What Is New

There have been a few open letters to Microsoft after last week's small Windows 7 disclosure at All Things Digital. Last week Rob Bushway wrote, "Mr. Gates, The Tablet PC Community needs to talk with you," after concerns about users giving up on features because of mobility issues (power, wireless, battery issues). Today, James Kendrick wrote an open letter to Microsoft about Windows' needing to attend to the ways the majority of people use PCs today -- relying on battery power and portability. "...the days of bloated system code are over," James wrote, as he too described power management issues like sleep / resume are too oriented toward stationary PCs and need to be more focused on mobility.

There have been others too. All thoughtful in their own way. Mobile PCs are the accepted standard and it looks like the community is willing to help prioritize features.

When you were in school, did you draw on your desk? When Microsoft launched Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Loren and I talked about how great it would be if our eldest brother could finally draw on his desk again. Yes, mark all over it.

You see, he's an architect. Even though more recently his drafting table is primarily used for reviewing and his PC is used for drafting or redlining, with pen and multi-touch technology he could have a multi-touch table. Architecture firms could also use entire walls to literally walk a customer through a virtual building to proof the drawing.

With Windows SDK offering ink and shape & handwriting recognition at a platform level, Google TouchLib, Microsoft Surface, Microsoft TouchWall, and other similar efforts we're nearing an opportunity to converge developer platforms in order to expand and deliver a greater variety to users. I don't think it'll happen in one fell swoop, but consider the possibilities.

What major advancements do you want to see with PC operating systems? "Ease of use," may be a vague catch-all phrase, but it is a continual quest. "How can PCs be easier?" "How can more people benefit?" Consider how most people primarily interact with PCs today: keyboard and touchpad. Speech, touch, and pen have been wonderful emerging methods, even offered in some products, but we're really beginning to delve into natural interaction.

For example, an adult male talking in his native language to his PC will get impressive speech recognition results. Whereas, an 8 year old girl, who has high pitched voice and speaking in a foreign language, may not get great results -- let alone conditions that impact everyone at one time or another, like someone who has a cold and cough. As useable as today's speech technology is today, there is still a tremendous way to go to build out the possibilities. Wouldn't it be great for a PC to be able to identify and recognize multiple voices singing in a choir or those in a conversation? Or shifting to touch, what about multiple people interacting with objects on a surface at the same time and the PC is smart enough to know the angles they're reaching from or perhaps who is touching it? What about vision sensing in robots for not only location but also facial recognition?

Are you ready to let your fingers dance across your computer monitor, display, or interactive whiteboard? When Microsoft announced that it is including multi-touch support in Windows 7, there was plenty of groaning about dirty fingers.

"...I really don't want users pinching and dragging their dirty mits around the new LCD monitors," writes Slashdot user binaryspiral.

"I know I'm not the most tolerant person in the world, but when someone comes to my desk, points at something on the screen and leaves a big smeary finger print, violent thoughts flash through my mind," comments TheTruthIsOutThere on ZDnet.

Channel9 user, YearOfTheLinuxDesktop, expresses, "look: I can fill my display with dirty fingerprints!"

Do you agree with these folks? Is touching something bad? Or is it a fear you can get over?

Perhaps you are hyper-clean. Nothing wrong with that. If that's the case, when you scrub your desk and keyboard each day - before and after you snack - just take a quick wipe of the display too.

Perhaps you are a free spirit who rarely cleans and are slightly worried that this is one more place that people will notice you haven't cleaned. Trust me, they know it already. If salt from potato chips scratching your display worries you, then there are great inventions like hand-towels and napkins to help you out.

Microsoft released a little information about Windows 7 today, which fans of natural and direct input on PCs will appreciate: multitouch supported in the OS. Videos demonstrating the new PC feature were shown at All Things Digital earlier today. Here's one of the videos from the Windows Vista Team Blog (Note: This blog is written by the Windows marketing team and even though it is "Windows Vista Team Blog" the feature the post is about is actually a future version of Windows, not Windows Vista.):

Multi-Touch in Windows 7