The Future of Multi-touch, Yesterday

The multi-touch technology found in Apple Inc.is new iPhone is truly remarkable and will certainly change how people expect their cell phones to work. But to get a taste of what multi-touch really has in store for us, we need to look back. All the way back to March, 2006, in fact.

Back in the pre-iPhone days, when rumors of tablet Macs, wide screen iPods, and an Apple cell phone were all the rage, Jefferson Y. Hanis demonstration video showing multi-touch interface interaction experiments found its way onto YouTube.


Resizing images with a multi-touch interface.

The short video shows a person interacting with a computer display using only their hands to navigate and interact with documents. If you watch closely, you can even see the "pinch effect" that Steve Jobs demonstrated to resize photos.


Two-handed map navigation.

The footage gives just a taste of how sophisticated multi-touch interfaces may become in both handheld devices and computers, but youill have watch the 10-month old video yourself to get the full effect.