Video: Amazing, Futuristic MultiTouch Interface… On Windows

Leander Kahney ()

The video above shows why tablet computers are so exciting. Using your fingers to directly manipulate objects onscreen (as opposed to hitting radio buttons with a stylus pen) is clearly a powerful and intuitive way to interact with our machines.

The video shows a demo of BumpTop, a 3D desktop overlay for Windows 7. As you’ll see, it makes the computer desktop just like a real physical desktop. It’s pretty magical. Just look at the way photos are cropped — by chopping them with your finger!

BumpTop’s blog has more details about the specific gestures.

DON'T MISS
Windows 8 Tablets To Appear Without Desktop App [Report]

If this is what can be done on Windows, I can’t wait to see what Apple’s got up its sleeve.

20 comments »

About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by .

Posted in Hardware, News, Tablet |

  • iGenius

    “The video above shows why tablet computers are so exciting. Using your fingers to directly manipulate objects onscreen (as opposed to hitting radio buttons with a stylus pen) is clearly a powerful and intuitive way to interact with our machines.”

    You seem to miss the point completely. The finger/stylus choice is not the point, as anything you saw here done with a finger could also be done with a stylus. And stylii do not need “radio buttons” to be an effective input device. But that too is unimportant.

    The 3rd dimension is the innovation you missed, with stacks and a wall and rotation.

    Stylus vs. finger don’t even enter into it.

  • Charli

    i actually thought the 3D part was rather stupid looking. At least the 3d ‘walls’ part.

    the rest is copied from Apple (multitouch gestures, stacks, fanning, grids etc). done nicely enough but really not all that innovative.

  • Charli

    hmm interesting. I’m surprised there was no reference in the article to this older article, which describes a tablet with the same gestures that BumpTop ‘created’
    http://www.cultofmac.com/title_23/176

  • http://kinsleydale.com brookshanes

    iGenius you are incorrect. When are you going to use 2, 3, or even 5 stylii? Never. The interface is built strictly for human, (literally) digital interface and not for an external tool like a mouse or stylus.

    As an aside, the 3d evironment could easily be done by iPhone OS sitting on a tablet; nothing we saw here was involving simultaneous visible applications to be open.

  • iGenius

    “iGenius you are incorrect. When are you going to use 2, 3, or even 5 stylii? Never”

    Of course not.

    Before I got my 3GS, I used a Palm Treo. I could use a stylus when convenient, such as when fine control was optimal, and I could use my finger when convenient, for basic stuff like pushing the buttons on the phone dialer. I could also use the fingernail on my pinkie when I needed fine control for a short period of time, and didn’t feel like pulling out the stylus.

    The point is that there is no true dichotomy between finger and stylus. Both are best for certain subsets of tasks, and so it is foolish to take a position that one is better than the other. It is indeed unfortunate that the iPhone will not accept stylus input, as this makes it inconvenient to use when fine control is desired. The finger is a very clumsy stylus.

    But all this is very much a non-issue, as the innovative aspect of the product under review is NOT the input device. Using it as a poster child for the position “See! Apple is right to prevent stylus input!” is just foolish. It misses the entire point of why the product was developed.

  • Church of Apple

    Ahhh, bumptop. Looks like they’s come a long way in the past few years. Still, they need to liven up their “work space.” I still feel like I’m sitting in the bottom of a dark pit watching their demos. I think I’d prefer Apple’s 3D interface where it wouldn’t seem like looking into the bottom of a big metal box:

    http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/12/11/multi.dimensional.mac.os/

  • john

    the room feels really costraphobic :S

  • John

    What Apple has up their sleeve, lolololololol.

  • Kate

    Drag and Drop?
    The thumb drive icon actually showing up (instead of insanely being labeled “E Drive” in the My Computer folder?

    Please. We had these essentials years ago.

  • Scott

    This actually seemed like a more cumbersome way to navigate content than what’s currently available with modern operating systems. Between preview, spotlight, and good old-fashioned folders, you’re going to be able to get to what you want a lot faster I think. It looks cool with a few dozen files, but picture that system with the 10′s of thousands of files users have and it would quickly become pretty unwieldily.

  • Pete

    My physical desktop is messy & difficult to find things on, my virtual desktop is even messier & more difficult to find things on. This combines the two to make the most awful working space I can imagine. Looks neat, would hate to use it.

  • Tycho

    I can see how this looks as an absolutely awesome glimpse of the future; the 3rd dimension is neat (although the room is as dark as a dungeon) and the degree of control offered by direct manipulation is astonishing. However, I don’t see this applied on a large scale in consumer devices anytime soon, as the average user will probably refuse to learn all these subtly different gestures and their meaning. There is hardly any cue for the user what (s)he should do in order to get the task done, which means that every command (gesture) will have to be recalled from memory rather than recognized from on-screen cues. When compared to older interfaces such as the command line, the modern graphical user interface draws its appeal mostly from this “recognition rather than recall” concept. Having people remember a large number of complex gestures is actually one step forward, but two steps back, and therefore I don’t see this happen.
    As an example, look at the iPhone: there are only a few really simple gestures that are used everywhere, rather than a whole bunch of complex gestures. Would the iPhone be so universally adopted if it were more complex to operate? I don’t think so.

  • Max

    Looks totally cool, however I do not believe that Microsoft came up with this. Did Apple loose a prototype tablet or something? Not sure about the name “Bump Top”. Looks totally like Apple. And the close window button is on the left.

  • Max

    See… I said that I doubted it came from Microsoft. I had never heard of Bump Top b4. Anyway I checked out their blog. I am surprised Microsoft has not assimilated them.

  • blackjesus

    I think everyone needs to look at this Microsoft late prototype (as in functioning prototype). I doubt apple will make anything that will be this applicable to a business environment anytime soon.

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/172872/microsofts_courier_tablet_details_emerge.html

    Also bumptop is a bad UI to actually use. it is made to look cool but the amount of info you get from the ui is so limiting it makes it unusable.

    Why is it that the moment mac guys see anything that looks slightly innovative, you all say they stole from Apple without the slightest knowledge of when research began (in bumptop’s case was over 4 years ago).

  • toke lahti

    If pen is do damn bad interface in overall, why so little of the best art for last 500 years is painted with fingers?
    Wacom has got it right: they offer both.
    These 3D desktops do offer a lot of eyecandy, but it seems to me that there are very few things when they actually increase work efficiency.

  • accolon

    @blackjesus:
    It’s not a functioning prototype. It’s a concept for a tablet pc, and Microsoft has shown nothing more than rendered images and videos.

    The article you referred to confirms this: “… considering that all we’ve seen so far are concept drawings and videos, and nothing in the way of a live product shot.”

  • Guntis

    Interesting. Closing button on the top left corner, just like on a Mac. :-)

  • tooma

    I´ve been following the development of bumptop since its beginning, and still I think this adds nothing but eyecandy to user. And in this demo, even the eyecandy is not that nice…
    It does not increase efficiency in anyway, only thing it adds is the third dimension to your desktop, boring. They have a good concept going on, but I think they have not properly studied the usability and how to use this interface to add efficiency to user´s workflow.

  • Halo

    The integration of trackpad gesture features is pretty impressive. Worth trying!