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Technology

Apple's New Trackpad? 106

Posted by timothy from the smarter-and-smarter dept.
jamesoutlaw writes, "I came across this article on Go2Mac.com today. It has some interesting information on a trackpad that might make its appearance in the next PowerBook. Among its features are 'hot spots' and the use of a stylus for handwriting input. When the Newton was discontinued, Apple stated that they were not licensing the NewtonOS or opening the source for the OS, and that they were going to integrate some of the Newton technology into a future product. It looks like this trackpad may be a part of that." Of course, this would make a cool external device for desktop machines (Macs, PCs or newfangled Web pads) as well, if the handwriting recognition software were available. Apple?
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Apple's New Trackpad? More

Apple's New Trackpad?

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  • Re:Handwriting Recognition: See Uncle Sam (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I worked at the post office several years ago and they where rolling out a new OCR technology... when the computer failed to read something they beamed the scan of the envelope to a human operator at a screen.

    Now they scan the envelope and put a red bar code on the back. The scan is processed at a central facility and the info on the address is beamed back and a black bar code is sprayed on the letter. It wasn't real time, unless the low level OCR sucessfully read the zip code or barcode. The letters that don't work the first time had to be run through again to get a bar code from the remote OCR stuff.

  • That is so much bullshit - way MORE than twenty went to other projects at other companies, like Phillips CE and Palm etc. Please don't think I'm anti-Apple - took delivery of my 450MHz G4 today, and was writing Newton softare full-time when they canned it - but you don't seem to know the facts. Jobs killed it because it was Amelio's project - the Newton died of chronic ego. read your history, gun-boy. (Product recommendation: IOGear Miniview USB/Video switch, Win2K and Mac G4. 3 machines controlled from one USB mouse, keyboard and monitor. Easy!)
  • Here's [buffalo.edu] a link to one of their projects on handwritten address recognition.
  • to Apple and use USB for input devices. Putting PS/2 on Macs now would be a joke.

    Doing tech support for a couple hundred secretaries and administrators, I see very little understanding or use of the right mouse button on their Win9x computers. I think Microsoft's implementation of context menus is pretty good (easy customization would be nice tho') but their utility is clearly beyond ordinary users conceptual sphere. Some just don't get it and others are too accustomed to going to the menus (they don't use keyboard shortcuts either, you see). The "power users" are those who know what many of the toolbar buttons do in Word.

    Actually, where I work the scroll wheel has been adopted more than the 2nd mouse button, presumably because it is *not* contextual. The scroll wheel pretty much does the same thing in every app.

    I love my Mac's Kensington USB two-button scroll mouse (I have one at work on my Win2K machine too) and think Apple should have it as a BTO option but

  • I generally like patents, but the way Apple has acted with the Newton (killing it for spite, but making sure noone else can use the technology or similar concepts either) is IMHO a good reason to get rid of software patents, and as far as I'm concerned, the Newton would be a good posterboy for the necessity of the GNU license.


  • And 2 mouse buttons causing RSI? I *could* believe that. But what's the ramafications of having to move your other hand around to the control key to do a context menu click huh?

    Normally, your other (non-mouse) hand remains on the keyboard anyway. Unless you just playing games, and aren't using your keyboard.

  • The USPS actually has a harder problem--they don't get to watch the person write the characters. Turns out this is a signficant difference.

    --j

  • Actually, some of really top Newton guys -- like the guy who created Newtonscript (the name escapes me) went to Redmond...
  • This would by great for things suchs as suvery taking so the information is only entered once no mistakes when keypunching

    http://theotherside.com/dvd/ [theotherside.com]
  • All it has to do is recogonize numbers, which are faily dissimilar, with the excepton of 1 and 7
  • An interesting misfeature of this device is that when you plug a mouse into the PS/2 port, it disables all of the fancy touchpad features, and they stay disabled until you reboot the machine. In addition, I have been unable to get the wheel on the mouse to work in this configuration. An associate of mine gave up and remove the touchpad driver completely.

    I have worked around the problem by using an USB mouse... thus avoid the PS/2 port that confuses the touchpad.
  • Quake on the Newton was a hoax. All it was was a 1mb program with nothing in it. I remember it was a real big deal for about a day until no one could get the program to run.
    The handwriting recognition was almost definitely software, it was too dynamic to be hardware.
  • Apple, with clear logical thought and good reason, originally considered developing around a two or three button mouse, and wisely rejected that idea after watching a statistically significant number of novice users become confused by them. Macintosh "Power" users can buy aftermarket pointing devices with a wide number of button configurations -- and they get to define what those extra buttons do.

    How many computers do you use? The idea that a person should be able to 'buy aftermarket items and configure them' is indicative of the notion that people will only use one computer, and that notion, especially in this day and age, is rapidly fading. I have a hard enough time just keeping my vim files in order from box to box, if I had to deal with different mouse layouts on each one, I would go nuts.

    I say this with frightening regularity - ease of use is not the same as useability. Apples neeeeeeeds to understand that a low learning curve is, in the long run, detrimental to productivity, unless it is followed by an equally rich feature set.

    --
    blue
  • When will apple move with the time and adopt interchangeable peripherals with IBM PCs?

    Excellent question. Time and again Apple has either "innovated" or stuck with past innovations when equivilent functionality was available, at greatly reduced cost, on the PC side. You'll notice that they finally started using IDE devices, instead of the now-antiquated 8-bit SCSI they had been shipping. While the merits of some of the innovations were there at their initial offering, they seemed to stick around way too long. Maybe some of this will change with the switch to USB peripherals for low-bandwidth I/O, and 1394 for high-bandwidth devices.

  • The main reason it wasn't successful was because of its large size and high price, but the thing was WAAAY ahead of its time, I can't see how anyone can deny that.

    My uncle sold IBM mainframes in the '60s. Sure, they were huge and expensive, but boy, could my uncle laugh up a storm making fun of all those Johnny-come-latelys buying powerful PCs in the '90s. What a bunch of behind-the-times laggards!

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • I think Sony VAIOs already have this feature.
    That day while going thru the Ubid [ubid.com]
    auction site, I found the new Sony VAIO >340
    machines had advertised this feature of handwriting
    recognition on the touchpad (though the Sony VAIO I have,
    (F-250 cute one, but OK display!) doesn't have this feature!)

    -Sas
  • If apple can actualy pull this off and make it a viabel product, it looks really cool. But once again I will beleive it when I see it. Handwriting recognition in computers still is poor at best. Who knows maybe this will be the first product for the pc that allows a decent pen input.
  • Someone should ask Logitech to license their Marble technology... my Marble FX has only needed very little cleaning, and dirt doesn't affect it too much.

    I see an opportunity here...
  • I use a palm III every day, and I hate grafitti. I despise it. Having never used a newton, I can't say that it is any better or worse at HWR, but anything that will at least try to interpret my handwriting the way I actually write would be so much easier to use. The problem I have with the Palm is that it's too easy to confuse the thing - it mistakes "i" for cr-lf, etc. So having a mangled alphabet doesn't fix the problem, and I can't write as fast because I am translating in my head as I write... There has to be a good solution for HWR.

    itachi, who thinks this thing could rock if the pad is the right size and actually _has_ HWR...
  • Handwriting recognition in computers still is poor at best.

    IMHO, the handwriting on the late-model Newtons was much better than what Palm has now. You didn't have to learn a special language, and you could write anywhere on the screen, not just in that little box. This was one of the reasons I wasn't immediately enamored with the Palm when it came out. It really felt like a download from the Newton.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • I've just had to can my Newton 2100 after it lost its stylus tracking ability, and I've moved to a Palm Vx. Despite being smaller and the fact that it syncs to loads of stuff (eg. Yahoo address/calendars), I miss the Newton enormously. The Plam uses Graffiti, so it recognises each letter. The Newton used the whole word to perform a lookup, so provided you wrote the first few letters well, it would stand a good job of getting the word right. If it didn't, you'd get a list of other options to select for each word. As Graffiti is character based, you don't get that option. Consequently, taking the teaching time of the Newton into account, I can write into the Newton at a much faster, more accurate rate than on the Palm (entering postcodes/zip codes aside!). Let's hope this technology emerges in another product soon, and I can put my Palm back in the toybox :-)
  • "If apple can actualy pull this off "

    Apple already 'pulled off' handwriting recognition with the original Newton, several years ago. They even made it work really well with the last Newton that was released. It's not much of a stretch to think that they can do it.

    "Handwriting recognition in computers still is poor at best."

    Maybe you mean non-existant. What desktop computer has attempted handwriting recognition?

    Mike van Lammeren
  • a) to nitpick, I believe the last StrongARM RISC CPU used in the Newton 2000 and 2100 was 160mHz, not 200.
    b) the handwriting recognition was indeed in software. The original handwriting recognition was slower because it was a word-based recognition. For NewtonOS 2.0, the handwriting recognition was character-based, a *much* smaller problem space to solve.
    Still carry a Newton 2100: they've been gone for so long younger geeks think it's some new MaxiPalm or something. :)
  • Perhaps you're missing the distinction here: only about twenty were laid off. Some of the rest may have chosen to resign, but the day of the layoff (Jan 29, 1998) my information was that only about twenty were laid off. I was present at Apple headquarters that day, by the way.
  • *ahem*
    The OTHER reason the original handwriting recognition was slower is that the original CPUs were 16mHZ StrongARM RISC chips. The 160mHz chips in the second-gen Newtons helped a lot, too :).
  • hey, that's cool. do you find that you are able to input information faster or at least as fast as you can with a keyboard, or does the write-look-correct cycle take longer on Newton?

    Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?

  • hey dude, i don't really think you're john katz. everybody, i think that's an imposter.

  • The Vadem Clio has a screen that can be flipped over, covering the keyboard and can be used as a writing tablet. Unfortunately, it is also a WinCE device with limited storage capacity. Putting that sort of ability on a real laptop with a hard drive and a more sophisticated OS like the Powerbook, the Thinkpad, or whatever Transmeta [transmeta.com] finally puts out would be an even bigger leap forward than putting it on the trackpad.

    This would give a mini-notebook much greater versatility. If you are sitting at your desk and type on the keyboard and do any of the work you would normally do on a desktop. If you are on the run or sitting through a meeting, you can write directly on the screen. Throw in better power management and a Crusoe processor and you've got a real "road warrior" machine.

    I know I'd buy one.
  • every 45? Maybe when trackpoints first came out, but I'm typing this on a Thinkpad with an "eraser nub" that has 360 degree motion, and moves faster the harder you press it. I think it's a wonderful thing for a laptop - weighs less and takes up much less space than either a pad or ball. I've been looking at a superlight notebook (2-3 lbs, just as big as the 10.4" screen), and the Vaio's have been calling to me...but I'm going with another brand _just_ for the trackpoint.

  • Haven't patents been discussed enough on /. that we all realise how long it takes for them to move through the system? This particular patent [ibm.com] was filed in 1995, while Newton was still somewhat alive. Why the patent writer decided to use a notebook in the diagrams, I've no idea. But the technology was used in the MP2k which, IIRC, had the Go-To buttons in software, instead of being printed over the screen. This patent obviously refers to the method used to do that.
    As for doing this on a notebook; if it was even Apple's original intention, I'd think they would have tried it out in some form before now. And any speculation on if they are is just that, pure speculation. Ever since The Steve took over, Apple has been playing their hand close to the chest. Hardly any news that has been supposedly leaked out of Apple has either been dead wrong or nothing that wasn't in a press release issued the next day. So these days it's best practice to treat any so-called news from Apple with suspicion.
    Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that Apple has received a patent for icon badges [ibm.com]?
  • Right clicking inconsistant on windows???? How so?
    Right clicking always brings up the context menu where there's one applicable. Almost all applications follow the same rulez, the ones that don't are usually games, where context menus don't apply, and the 2nd mouse button is more useful doing something else.

    And 2 mouse buttons causing RSI? I *could* believe that. But what's the ramafications of having to move your other hand around to the control key to do a context menu click huh?
  • Having to hold your hand over the keyboard all the time prolly isn't good. With 2 mouse buttons (or 5 on the wheel mice) you can basically sit there with food in one hand and mouse in the other :P

  • Way ahead of its time? No kidding. I recently passed my Newton MessagePad 2000 to my wife, and I'm now using a Palm V.

    I used my Newton for over 3 years, and the handwriting recognition got to the point where I would make fewer mistakes with it than with a regular computer keyboard.

    Don't get me wrong. The Palm's *okay*, but I'm surprised that this brand new Palm lacks more than half the features my Newton had. If Apple had gotten the synchronization as good as the Palm's Hotsync (which has always been a limitation with the Newt), and had made it as small as the Palm V, I'd still be using it today.

    The Palm and Newton are in a way very different products. The Palm is basically an extension of my contact manager and complements my PowerBook. My Newton could effectively replace a laptop for some types of business trips.

  • And a few went to psion.

    But 32 of them left enmass to Palm on a Friday. Within 2 weeks of the announcement of the cancellation of the spinoff.
  • Lets say I followed this matter, because it mattered alot to my pocketbook.
  • >Of the almost 1000 people in the Newton

    Eh? Got Proof on this one?
  • >but you don't seem to know the facts. Jobs killed it because it was Amelio's project - the Newton died of chronic ego. read your history, gun-boy.

    Ego YES

    Gil's baby...NO!

    Scully was VERY public that the Newton was HIS baby. And, given Scully is who got rid of Jobs, Jobs killed the project. That and it wasn't a NeXTSTEP or Mac.

    The early Newton *DID* deserve the bad rap. 2.0/2.1 of Newton Intelligence were quite good. (It could understand MY handwriting...and I have trouble doing that some days!)

  • I completely agree.

    My fiancee just learned that you could grab the title bar of a window to move it around the screen, after seeing me do it many times. I think the 2nd button would be totally beyond her.

  • IDE drives were cheap for a reason. They sucked when compared to SCSI drives. When IDE drives started to meet Apple's standard of quality, support was quickly added. My current Mac (couple years old now) has an IDE drive, and I know they had them before that.

    Apple invented personal computing. You have to wonder why IBM PCs went off on a divergent tangent to begin with.

  • I too beleive that Mumia Abu Jamal is wrongly imprisioned. But who are you going to persuade with such a weak post?

    --
  • I think Amiga took a patent on using the right mouse button for menus so windows couldn't use it....
  • All else stipulated as true, one additional feature that would make me buy one would be thumbprint recognition.

    Imagine being able to use a thumb/finger print on the touch pad instead of typing in passwords all day long!

  • As far as I can tell the great invention here is to use a sylus (of newton then palm fame, am I missing the real inventor?) with a notebook. Whats the great invention here?

    I can't imagine using grafitti to post this post.

    Just wait till our wireless revolution takes over and most Slashdot posts are Grafitti written on Palms saying "Hot grits!"....the poster just loses interest after all the effort it took to enter and edit the post for spe1lling e13rors.

    This will give new meaning to the Slashdot customization options regarding length of post.
  • 1) I don't think it's true to say that Windows users generally don't use the RH button. Most of the time the context-sensitive menu is much _more_ intuitive for anyone than scrolling through (potentially) hundreds of menu buttons. It only takes novice users a few seconds to work out (or be told) that the LH button is the one to use.
    2) Do the RSI studies take into account the awkward sitting position required to hold the Mac mouse _and_ keep a finger over the CONTROL or APPLE key to get the context-sensitive menu which most people would want to access every fourth click or so?
    3) Why don't Apple take a middle ground and produce 2-button mice, and supply new Macs with _both_ buttons mapped to the left, so that new users don't get confused, with a Control Panel option to have a 'Power User' button mapping?
    I think that Apple are just holding out on this one becuase they don't want to give in. Almost all office and development software uses RH click context-sensitive menus. It's time to give in, Apple!
  • Now those newtons were truly beautiful peices of machinery. 200 mHz, full, amazingly accurate handwriting recognition, and a killer interface. God, I really with they hadn't discontinued them.

    O, Wait, what am I saying

    None of this swwweeeeet technology is going to goto waste, hooray. They are just reincarnating it (for around the same price) as the power book. Now I heard a rumor that someone got quake on one of those puppies, that'd be sweet!

    And now, the Hardware Hacker emerges from the dark cave:

    Now, does anyone know whether the handwriting recognition is implemented in hardware, or software. Now if it were implemented in hardware, that would be awesome. It would mean you coul plug one of these devices into anything and have it "just work! (tm)" Obviouslty, this means bultin linux support (tm). -fosh The opinions expressed here are not nessesarily anyones
  • I've been using the Kensington USB 2-button mouse (with scroll wheel) for several months now. It's a great improvement over both the new hockey puck Apple mouse and the older ADB mice. I would highly recommend this to any Mac user who's frustrated with the hockey puck. (It's also programmable for different applications, which is helpful with games.) It comes with a USB/PS2 adapter, which I haven't used, but would be helpful if you wanted to carry it with you to a non-USB PC. The speed control is a vast improvement over Apple's, meaning that small twitches of the wrist can send your cursor all the way across the screen if you want--great for big monitors. And at only $25 or so, it's not a major investment. No, I don't work for Kensington, I'm just in love with this piece of hardware. :)
  • I agree. It is going to make for a more expensive screen and possibly a performance hit (brightness, power consumption). You also have to deal with some kind of cover that is replaceable so the surface doesn't get scratched. All that aside, I still want one on my ideal laptop which would be more of a webpad, but with a real (>4GB) hard drive and a keyboard that could be separated from the main unit (so I could decide not to bring it).

    I really think pen based GUI's will take off when people are able to talk to their computers more. Typing is faster than writing even for bad typists, and it is more convenient to use a trackpoint or trackpad while typing. But most people can talk much faster than they can type, and if you input via voice, you can hold the pen the entire time and use it for GUI navigation (much easier than a mouse and no RSI) and for limited text editing (strikeout, copy, paste). This leads to the obvious conclusion that the Mac has it right for the number of mouse buttons - no point in the user getting used to two or three buttons since when they use a pen, they will lose these features (and hovering for that matter).
  • Well, I don't think they will. I've seen a lot of laptop track balls, and they all had one HUGE problem: keeping them clean.

    Just like with a mouse, you can clean it only so much, eventually they will die, no matter how expensive the mouse/track ball is. And usually they'll die first, and there's no way you can replace them.

    If you really want one though, Logitech makes one that's specifically for the laptops and I believe it plugs into the ps2 port and attaches to the side of the laptop.
  • I bow to the Kumquat.

    ...but i still like trackballs....


    --

  • They also have the advantages of mice:

    1) Relative-to-cursor movement, like those eraser-nub thingys IBMs have : you're not moving like it's a screen.
    2) Full 360 - degree movement : not just every 45 like an eraser nub.
    3) Precision. Far more precise than a nub or a touchpad.

    To clean 'em, just twist the little surrounding thing and pull out the ball. Just like a mouse.


    --

  • You've got a Newton now.
    You got it from some guy who was on crack.
    You don't know who it came from.

    Therefore:
    You've got a Newton now.

    Enjoy yourself... and clean the crack and dirt off'n it.

    --

  • Ive been using a thinkpad 600 for about 1400 months now at work, and consider it on eof th emost durable and excellent pieces of kit I have. This whole issue abou tpointing devices really is becoming crucial I think to the whole development of mobile computing. If I take my 'pad on the road or on a 'plane ther's just no simple way - if at all - to keep a comfortable typing angle. Event though this is blessed with nice responsive keys which feel nice when plunging code into the machine as fast as my mind will take, the tradeoffs between this portable and a full desktop system, wher eI can pay real attention to ergonimics, become almost unbearable. If (curse work - not possible in this instance, see later) I could switch to running a shell (yeah, I know this could be kludged on the Win98)then my pain levels would drop real fast. Thing is I'm using layout and design ware and getinto a lot of forced mouse movements. After about 2 hrs or less, the way the Pointer works is causing lateral strains across the palm of my hand and affecting my concentration. As soon as I'm sedentary, this is no matter - plug in trackall or graphics tablet. But if companies such as Apple are really going to take advantage of the vast investmets in mobile networks GPRS 3rdGen etc they've got to think of less stressful ways for people to enter the majority of their typical data. When on the move laconicism counts. Shorthand was the ultimate tool not so very long ago, allowing secretaries and professionals to keep up with the spoken word and transcript a dictation or conversation. But the vocabulary of a mobile executive in a fast moving environment is going to be different from that of an author or a negotiator. So a few stock phrases or replies, or at least a less demanding response could be more important than any other aspetc of using a computing device : "What do you think about this contract, Dave?" "Too much, we're being stiffed on para 4 subsection blah blah" Not that I advocate a move to parenthetic opinionation or anything ;) but IMHO this ergonmics on the move thing is going to be big, and above all the flexibility of the input devices is paramount. Best of luck to anyone who tries to improve the situation. [note to Linux developers, I *bet* that the most important thins to computing havent been learnt or maybe thought of yet. Much general respect from non user :( ]
  • just to remove an apparent inconsistency from the above post. design and layout use all stemmed from working on my web site recently. Win* is god awful for UI consistency. 30 years from now lets all sue MS$ for personal injury same basis as the tobacco companies who *knew* what they were selling was bad.
  • The handwriting recognizer in the last version of the newton OS (2.1), is called rosetta and is just about perfect!! Before you have tried rosetta, you haven't tried real handwriting recognition!

    Unfortunatly, rosetta is part of the technology from the newton which apple is keeping to them selfes..
  • My Pavilion has hot spots, so I don't really think of that as much of an innovation. The only really new-ish thing is the handwriting recognition, and that's been out for a while already. Even if they got the handwriting thing to work right (or write, depending on how you look at it), I would still opt to use the keyboard. When I really work at it, I almost can't see my fingers (but then my typo ratio goes throught the roof).

    Besides, can you imagine writing out a script by hand?

    --
  • I am using a school imac now. I am longing for my natural keyboard and intelie mouse with 2 buttons and a wheel at home.
    The imac/G3/G4 keyboard mouse design is atrocious. There is no "del" key so how do i clear multiple cells in excel with out my RMB. When will apple move with the time and adopt interchangeable peripherals with IBM PCs?
  • Personally I wasn't a fan of the trackball, it had the age old problem the same as mice, they got too dirty too easy.
    Bring on touchpads and/or inplants.
  • "The United States Postal Service deployed over 900 Linux based systems throughout the United States in 1997 to automatically recognize the destination addresses on mail pieces. Each system consists of 5 dual Pentium Pro 200MHz (PP200) computers and one single PP200 all running Linux."

    For info on the US postal service handwriting recognition why don't you look at an old copy of Linux Journal?

    I forget the excat issue number but it was within the last year or so, it could also possibly been an "on-line only" article. Linux Journal subscribers will know what I mean.

    They had an article describing how it was developed, its a cluster of computers over a small dedicated lan.

    One computer is in charge of doing high resolution scanning of the envelopes, and others are in charge of actually doing the recognition, or something like that. Apparently it randomly saved some of the scans to a harddrive for latter use. This is how the developers "tuned" the system to make it recognize things better.

  • Handwriting Recognition: See Uncle Sam (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The US Post Office has some extremely advanced handwriting recognition software. I'm surprised it hasn't been exploited commercially.
  • Yes, but the standard text-entry application (simpletext) needs to:

    1) be able to open reasonably sized files (no 16k limit, or whatever the limit is - I keep getting it confused with Notepad.exe - nyuck nyuck nyuck)
    2) allow text and graphics to be seamlessly interwoven, similar to how *gasp* Adobe Illustrator works. (okay, 'cmon, it doesn't have to be all that feature-rich!)

    Make something like that the default text editor of the system, make the file-format PDF (er Quartz?), and you've got a handy-dandy application that is suddenly able to do about half of what folks are always trying to get SimpleText to do (with various plugins, hacks and whatnot).

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
  • As an owner and current user of two Newton devices (first the MP100, with the really shitty HWR, and now the 120), I must take exception to the overall sentiment in this forum that the Newton's HWR sucks. The HWR in version 2.x of the Newton OS is FAR superior to that in 1.x. Of course, Apple being Apple, they never really countered the bad publicity that the first version got, and then they let Newton die altogether. I get about a 90% accuracy rate with the version 2 OS, and about 80% of the errors that I do get are limited to a single letter. Making corrections is easy, and I'd sure rather have real HWR than use Graffiti on the Palm!
  • The pointing device on a laptop matters a great deal to me. IBM's TrackPoint and thumb-operated trackballs are fine. I loathe Apple's trackpads (and I think there is HCI evidence that they aren't very effective) and Toshiba's pointing stick (which is a poor TrackPoint clone).

    The problem with Apple laptops is that, as in so many other areas, Apple just doesn't give you a choice. Apple has the "one size fits all" attitude even worse than Microsoft. I'll seriously consider an Apple laptop again when they have some pointing device other than a trackpoint.

  • Pardon my typo: the last sentence should, of course, read " I'll seriously consider an Apple laptop again when they have some pointing device other than a touchpad."
  • eries wrote: "... unless they've had a really dramatic breakthrough, this technology is not really good for data entry, period. However, I think that it's _real_ utility could be in applications like digital signature recognition. Imagine that instead of having to remember you secret PGP key you just sign on your trackpad.... That would be cool.
    Anyone know what kinds of apps they've got planned?"

    You're right that for text entry, a handwriting-recognition pad is not very helpful compared to a keyboard. Definitely!

    But "data" in the sense of "communicable information" isn't all text. It's a lot easier to draw a little map or a schematic with a stylus than with a trackball or a mouse (IMO); and like you say, handwriting would be neat for signature recognition.

    timothy
  • Why would I go back to handwriting? I haven't done it in years!

    If I can't read it, how's a computer gonna manage?
  • there were pencils. Pencils introduced you to the concepts of hand-eye co-ordination when the PlayStation was being used by someone else. Pencils also introduced you to the concept of the 'delete' key.

    Next you moved onto pens. Pens were an important lesson in your development. Pens showed you what would happen if you made a mistake and then submitted before previewing. They also made it possible to buy computer stuff from old-fashioned shops that still required a permanent signature.

    To prepare yourselves for the next stage in your upbringing, you would have been introduced to Mr Mouse. Mr Mouse taught you that the GUI is your friend, and that words are not the only form of communication.

    Now you are ready for the keyboard. Most people reach this stage of development around 5 years old (uber-geeks missed out the first two steps of development). You learn that the keyboard can do things faster than the pencil, pen and mouse. Vital lessons about Internet use are learned with the keyboard - it's quicker to type slashdot.org with your keyboard than it is to click in your history folder with the mouse.

    The keyboard also encourages more important sociological ideals - the importance of home. Your home keys represent a starting point for your typing the way 'home' represents a reference and 'safe place' in your life.

    So you see, when we have moved onto keyboards, we have reached the very top of the evolutional ladder of development and control - the very pinnacle of inteligent maturity. To try and develop new methods of control would only leads us back down a path that we have all walked in our lives.

  • The Sony VAIO 505 series has this capability, too, at least the older ones. You could use either your finger or the stylus hidden alongside the LCD in a pop-out tray on the left.

  • Paragraph's handwriting engine is indeed very good. For those that don't follow the link above [paragraph.com], it goes to a Java applet that recognizes cursive writing with a mouse with no training whatsoever.

    In fact, it's the cursive engine on the Newton (Apple's own is used for print recognition). Anybody with a touch-capable LCD should definitely see if Paragraph runs on your system.

    As mentioned, it runs on Wince. CmdrTaco forgive me for my sins but I have dallied with the Beast - when my beloved Newton died, I got a Phillips Nino. Why not a Palm? I had tried Graffitti on the Newton - didn't much care for it. I gave it another go on Palms belonging to friends. Couldn't cope - my writing habits were too ingrained and I couldn't get my mind around the concept of "write each letter one on top of the other." Since Paragraph's Calligrapher ran on WinCE, I got a WinCE device. No joke. That was the only reason.

    Of course, it was Microsoft software. It needed to be reset pretty much every day, even if I did nothing with it but turn it off and on occasionally. If I used it with any real frequency, it would crash. And the sync services fought with everything else for the serial port. Yuck. So I went to eBay and found a "new" Newton.

    I'm much happier. My Newton gets words right when I know I got them wrong. It garbles foreign names, until you tap the word in question and select "Try Letters" (i.e., don't use a dictionary for matching). Bingo. Perfect.

    Yes. Three years later, and it still kicks the pants off a Palm as an actual computing device. Sure, Palms sync great, but do you use one to take notes in meetings? I'll bet not - as Newton users observe, the Palm is the right size when you're not using it, and the Newton is the right size when you are. And on eBay, you might actually find one at a price comparable to a high-end palm.

  • Of the almost 1000 people in the Newton division when Apple killed the project in late January 1998, less than twenty were actually laid off. The other nine hundred-plus were roughly evenly split between the dev/test/QA/etc. groups for Mac OS 8.6 (which shipped that October) and the Mac OS X project. Apple probably couldn't build a Newton 2100 today without starting from scratch.

    The main issue to remember about the handwriting recognition is that it learned you, as opposed to you having to learn Graffiti. (Graffiti was available for the Newton, too, if you liked it). A number of the more ridiculous failures of the Newton's handwriting recognition came from people trying to write on a Newton that had already been trained to recognize it's owner's handwriting.
  • "For example the upper left corner of the trackpad could be linked to a menu in an open application, allowing for easier navigation, while the right corner could for be used to launch a Script. "

    Not sure if this is just the writer speculating, but I've already got this feature on my Dell laptop. Not only does it have hot spots, but you can use the sides of the trackpad to scroll windows. Hope Apple has more grandiose plans than that...

    Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?

  • Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but why would you really want hand-writing recognition software, assuming you still have a keyboard?


    I can understand the uses for signatures, etc, but how many people, after some practice typing, would go back to handwriting?


    Most people I know can, after a little practice, type much faster than they can write.


    Maybe someone can point out why you would really want this

    "Oh, I got me a helmet - I got a beauty!"

  • Check this impressive demo out..

    Paragraph's Demo [paragraph.com]

    Even better, it works on Windows CE HPC and PPC devices natively. (Ofcourse CE fully supports Java 1.1 too).
  • Silly you.

    The sweeeeet technology from Newton that Apple is re-using is the translucent plastic from the E-mate.

    Steve can understand translucent plastic.

  • Here is a bunnysuit parody [tripod.com]

    Its a classic.

  • Man, my trusty PowerBook 170 has one of the best trackballs I've ever seen on a laptop... I dug it out the other day and was amazed at how usable it was after using crummy "pencil eraser," trackpad and various other mouse-wannabe-replacements. While it needs to be cleaned every so often to maintain peak performance, it's better than having to replace the little eraser-head caps every month or so... (and I hate trackpads :). Modern laptops need trackballs like this, heck, if it weren't a 7 year old powerbook, I could play Quake with this thing quite easily...
  • Yeah, all that "clear logical thought" went into designing the iMac mouse, which is clicked by mashing your palm onto the circular *scream* mouse.

    --
  • Just a quick note, I've found a better description of this system at http://www.business-linux.at/case/case.uspostal.ht ml

  • Re:I think Apple.. (Score:3)

    by SteveSgt ( 3465 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @09:04PM (#1194405)

    We've been through this holy war before... (sigh)

    M$ Windows isn't entirely consistent about what they use the two buttons for. The average Windows users I know rarely use the second button -- or when they do, it gets them into unexpected trouble. The way X uses the mouse buttons seems even more unintuitive and inconsistant. What good are all of those extra buttons when you have to learn what they do all over again for each application or window manager?

    Some research that I read about (and wish I'd kept track of a reference to) demonstrated that more mouse buttons means more RSI. This is partially due to sharing the load among the tendons, but it has more to do with the way one holds a mouse when one can use any finger to press the button, versus the way one holds a mouse when they have to use different fingers to press different buttons.

    Apple, with clear logical thought and good reason, originally considered developing around a two or three button mouse, and wisely rejected that idea after watching a statistically significant number of novice users become confused by them. Macintosh "Power" users can buy aftermarket pointing devices with a wide number of button configurations -- and they get to define what those extra buttons do.

    Windows 3.1 really didn't make use of the second button. But the MacOS had context-sensitive menus (available by a holding the "Control" key on the keyboard while pressing the mouse button) for some time before Microsoft standardized on what their second button did. Some Mac "power" users, who may be ignorant of the RSI ramifications, set their second button to duplicate that operation.

  • Sorry, that's not new. (Score:3)

    by Joe Decker ( 3806 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @08:14PM (#1194406) Homepage
    Touchpad hot spots are already a feature of many touchpads in the PC market.

    While not in common use in the US, touchpads of various sizes that work with stylii are being sold with Chinese character recognition.

    As an example, Synaptics [synaptics.com] both has a touchpad-based Chinese character recognition system and a touchpad whose standard driver includes configurable hot spots.

    -j

  • The Newton was truly an amazing device. Before anyone bashes it on the stereotypes that people had against it, realize that in the later versions the handwriting recognition was excellent, it had a 200mhz processor on a HANDHELD, was able to record sound, accept TWO PCMCIA cards, get on the internet, fax, print, infared connection between two Newtons, wireless printing, play sound, and many more things right out of the box.

    Now also realize that the Newton 2100 (the last version) came out over 3 years ago. The main reason it wasn't successful was because of its large size and high price, but the thing was WAAAY ahead of its time, I can't see how anyone can deny that.

    Aside from that, Apple just canned it when Jobs came on board, supposedly because Jobs just didn't like them. I'm not bitter about it, it was probably the right decision. Some people on here asked why Apple doesn't revive it, well the story goes that much of the design information for the newton OS and hardware is lost/scattered throughout the apple campus. Plus, the handwriting recognition is about the only thing that is transferrable to another product.

    I don't really see why someone would want to write on the trackpad when they have a keyboard right there; except just to draw on the screen easily, but that is not handwriting recognition. It certainly adds to the coolness factor though.

  • Apple can't. Re:Reinstate the Newton ? (Score:3)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @10:18PM (#1194408)
    Jobs killed it because of his Ego.

    Jobs managed to drive away most of the Newton engineers. They left in-mass for Palm Computing.

    When Jobs stood up at WWDC and said:
    "Apple Makes Computers Right?"
    "Computers have keyboards, Right?"
    Jobs then help up a Newton and then said:
    "So what is this then?"
    This caused a few Newton Engineers to leave. When the spinoff was cancelled, thats when most left.

    And, as I have heard it in the Newton newsgroups, the code was rather crufty, and convoluted. The only people who have a CHANCE of groking its fullness are now at Palm.

  • handwriting recognition (Score:4)

    by eries ( 71365 ) <slashdot-eric.sneakemail@com> on Friday March 17, 2000 @08:11PM (#1194409) Homepage
    I spent a summer working on the Newton way back when that was still a real platform. The group I was working with at SAIC had a little challenge, which was to get the device to recognize the handwritten phrase "Four score and seven years ago." After about 2 months of "Flour snakes bend kevlar coors" I finally got it to work.

    I'm sure they've done a lot of work on the handwriting heuristic, but it was the generally clunky nature of having to wait for the device to process each word that eventually led to the development of Graffiti, which of course is now so popular on PalmOS.

    Unless they've had a really dramatic breakthrough, this technology is not really good for data entry, period. However, I think that it's _real_ utility could be in applications like digital signature recognition. Imagine that instead of having to remember you secret PGP key you just sign on your trackpad.... That would be cool.

    Anyone know what kinds of apps they've got planned?


    Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?

  • I think Apple.. (Score:5)

    by Rombuu ( 22914 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @08:20PM (#1194410)
    ..should "invent" the 2-button mouse first.. :)

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