the surface doesn't do this. It just detects a finger, but it can also detect a stylus or anything else. Its accuracy is that of an object, maybe a finger, not a pixel somewhere under the finger that is much smaller than the finger. I'm not discounting Microsoft's work, it its just not relevant to this discussion. When doing the trademark search just now, I found that some one else used it to talk about a switch based technology, invented around 1990.[2] Again, "touch screens" whereby finger pressure closes a circuit by bending one trace into another has been around since the 1970s. These are almost alway single touch, but even when they can detect two fingers, they are not solving the same problem Apple did. Apple resolved a finger down to a pixel, these things just detect fingers. There's a huge difference. Thus, people bringing up these other technologies that do not even do the same thing, as if they are "prior art" are being dishonest. [1]Word Mark MULTI-TOUCH Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Handheld mobile digital electronic devices with electronic mail, digital data transmission, audio player, video player, handheld computer, personal digital assistant, electronic organizer, electronic notepad, telephone, computer gaming, and camera functions. FIRST USE: 20070109. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20070629 Standard Characters Claimed Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK Serial Number 77219819 Filing Date June 30, 2007 [2]Word Mark MULTI-TOUCH Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: switches, switch panels, and communication circuits. FIRST USE: 19900202. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19900202 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Serial Number 74438236 Filing Date September 21, 1993

by nirvana 15y ago

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.
  - nirvana 15y ago
    The key problem here is that people are conflating technologies that work on a completely different principle and don't have the same capabilities with the iPhone touch technology, and saying that their existence proves that nothing was invented for the iPhone. However, this is obviously false, as the technologies work using different methods and have different capabilities. Multi-touch is a trademarked term[1] Apple uses to describe its technology for resolving the amorphous blob a finger makes when in contact with a screen into a single pixel. Notice that the surface doesn't do this. It just detects a finger, but it can also detect a stylus or anything else. Its accuracy is that of an object, maybe a finger, not a pixel somewhere under the finger that is much smaller than the finger. I'm not discounting Microsoft's work, it its just not relevant to this discussion. When doing the trademark search just now, I found that some one else used it to talk about a switch based technology, invented around 1990.[2] Again, "touch screens" whereby finger pressure closes a circuit by bending one trace into another has been around since the 1970s. These are almost alway single touch, but even when they can detect two fingers, they are not solving the same problem Apple did. Apple resolved a finger down to a pixel, these things just detect fingers. There's a huge difference. Thus, people bringing up these other technologies that do not even do the same thing, as if they are "prior art" are being dishonest. [1]Word Mark MULTI-TOUCH Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Handheld mobile digital electronic devices with electronic mail, digital data transmission, audio player, video player, handheld computer, personal digital assistant, electronic organizer, electronic notepad, telephone, computer gaming, and camera functions. FIRST USE: 20070109. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20070629 Standard Characters Claimed Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK Serial Number 77219819 Filing Date June 30, 2007 [2]Word Mark MULTI-TOUCH Goods and Services IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: switches, switch panels, and communication circuits. FIRST USE: 19900202. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19900202 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Serial Number 74438236 Filing Date September 21, 1993