NY Times - MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The computer industry has a lot riding on your fingers.
For years, companies have dabbled with the touch-screen technology that lets people poke icons on a display to accomplish tasks like picking a seat at an airport check-in kiosk. Apple elevated such technology from a novelty to a must-have feature on mobile devices with its iPhone. People can flip through pictures with a flick of a finger or make a document larger by pressing two fingers against the screen and stretching them out.
Now both personal computer manufacturers and software makers hope to do more with touch on larger devices by giving people a 10-fingered go at their screens.
“You don’t even operate your TV with two fingers,” said Amichai Ben-David, the chief executive officer of N-trig, which produces touch-screen technology for PC makers. “In order for this to feel really natural, you need more than two fingers for sure.”
The PC industry hopes the feature spurs sales. PC makers like Hewlett-Packard and Dell have been clobbered during the recession as struggling businesses drop computer upgrades to the bottom of their to-do lists. Consumers have shown more interest in new machines, but they are buying cheap, tiny laptops rather than decked-out goliaths.
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