Multitouch Part 1: iPhone

It’s interesting how profound an impact well-designed and innovative technology can have. There have been just a few moments in my life when I was affected in such a way: my first real exposure to a programmable computer, my first experience with a Mac, my introduction to NCSA Mosaic, and my purchase of an iPhone.

My middle school had an Apple IIe, and to me the amazing thing about that computer was how accessible the programming environment was. It was my first real experience with programming of any kind. Turn the thing on and you could start typing BASIC commands without any preamble, as if your faithful assistant were there, head cocked, pen in hand, ready to take meticulous notes right as you walked into your office, before you’d even taken off your coat and sat at your desk. Programming a IIe turned me on to the world of computer science, and it was a pivotal moment in my life.

Also in middle school, I had my first exposure to a GUI. My friends Jamie and Ethan lived in a relatively affluent part of town and had a psychologist father who could afford the early Mac 512. I have vivid memories of staying up late, using MacPaint to express myself in a way that felt intuitive, powerful, and brand-new. Using that interface felt natural and easy. I instincively felt that all computers would work that way one day; how could they not? It was so well-designed that the computer melted away and I was directly connected: my creative impulse flowed straight to a tool and medium that offered possibilities I hadn’t dreamt of until that moment.

In my senior year of college (‘94-’95) I used a web browser for the first time. Being able to navigate hyperlinked pages has become such a routine activity that it’s hard to remember that it was once a novel experience. I do remember that it was the first time I could clearly see the potential of the Internet for communication, information exchange and entrepreneurship. *

The only other time I’ve had a similar experience was when I got my iPhone some two decades later. Right away I felt that all computers would one day work like this. The interface is, to me, the first quantum leap beyond the mouse-based GUI since it supplanted the command-line interface. I find myself wanting to poke, pinch, squeeze, grab, flick, and swipe things on computer screens. It’s the kind of paradigm shift that makes you realize just how narrow a channel of communication you’re using by controlling a single point on the screen and using a monotonic gesture like clicking.

So I’m sold on multi-touch, gesture-based interfaces as the future of human-computer interaction. There’s lots of research in this area, and products are just beginning to arrive. Think of the iPhone as the original Mac 128K, with its tiny black and white screen, limited memory and slow processor, and you’ll start to realize where things can go from here. I can’t wait to see the upcoming GUI revolution. I hope that engineers everywhere see this as an opportunity to truly innovate and discard some of the tired old conventions that modern technology has outgrown, but that are grandfathered into new systems in the name of backward compatibility and learning curves. More on that in upcoming posts.

A disclaimer and final thought… Is it a coincidence three of these experiences have involved Apple products? I try not to be a fanboy, and I didn’t intend to write an Apple post. The Mac and iPhone happen to be characterized by superlative design, and Apple excels at design when it’s firing on all cylinders. They can take groundbreaking research and existing products and craft them into a very polished and compelling package.

* My friend Randy and I had the idea to create an internet café where you could get coffee and a sandwich and buy internet access by the hour at installed computer terminals. Had we quit college then and gone into the business, we would have been at the leading edge; I don’t recall many existing back then, if any.