Posts tagged “touch screen”.

Play with an Android-based G1 with simulator

March 5th, 2009

Android G1 simulator

Sometimes it’s fun to see how the other guys do it. In this case, T-Mobile is offering a G1 simulator running Google’s Android operating system.

It’s really an Adobe Flash-based simulator, but it gives you a good feel for how the G1’s music player (above), contacts, and apps behave. Most of all, it’s neat to see how another touch-screen phone other than the iPhone operates.

Hopefully, Palm will do something similar when they release the Palm Pre.

Touch-screen Mac, circa 1993

December 9th, 2008

Found a cool blog, System Folder, that highlights a technology called Mac ‘n’ Touch – a precursor to the finger-controlled iPhone. Author Rick Mori dug through an 1993 copy of MacUser and found this Mac ‘n’ Touch technology, developed by MicroTouch, was an add-on to monitors that allowed users to interact with software without a keyboard or mouse.

Unlike the Newton, Mac ‘n’ Touch used a “capacitive sensor” that worked only with touch, not a stylus, much like today’s iPhone.

As you can imagine, this kind of innovation was aimed at the education market. Kids love to touch, right?

Read the rest of Rick’s post for more details. Touch-screen Mac rumors have been around for a while now, especially since the iPhone came out. It’s nice to see that a touch-controlled Mac isn’t such a new idea after all.