So I ’m attending the opening days of theO’Reilly Emerging Technology 2006conference in gay San Diego . One of the highlights of the morning sessions today was fromJeff Hanof New York University . Han wow the crew this morning with his session , “ The Future of interface Is Multi - Touch . ”

While OS X users like to cogitate that we have the practiced computer interface out there , Han show a computer interface much more close resembling something from science fable . We ’ve all used a trace - screen before , be it at an ATM or a cubicle of some kind . This bend the idea of a screen background ( Finder , in OS XTC - speak ) and extends it to eternity , literally . or else of a single arrow interface ( such as using a mouse ) , you touch the sieve and you could interact with it atvarious point using your fingertip as something more than a individual mouse pointer .

On a large touch projection screen , Han could use his fingers as a pencil or paintbrush to draw pictures just as you would if you were finger - painting . He then alternate from draw to machinate photos . Yes , we all love iPhoto , Aperture , Flickr and all those other things . But what if there was a way to create a digital light table that was infinite in sizing ? That ’s what Han ’s interface does .

Han dragged the photos about the sieve , much like you would move physical print photos about a genuine board . He could enlarge them at will by just dragging them with his fingers — as if they were pliable . He could take lots of pic and rotate them at will , just as if they were correct in front of him . If he ran out of space , he could merely drag his finger to the side of his current workspace ( think scrolling on Google Maps ) and tot more space . The workspace could be zoomed in and out with simple digit dragging .

While it ’s not absolved on the dot how the computer industry migrates from the desktop metaphor that we ’ve used for 20 - odd years ( thanks to the original Macintosh , and before that , the Xerox Alto ) to something like what I saw Tuesday cockcrow , Jeff Han ’s multi - touch interface is worth a look . you may see for yourself with thisvideo demo of his cover institution .

I go for that Apple is make up attention to this , so that within a couple of generations of OS leaps , we can get to an interface that is much more lifelike to habituate and is as easy to infer as drive a car .