back to article Will you soon be fingering your seven-incher?

The mill that grinds out iPad Mini launch rumours was hit by a hurricane this week, its normally creaking sails thrashing like helicopter blades. I’d love to say that I’m bored by the whole thing but unfortunately it’s going to affect everyone at work. You spend six months preparing for the Kindle Fire UK launch – a “game- …

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  1. EddieD

    Not so silly on bigger tabs

    You can have two folk interacting.

    I forget what the limit is on Microsoft's Surface 2, sorry Samsung SUR40, about 50 or so...

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Not so silly on bigger tabs

      >In fact, does any tablet or smartphone need eleven – or even five?

      On something the size of an iPad, a virtual piano or mixing desk are examples of an applications which can benefit from detecting more than a couple of fingers simultaneously. On physical electronic musical keyboards, statements like '5 note polyphony' have adorned the packaging for decades, because a cheaper model might only allow two notes to be played at once.

      So, to answer Mr Dabbs question: A tablet is a multifunctional tool, and whilst you don't need five points of contact to tap out an email, watch a Youtube video or check a railway timetable, other applications can benefit from it. The whole point of having a device that runs software is that its function is not defined before it leaves the factory, so I am surprised Mr Dabbs has taken a limited view. Must be a Friday.

  2. TRT Silver badge
    Pint

    Applauds headline.

    Well done sir!

  3. Paul M 1

    How about 0 points?

    Many companies seem to be looking at going touch-free, detecting gestures from afar.

    Maybe even the touch-sensitive screen is on the way out!

    1. Fred Flintstone Gold badge
      Coat

      Re: How about 0 points?

      Many companies seem to be looking at going touch-free, detecting gestures from afar.

      I claim prior art here. I have been using touch-free gestures detection with my boss for years. What's more, it doesn't even involve multiple fingers..

    2. Levente Szileszky
      Go

      Re: How about 0 points?

      Sony already has it, it's called "floating touch" - my wife can can browse, scroll, drag, even select hyperlinks on her Xperia Sola without touching the screen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q73bHn9xus

    3. Sloppy Crapmonster
      Joke

      Re: How about 0 points?

      Virtual instruments able to take input from zero fingers? John Cage would like to have a word and/or lawsuit with you.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    I'm perfectly satisfied

    with my 7 1/4", but one or two touches isnt enough to make it do anything worthwhile.

    I just wish I had a tablet, preferrably a dual-boot one, since I have to keep my customers' data separate, and preferably non-existent/invisible except when I'm on site. I'm currently trying to do this with Fedora and a separate 5GB data partition for each client. It's an interesting (at least to me) problem to try to solve.

    1. James 51

      Re: I'm perfectly satisfied

      Sounds like you want a playbook. £129 for the 64gb version.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm perfectly satisfied

        Indeed. The 2.1 upgrade came out this week. This morning I tried to use a (recent) Android tablet in a meeting. After the PB, it is enormously frustrating - gestures work really well on smaller screens, and the PB is logical and consistent as well as able to run email, web browsing and a few other applications with minimal switching time. It also has a magnetic power connector, HDMI output, and now the ability to send sms messages through my phone.

        If there was a contest for "most undervalued IT product" it might well win.

        1. jason 7

          Re: I'm perfectly satisfied

          I know what you mean. After you use 'gestures' any other touch device feels rather old fashioned. I've tried a lot of them but the Playbook really does work the smoothest.

          Having to use a back button?? Only able to run one app at a time??

        2. Levente Szileszky

          Re: I'm perfectly satisfied

          While that might be through, my $99 Touchpad was able to pick up and start calls through my Android phones last Summer - and this is something existed in WebOS from day 1...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Think about it. Eleven.

    >an iPhone supports up to five simultaneous touches but the iPad supports eleven.

    OK, so that's eight fingers, two thumbs and er....?

    Thoughts...

    What use are eleven touches for a woman?

    But I rest my iPad on that and my nose won't reach that far, erm not that I've tried

    And Apple think fanbios have friends who could help with the extra digits.

    1. Graham Bartlett

      Re: Think about it. Eleven.

      Ask Mozart and Haydn about that one.

      http://www.teachpianotoday.com/2011/10/11/a-long-nose-a-case-of-champagne-and-a-great-piano-teaching-tip/

      Actually you *can* have more than 5 points of contact with a single hand. Place all five fingertips on the surface, then drop your wrist - you now have an extra point (actually an area) of contact with your palm heel.

  6. NB

    Meh, I already have an excellent 7 incher. It's called a Nexus 7.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's a novel name for it. Oooo er, mrs!

      7" - you should be happy. Mine is 10" and can handle 11 strokes....

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Your mother

    loves my seven-incher.

  8. John Robson Silver badge

    Audio controls...

    Often use 10 touch detection....

    On a mechanical devices I can, and regularly do, use all ten fingers at the same time, although the ability to have their freedom restricted by friction on a moving control is invaluable.

    I can see "musical instrument" apps easily needing ten touches.

    "Mixer" apps (of which there are several) also need highly multi-touch interfaces.

    On a 7 inch device I can see limiting to 6 being feasible - certainly for someone with my ape like hands.

    1. Big_Ted

      Re: Audio controls...

      If the 7 inch format becomes common just add NFC and you touch 2 7 inchers together and have one for each hand on the desk in front of you, much better than squeezing it onto an iPad/10" screen. add to that video over wifi and your all set, this would also enable 2 people to a game each with their own tablet.

      And being 7" they would be much cheaper than 10" jobs as the smaller screen would be cheaper to start with.

      I can see the future being either one 10" plus all other tablets in a house being 7" or if just one tablet 7" being the choice of many as its just easier to hold etc and bigger screen could just be the laptop/desktop.

      I already use my blackberry playbook for simple stuff and if need a bigger screen use compremote from the app store to use it as a mouse and keyboard to control the pc conected to the tv.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Audio controls...

        Well the hell not... the perfect way to sell a second device to someone you can't persuade to upgrade to MKII.

        Seriously though, there's precedent in consumer devices: Two Playstation-2s could be daisy-chained to expand Gran Turismo over two TVs.

    2. Piro Silver badge

      Re: Audio controls...

      Even my glorious Chinese tablet (Pipo M3) can support 10 touches on a 10.1" (IPS) screen.

      10 is definitely defacto.

      1. Piro Silver badge

        Re: Audio controls...

        *de facto

  9. STGM
    Paris Hilton

    Can someone explain that 4Dice cube video to me

    ..slowly and with small words please? It's bending my mind a bit.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Can someone explain that 4Dice cube video to me

      OK. Start with a line - one dimension. It has 2 "edges" - the endpoints. What is a square? a line with two other lines at right angles in a new dimension, one at each of the edges, plus a line connecting the two new lines.

      Take a square: two dimensions. It has 4 "edges" - the sides. What is a cube? A square with 4 new squares at right angles to it in a new dimension, plus a square connecting the 4 new squares. Now, rotate that cube around and watch its shadow. See how sometimes it looks like 2 squares and lines connecting them, and sometimes it looks like not-square-at-all shapes?

      Take a cube: three dimensions. It has 6 "edges" - the sides. What is a tesseract? A cube with 6 new cubes at right angles on each of the edges, plus a cube connecting the 6 new cubes. Spin it around in 4 dimensions, and the three dimensional shadow will sometimes look like a cube inside another cube with lines connecting them (just like the shadow of the cube can look like 2 squares connected by lines), and sometimes looks like not-at-all-cubelike things.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Can someone explain that 4Dice cube video to me

        Its like the Simpson's Halloween Special episode, called 'Homer³' , in which Homer gets sucked into the 3rd dimension.

        "Homer! Can you tell us what its like in there"

        "Well, did anyone see that movie Tron?"

        [Everybody in turn] "No!"

        Professor Frink is called upon to explain to the rescue party what the 3rd dimension is: "Well, it should be obvious to even the most dim witted individual.. who holds a PhD in hyperbolic topology ahem ahem" and continues to give an explanation not unlikes Mr Hagood's above.

        "There could be cubes in there the size of gorillas!"

  10. Leona A
    Angel

    Size Matters!

    so nothing less then a 10 inch'er will do! ;)

    I've tried my partners 7 inch'er and I just can't see it well enough to use it.

    We are talking about tablets right? ;)

    I think that's enough s3xual innuendo for one day.

    1. Wibble
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Size Matters!

      Was it the sexual inyourendo that made you go blind?

  11. plrndl

    I've turned up an answer...

    ... obviously you need 11 points for a Spinal Tap.

  12. bluesxman
    Coat

    Quite happy...

    ... with my 7 inch Ainol -- with which I can assure you that 5 fingers is more than enough.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a load of tosh...

    "As El Reg readers will be well aware, a seven-incher only needs one hand to hold comfortably and it can be whipped out in public without attracting unwarranted attention."

    I'm aware as an El Regger I can hold my iPad comfortable with one hand and use it with the other. I thought lonely fandroid techies who wack their true 7 incher every night would have strong wrists? Thought not.

    *waits for the bait to be bitten on*

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What a load of tosh...

      "I'm aware as an El Regger I can hold my iPad comfortable with one hand and use it with the other.

      ...

      *waits for the bait to be bitten on*"

      Since I don't want you to be waiting around all day, is that because you're only using it for 30 seconds before you switch to something with an accurate map?

      1. the-it-slayer
        Happy

        Re: What a load of tosh...

        Luckily I know how to use Google Maps on Safari.

  14. Britt Johnston
    IT Angle

    Seriously, now

    Excuse me for interupting the frivolity of Friday afternoon to pick out a serious point in this.

    Surely Apple will get slower IT support from large firms if they don't provide timelines, betas, and coming features well in advance. These are firms now upgrading from windows XP to 7, with a turn-around of several years? And being asked to deliver apps for home log-in, KPIs on the go, cloudy teamrooms,...

    Not unrelated, today a colleague rolling out HR IT modules on SAP showed me the iphone he had replaced his Blackberry with.

    1. dogged

      Re: Seriously, now

      missread as "cloudy tearooms". Would that be the smoke-haze of the 70s?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Surely Apple will get slower IT support from large firms if they don't provide timelines, betas, and coming features well in advance."

    Cast your mind back to the original iMac launch .... the translucent blue back to the monitor/processor unit was a real new feature compared to all the bland grey boxes everyone else did. Hence lots of peripheral manufacturers decided to repackage things like USB hubs, scanners etc to match when they saw how iMac sales were going. However, given the lead time in getting produces to market seem to recall that a huge glut of translucent blue peripherals bit shops at just about the same time as Apple launched v2 which had a range of pastel coloured translucent covers

  16. Vince Lewis 1

    7 inches happy

    I'm loving my Nexus 7.

    It fits comfortably in my hand and great for most browsing and android games.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Optional

      Indeed, I love my Nexus7, it's brilliant kit. In cour close family circle, there are now 6 Nexus7's in use, and all loved..

      The only people that seem to think the 7in formfactor is shit, are Apple, but having seen some stuff at Pegatron recently, I suspect their message to market is about to do a 180 degree u-turn....

  17. probedb

    Nexus 7?

    So the completely fictional iPad mini is mentioned many, many times but the Nexus 7 not once?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Witty Title Here

    All this nonsense on tablets. I'll stick with my 15.6" you lay across your lap. Btw, it's far more "productive" and it can handle input from 78 fingers. So long as you *ahem* push the right buttons.

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