Windows 7 multitouch: it's a gimmick (for now)



It is said that the microsoft's developers have spent some time with Windows 7 Beta's new touch and multitouch features this week, and came away largely disappointed. According to them, It was not that they didn't work, at least on occasion, it was that they didn't really provide a comprehensive or pleasurable method for using a computer. The primary enhancements to the OS that really made touch usage possible include a taller taskbar, pinch to zoom and tap-and-drag scrolling. There was a fancy new onscreen keyboard that's actually usable, and those quick-swipe gestures from Vista remain for forward, back, copy, paste, undo and redo.

It sounds like a lot,ya true that what happened exactly when MS made the fuss about Vista! Interactions are inconsistent from program to program, including Microsoft applications, gestures seem to work when you don't want them, and don't work when you need them, and at least 50 percent of the OS is still too small to use with touch -- making the improvements to touchability of the rest of it slightly pointless. All that said, we really like the idea of a touchscreen desktop OS, at least in theory. "There are certain actions like messing with photos and casual browsing that seem to make sense for augmenting regular computer inputs with touch -- they've certainly been enhanced by multitouch trackpads of late -- but we're going to need more consistent implementations to really get into it OS-wide", they say. Of course, this is just a Beta, things could always get better, and third party support will, like with most things, make or break it.

We'll hope for the best, but we're not tossing our keyboard and mouse just yet.

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