There was some news recently about how newer touch screen technology can accommodate up to 10 fingers on one screen, but I still think we could take more advantage of what we currently have on our iPhones. Apple loves touting the multi-touch screen like a killer feature, but I barely ever end up using it […]
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How about more multi touch gestures on the iPhone?

Aug 4th 2009 by


multitouch
There was some news recently about how newer touch screen technology can accommodate up to 10 fingers on one screen, but I still think we could take more advantage of what we currently have on our iPhones. Apple loves touting the multi-touch screen like a killer feature, but I barely ever end up using it in default apps. I recently took a swig of Kool Aid and bought a MacBook Pro, and one of the things I’ve really been enjoying is all the multi-touch gestures available on the glass trackpad. Four finger swipes to switch programs, three finger swipes to move back and forward in Safari. I love it. So how come we aren’t seeing more gestures on the iPhone?

I sent an e-mail around to the JAiB team (ok, so maybe only I call this site JAIB) and asked for thoughts on more multi touch gestures on the iPhone. Brandon and Alicia felt that the multi-touch gestures were used by only a minority of iPhone users, and that the iPhone’s strength is its simplicity. But even if we do take this point of view, there are a number of gestures missing on the iPhone that I think would be right at home on the platform.

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Okay so this can isn't hard to read sideways -- but I think you get the idea

Take the photos app, for example. You rotate a photo with the accelerometer on the iPhone, and the MacBook doesn’t have any equivalent because rotating a 5 lb. notebook just isn’t ideal. Swiping two fingers in a circle is simpler — but why leave that off of the iPhone? There are some instances when you’re viewing a picture in landscape view, but the text is tilted 90 degrees. Rotating the picture doesn’t do any good, since the text will just shift again and stay at a 90 degree angle. If I could just put two fingers on the screen to rotate the picture without changing the iPhone’s orientation, there would be no problem. Instead I have to rely on other programs like Photogene to rotate the picture to view it properly on the device.

I could easily go on for a little while — how about swiping to lock Safari’s orientation, or another quick gesture to reach Spotlight — and the interface could sound a little complicated, but I think as long as new multi-touch gestures are introduced as alternate ways to achieve an effect, iPhone interface will stay intuitive. The new shake to shuffle feature is a good example of this, since you can always tap a button to shuffle the iPod app instead of shaking. You can even turn the whole feature off if you don’t like it.

I’m not out to be dramatic here — the iPhone isn’t a nightmare to use. I love the platform and the device and I think it’s terrifically easy to use. It’s just that two, three, and four finger gestures (the iPhone supports up to five fingers, but that seems a bit much) haven’t really been touched upon in a while, and I think it would be really interesting to see more development in this area. Anybody around these parts have thoughts about multi touch? Is it already too complicated? Would you also like to see a bit more ingenuity?

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