On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. They seem pretty cool to me. > So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? How do you right-click on a touchscreen? The old way has been to hold down the stylus for some timeout period. But with multitouch there are other alternatives. One will probably emerge as the standard. You might even be able to detect different fingers by the shape of the contact patch, so different fingers have different actions. I'd like to play with it, but right now my choices are: buy an iphone and hack it; or build my own FTIR table. Without even thinking about specific use cases though, isn't it clear that multitouch is the superior technology? If you add a new capability and allow developers to play with it, new uses will emerge which nobody has yet thought of. Besides it's more durable: it won't mechanically wear out like resistive touchscreens do, and the screen can be glass instead of scratchable plastic. Maybe even could be a mineral crystal like a good watch. Maybe you are just making excuses based on the fact that you think multitouch is unobtanium at this point? It has been discovered that the necessary chip is made by Broadcom, with the model number BCM5974. Funny thing is, when you google that you just find a zillion copies of the same blog by someone who disassembled the iPhone (and the Air) and discovered that; I haven't found anything on Broadcom's site. So I don't understand if Apple was able to coerce them into making it exclusive. I mean, Apple bought Fingerworks and thereby got the technology, right? Then what... they said well we don't have a fab, do we? so they made an agreement with Broadcom to manufacture the chips on the condition that they are not allowed to sell them to anyone else? (Just guessing) Well how long do you think that will last? Maybe the exclusivity expires after some period of time; and Broadcom knows that either they will find a way to sell to everyone, or the competition will catch up and do it for them. Soon we will see another supplier, because it's too hot to be ignored. (It's also a good question, who made the chips for Fingerworks.) In a couple years there will probably be chintzy LCD multi-touch wristwatches or something. By that point it will be uninteresting. But FIC ought to try to feel their way around this situation: chat up the sales guys and FAE's at Broadcom and find out if there's any way to buy this chip. It reputedly costs a mere $3. I agree, the next Neo needs this capability. _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community