I just came across this video of a new multi-touch OS that I think is pretty interesting. It's called 10/GUI. The designers tried to imagine what the Operating System would look like if designed for ten points of input instead of a single mouse pointer. What they came up with is a type of window manager that puts each window side by side, in a long strip. Using gestures you can zoom in and out as well as reorganize the windows.

I find this sort if thought experiment intriguing, but I'm not convinced they've landed on the right solution yet. This works well for a small screen, such as you'd find on a laptop, but I can't imagine it on my 26 inch monitor. I like to organize my windows in a horizontal and vertical tiling layout. I also switch between multiple windows or have multiple windows up at the same time, I think this may be confusing if switching between more than a couple windows. Finally, what about multi-monitor setups? In my office I use between two and four monitors at any time. Would you have a single strip that would link all the monitors together?

Here's the video, I think it's an incredibly interesting idea. I also like that they didn't replace the keyboard with a surface, yet.


10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Labels: GUI, Multi Touch, User Interface