Over a quarter-century ago, Xerox introduced the modern graphical user interface paradigm we today take for granted. 10/GUI aims to bridge this gap by rethinking the desktop to leverage technology in an intuitive and powerful way.
A friend of mine introduced the 10GUI project to me a couple months ago. I watched the video for a couple minutes, lost interest, and shut down the computer; It was late and I wanted to get to sleep. Yesterday I revisited the site, and watched the entire video. Please visit the website, read the information, and watch this ten minute video. It will be worth your time, I can guarantee it. Before I get into what my real thoughts about 10GUI are, I want to talk about the brief history of touch sensitive computing.
The first touch sensor was invented in 1971, from that year all thew way up to the beginning of the 21st century, I believe there was no improvement on a large scale. Sure, the sensors got smaller, sure they became more sensitive, and sure, the screens got bigger, but there was never a large advancement in usability, or interaction. This is because there are many problems that arise when trying to make a large change, which I will get to within the next few paragraphs.
I believe that Apple’s Multi-Touch, or Cocoa-Touch technology has been the foundation for touch screen computing in these past few years. Upon the release of the original iPhone, other cellular carriers designed and developed touch-screen phones like rapid-fire to compete with the iPhone. Droid, Storm, and myTouch all have their own “Multi-Touch” features, but it’s not like they would be here as they are if the Apple had not developed the iPhone with it’s own “touch” capability. Apple, along with it’s competitors has given us the opportunity to realize that touch-screen computing is the future, and for me, 10GUI is the future.
Touch technology did not take off so quickly in the computing sector because of the problems that arise. When you are using a touch computing mobile device, such as an iPhone, your fingers are not always on the screen when using an application. However, when using a computer, your fingers and hands are always resting on the keyboard or mouse. Therefore, if you were to enlarge the screen of a touch enabled mobile device and put on a desktop operating system on it, your fingers would always be resting on the screen; with your hands resting on the screen, much of your viewing space is taken up. 10GUI solves this problem by using a keyboard shaped pad.
Take a look at your current desktop, what do you see? If you are the “average” person, it is likely that you have more than one window open, one, being the browser window, which takes up a decent percentage of your screen size. Then you have the other windows that take up any remaining space, or are too large and must be minimized. 10GUI solves this problem by turning your monitor into one linear window. New applications will appear as they are launched, and navigation is possible by multi-touch gestures. As you switch Applications, different multi-touch gestures become available, and there are hundreds of combinations because of the number of fingers you have.
Imagine yourself as a sound technician in a recording studio. You are manning the equalizer on a non-touch screen computer. To adjust, you must use your mouse, and singularly move each dial or fob until satisfactory; this is completely different than using a real EQ, because you have all your fingers available to move the dials and fobs at the same time.
This is one of the main phenomenons about 10GUI. It allows the user to not be limited to “a single pair of coordinates”. Using more of your fingers will increase the speed of which you complete tasks. Since multiple fingers can be doing multiple things at the same time, this makes multi-tasking a breeze. The touch-pad also has three layers of sensitivity, which triples the number of actions you can do with your fingers, depending on the number you use, and the pressure that is applied. In 10GUI, more is more.
JD
My Bite Into Apple
http://mybiteintoapple.com
David DiFranco