Please, I beg you. Stop selling multi-touch when talking about Windows 7. Don’t even mention it, never ever again. Here is my reasoning.
When the iPhone came out, it made a splash in a pretty big market of the same stuff. Phones. Why was it any different? You could touch it and when they said you could, not with a stylus, but with your fingers, it won the big bucks. Since then, the touch market has become pretty prevalent in the phone market. When you combine phones and touch, it just happens to work out. It’s cheap and it’s pretty easy.
Let’s picture a world where Apple didn’t make their own hardware. Let’s just say the released their iPhone OS into the world for, for laughs and giggles, $100, what would have happened? As you know, their iPhone OS is based on touch. There are more phones in the market with no touch capabilities. It would have been a very limited release and very small market. Now, let’s apply the same logic to Windows 7 and multi-touch.
One day in 2009, windows 7 ships and I buy a copy at best buy for $299. Sounds like a fair price, it’s touting the latest and greatest touch technology after all. And for seconds, I revel about how fun it’ll be. Moments later, reality comes crashing down. My monitor cannot support touch! My monitor is a fancy 22 inch flat screen from 2007. I suddenly go back to best buy and get a new monitor with touch capability for some around $499. That’s great, $800 for what, a greasy screen?
What I’m trying to say is this: it’ll be another Vista hardware issue. When Vista came out, nobody had the hardware for it. It’ll be the same way with Windows 7’s touch. I think about ten percent of all PC users would actually brand new hardware for just a new multi-touch. I bet it’s even less than that. Until touch-capability gets integrated with monitors without being significantly higher than a non-touch monitar, it won’t happen.
So please! Stop selling touch every chance you get. Touch is a feature, but not a main feature, of an OS.
(I’m ashamed to say this, but honestly, I think we should leave all touchy-stuff to the big Apple.)
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