• iPad 3 to Feature Senseg’s E-Sense Touch Technology?

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, iPad, News, Rants & Raves, Rumors, Tech. No Responses

    iPad 3 to Feature Senseg’s E-Sense Touch Technology?

    iPad 3 to Feature Senseg’s E-Sense Touch Technology?

    When we first get the next-gen iPad (iPad 3 or iPad HD) event invitation, every body’s attention went to “We have something you really have to see.” which was translated instantly as the company might have attached a Retina Display to their new iPad which is a big possibility. But the invitation text goes with another words that – “And touch.”? Which in turn could be a reference to a new technology adopted by Apple.

    According to reports by The Guardian, unlike Apple’s existing iPad display, next-gen iPad screen may be textured and actually you may feel rough, smooth, curved, flat, sticky, and slippery sensations by just touching the screen surface.

    “Apple never uses words in its invitations without them meaning something,” said Carolina Milanesi, smartphones and tablets analyst for the research company Gartner. As she pointed out, the invitation for Apple’s previous event in October had a picture of some app icons, a “1″ against the iPhone, and the phrase “Let’s talk iPhone” – in retrospect, a pun on the planned introduction of the single iPhone 4S, with the Siri voice-driven “assistant” software.

    Milanesi thinks similar analysis will pay dividends: “Saying you have to ‘see’ it obviously refers to the retina display. As for ‘touch’, my first thought was that they have done something to the back of the iPad.”

    But the Guardian believes that the “touch” refers to a technology from Senseg, a Finnish startup which has developed a system called E-Sense which appears to give texture to a touchscreen.

    The technology comes from a Finnish company called Senseg and it uses things called “tixels,” generated by electric fields from elements embedded around the screen, to provide a texture on the display that can change just like its pixels.

    [via cultofmac]

  • Microsoft Unveiled Windows 8 With Tile-Based Touch Interface

    // Gradly // blog, Featured, Gadgets, Microsoft, News, Rants & Raves, Software, Tech. No Responses

    Microsoft offered the first glimpse of Windows 8, a sneak peek that reveals much about both the influences and the strategic goals of the major overhaul of Microsoft’s 25-year-old operating system.

    At the heart of the new interface is a new start screen that draws heavily on the tile-based interface that Microsoft has used with Windows Phone 7. All of a user’s programs can be viewed as tiles and clicked on with the touch of a finger.

    Windows 8 essentially supports two kinds of applications. One is the classic Windows application, which runs in a desktop very similar to the Windows 7 desktop. The other type of application, which has to be written in HTML5 and Javascript, looks more like a mobile application, filling the full screen. Internet Explorer 10, which is part of Windows 8, has already been configured to run in this mode, as have several widget-like apps for checking stock prices and weather.

    Although Windows 8 is clearly influenced by the iPad and other mobile devices, the plan for the new operating system has been in the works since Windows 7 shipped in July 2009–several months before the iPad was first shown. Watch the demo below:

    Microsoft has also done work with the classic Windows desktop to make it more touch friendly, including using a new kind of “fuzzy hit targeting” to adjust for the fact that fingers are far less precise than a mouse. The goal, says chief designer Julie Larson-Green, is that classic apps, though designed for a keyboard and mouse, work well with touch. Apps taking advantage of the new programming layer, she said, are designed for touch first, but also work well with a keyboard and mouse.

    [via AllThingsD]