Scott Magdalein

If you aren't necessarily very techie, the title may sound off to you. Here's an explanation:

• Multi-touch is a phrase that describes how a human can interact with a touch sensitive computer, like an iPhone. It allows a user to use more than one finger at a time to manipulate what you see on the screen. For example, multi-touch allows iPhone users to pinch-to-zoom on a photo.
• Nexus One is the latest phone powered by Google's mobile operating system, Android. I bought one last month.

Can you see the striking resemblance between these two photographs? Both geniuses. Both enjoy simplicity. Neither holding a computer.

   

I'm sitting on a plane typing this blog post on a touch screen phone
(iPhone). Sitting to my left, across the isle and one row forward, is
a middle-aged man dressed for a business meeting and looking bored.

The flight hasn't taken off yet, which means the little screen on the
back of the seat in front of him (and me) is rotating informational
slides. Nothing interesting is being displayed, but the slides look
good...and touchable. In fact, they have button-like graphics that
begged to be touched.

So, with his curiosity at a peak, and convinced that these slides are
touch-friendly, he commences with a frustrating round of touching
every pixel on the screen. After several slides pass, and not one
single touch is getting a response from the screen, the man gives up
and grabs the Sky Mall catalog.

When I was a kid touching things was the best way to discover. If I
wanted to know what mud felt like, I touched it. If I wanted to see
how sharp a knife was, I touched it. Touch was a way to build a
sensory link between what I saw and what was real; a sensory-context,
if you will.

With the emergence of the iPhone, and before that stylus-powered
devices, touch has become an expected way of controlling a computer.
If something fits in your hand, or doesn't have obvious controls, the
assumption is that you can control it via touch.

When I got to the airport this morning, I checked in at the Delta
kiosk on a touchscreen computer. On my way to gate A10, the guy
running the x-ray used a touchscreen, a cashier used a touchscreen,
and there was a vending machine that offered a touchscreen. Even the
person that checked me into the plane used a touchscreen.

No wonder that poor guy in front of me thought he should be touching
the screen on the back of the seat. Uh oh, he's back at it. Should I
tell him that's not how it works?