Re:Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop
by 83457 on Saturday April 03, 2021 @08:40AM
(#26680573)
Sounds obvious now but pinch to zoom was a big new feature on iPhone that traditional phones, even those with touch capability, did not have muti-touch. Part of this was capacitive touch screen technology that few other devices had at the time, instead having cheaper resistive which pretty much required a stylus to do anything but press in a particular spot on screen. I don't believe android devices had muti-touch originally even though they had capacitive touch screens. Touchpads on laptops and touch screens added multi-touch years later.
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Re:Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop
by dTal on Saturday April 03, 2021 @09:35AM
(#26680921)
I don't think it was so much that resistive touchscreens were cheaper; rather, the dominant mobile interaction model had for a decade been oriented around styluses - handwriting recognition, small UI elements - and resistive touchscreens are simply more precise. Even with a capacitive screen, direct physical interaction such as smooth scrolling and pinch-zooming requires graphical horsepower that just wasn't on the table until around the time the iPhone came along.
Re:Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop
by salamandersauce on Saturday April 03, 2021 @10:03AM
(#26681122)
Yeah. The T-Mobile G1 lacked multitouch gestures. You could hack them in though as the hardware supported it. I think it was a patent issue or someething which was why it was left out.