Windows 7 starts race with Apple to full multi-touch desktop OS
The first public showing of Microsoft’s next major Windows update reveals an operating system with a familiar-looking dock and a more than slight emphasis on multi-touch displays.
Demonstrated at the Wall Street Journal’s D6 Conference, Windows 7 is described by observers from the newspaper as having a touch interface recognizable to “anyone who’s ever used an iPhone.”
Similar to what was demonstrated a year ago with the Surface table — as well as applications preloaded on the iPhone — the operating system will let users zoom into and rotate photos or maps using natural finger-based gestures, including pinching and flicking. Users can also draw multiple points at once a new version of Paint.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based firm has all the same taken early steps to develop and patent forms of multi-touch that would extend to a whole software platform, including pressure-sensitive screens as well as unique advanced multi-touch surfaces that would be used for typing in addition to gesture input. The iPhone by itself has over 200 associated patents, many of which relate to its multi-touch display.
Whichever of the two wins the contest for touch interfaces, Microsoft may also have to explain a more conventional similarity in Windows 7 when it arrives as soon as late 2009. The still very young operating system features a revamped, more colorful taskbar and the conspicuous addition of a Mac OS X-like dock for quickly managing apps.
“Multi-touch and a Dock. In Windows,” comments the Journal’s John Paczkowski. “Steve Jobs would be proud.”