The Next Wave Of Interfaces: Touch, Plus Something Else

In the Apple Watch and other new gadgets, multitouch input is improved, augmented, or passed over altogether.

In the days when Macintoshes all came with 9" monochrome displays, I once came upon a woman in a computer store trying to make sense of Apple's boxy beige computer. Looking at the display, she tried to activate an on-screen button by tapping the mouse against the screen rather than sliding it around the desk to control the cursor. In doing so, she demonstrated that direct manipulation of on-screen items is often more intuitive than indirect input devices such as a keyboard and mouse.

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