I Want My MPC: The 'Multi-Touch PC' Era Dawns

Apple's got it, but you can't do much with it. Microsoft's got it, but you can't afford it. And Dell's got it, but you can't have it yet.

Everyone's talking about multi-touch. But what is it, exactly, and why should you care?

The word multi-touch has become shorthand for a wide range of next-generation user interface technologies that, taken together, will transform how we interact with computers.

The major components of this UI are multi-touch (the ability of a touch screen to accept many points of input at once); physics (on-screen objects that behave as if they have weight, mass, momentum and other physical properties); and gestures (the ability to send commands to the system by drawing a shape on screen).

Big deal, right? In fact, this combination of advances will deliver us at last from the old-and-busted WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device) UI we've been saddled with for the past quarter century.

If you're still not impressed, check out these two videos. The best demonstrations of the promise of multi-touch I've seen are these now-famous videos created by researcher Jeff Han nearly two years ago.

There’s no question that multi-touch is a giant and welcome leap forward. And although multi-touch is theoretically here, you can’t just go out and buy a real computer with multi-touch. Even if you could, there’s almost zero software available to support it. Still, the industry is off to a good start and THE DIRECTION IS CLEAR.