{"id":109929,"date":"2016-11-06T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T09:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=109929"},"modified":"2016-11-06T09:24:52","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T07:24:52","slug":"the-amazing-technology-behind-the-macbook-pros-touch-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/gadgets\/109929-the-amazing-technology-behind-the-macbook-pros-touch-bar","title":{"rendered":"The amazing technology behind the Macbook Pro’s Touch Bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple\u2019s MacBook Pro series is back in the media thanks to the comany\u2019s announcement<\/a> of the new \u201cTouch Bar\u201d.<\/p>\n

Announced last Thursday, the Touch Bar uses retina display and multitouch technology to replace the MacBook Pro\u2019s top row of static function keys.<\/p>\n

It might seem like a simple idea, but it builds on a long history of research on what is referred to as \u201chuman\u2013computer interaction\u201d.<\/p>\n

The feature deserves the attention it\u2019s receiving as it provides a glimpse into how we will be interacting with computers in the not so distant future.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a new idea, but once again Apple has managed to bring an innovation to the mass consumer market.<\/p>\n

The origins of touch<\/h3>\n

Using touch for interacting with computers became commonplace with the advent of the iPhone in 2007.<\/p>\n

But touch-based consumer devices have a long history<\/a> and include the Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) that were popular through the late 90s and early 2000s. PDAs used a stylus pen along with a touch-sensitive screen.<\/p>\n

This form of interaction was first proposed<\/a> in 1963 by Ivan Sutherland at MIT\u2019s Lincoln Labs as part of a new \u201cman-machine\u201d interface called \u201cSketchpad\u201d.<\/p>\n

Being able to directly tap on a button with a pen offered a much more intuitive way to interact with computers compared to moving a mouse and clicking on menus and icons.<\/p>\n

But it felt constrained due to the requirement of using a pen, and its limitation of reading only one input at a time. Using a pen didn\u2019t quite match the way we interact with objects in the physical world and made tasks such as typing slow and cumbersome.<\/p>\n

The breakthrough of multitouch<\/h3>\n

This limitation was lifted when Jeff Han, who at the time was a research scientist at New York University, presented<\/a> his vision of an \u201cinterface free\u201d computer at the TED conference in 2006.<\/p>\n

In his talk, Han demonstrated moving, zooming and manipulating virtual objects on a multitouch tabletop computer using both hands.<\/p>\n