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Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

tactustechnology.com

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Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#51

Post by [deleted] »

saulrh wrote: post #39
earbitscom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bummer. Now, that is classic. I remember using public payphones just a little over a decade ago. One time some kids had put Vaseline on the earpiece. That was a fun time. Now we have a phone in our pocket that we can talk to and have it do nearly anything. By next year, it will have buttons when we want and no buttons when we don't. Vaseline on your ear is a bummer. This button-no-button stuff is not a bummer.

It's a bit of a bummer because it's trivial and boring. It almost looks like it's just a touchscreen with pockets on the front that you blow compressed air into. The fact that this is getting so much attention - and the fact that it's wasting some of our time in the process - is kind of annoying.

[deleted]

Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#52

Post by koeselitz »

saulrh wrote: post #39
earbitscom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bummer. Now, that is classic. I remember using public payphones just a little over a decade ago. One time some kids had put Vaseline on the earpiece. That was a fun time. Now we have a phone in our pocket that we can talk to and have it do nearly anything. By next year, it will have buttons when we want and no buttons when we don't. Vaseline on your ear is a bummer. This button-no-button stuff is not a bummer.

It's a bit of a bummer because it's trivial and boring. It almost looks like it's just a touchscreen with pockets on the front that you blow compressed air into. The fact that this is getting so much attention - and the fact that it's wasting some of our time in the process - is kind of annoying.

There are millions of people now who carry around little extraneous keyboards with their iPads - and probably millions more who don't buy iPads or any other touch device because they really don't like typing when they can't touch-type. Maybe that seems like a trivial problem, but any gap in the market keeping people from devices is generally a gap worth working to close.

Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#53

Post by [deleted] »

saulrh wrote: post #39
earbitscom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bummer. Now, that is classic. I remember using public payphones just a little over a decade ago. One time some kids had put Vaseline on the earpiece. That was a fun time. Now we have a phone in our pocket that we can talk to and have it do nearly anything. By next year, it will have buttons when we want and no buttons when we don't. Vaseline on your ear is a bummer. This button-no-button stuff is not a bummer.

It's a bit of a bummer because it's trivial and boring. It almost looks like it's just a touchscreen with pockets on the front that you blow compressed air into. The fact that this is getting so much attention - and the fact that it's wasting some of our time in the process - is kind of annoying.

[deleted]

Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#54

Post by [deleted] »

saulrh wrote: post #39
earbitscom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bummer. Now, that is classic. I remember using public payphones just a little over a decade ago. One time some kids had put Vaseline on the earpiece. That was a fun time. Now we have a phone in our pocket that we can talk to and have it do nearly anything. By next year, it will have buttons when we want and no buttons when we don't. Vaseline on your ear is a bummer. This button-no-button stuff is not a bummer.

It's a bit of a bummer because it's trivial and boring. It almost looks like it's just a touchscreen with pockets on the front that you blow compressed air into. The fact that this is getting so much attention - and the fact that it's wasting some of our time in the process - is kind of annoying.

[deleted]

Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#55

Post by koeselitz »

anigbrowl wrote: post #12

I am sure the first generation is going to be fraught with problems, but this looks so good that I would badly like to own part of this company. Massive game changer, with the sort of technology I thought to be 5-10 years out. Unqualified thumbs up from me.

Same here; it seems like the range of applications is incredibly broad.

Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#56

Post by geon »

hacknjack wrote: post #14

This would be a killer feature for me if the buttons had some kind of depression, so I could feel the button before actually pressing it. Without that feature it's just a bumpy touch screen which isn't all that much better than a flat one in my opinion.

Would the bubble create a non touch sensitive surface, since it is at a distance from the screen? Assuming it can be pressed flat against the glass before the touch screen beneath detects a touch, you have pretty much what you want.

There would still be touch sensitive areas between the bubbles, which might be a problem, depending on the app.

Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#57

Post by anigbrowl »

run4yourlives wrote: post #46

This is cool, but is there really a demand for this? Didn't we almost universally switch from textured, real buttons to glass interfaces over the last 5 years? Maybe it's just me, but I'm not exactly pining for my old blackberry's keyboard. My display/interface iPhone isn't perfect, but this just isn't a real enough problem for me. Is it for you?

I don't want to look at the screen all the time, same way that when I type on a real keyboard I don't usually look at the keys (or even the screen some of the time). On tablets, i'd like the feel of a keyboard some of the time (without losing the real estate when I'm not typing), but I'd also really like tactile feedback for music applications, scrolling and stuff like that.

Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.

#60

Post by jarek »

zacharypinter wrote: post #34

Prediction: Apple buys the company and the proceeds to get every patent they can on this tech.

Unfortunately for them that won't be a lot of patents that would stand up under examination since there's been heavy research in haptic interfaces, and especially haptic touchscreen interfaces for quite a while now.

In fact I would be surprised if Apple wasn't doing research into this themselves.

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