I love tech media trends. The iPhone hype crested for several months before giving way to the inevitable iPhone-hype backlash. Now, with the anticipated retail launch on June 29, a second wave of hype is rolling in, promising to be even more ridiculous than the first.
Now personally, I prefer specificity in my hype. In regard to the iPhone, it's Apple's usual excellence in user interface design that is truly hype-worthy. Particularly, the innovative touch-screen technology that responds accurately to remarkably subtle finger movements. Perhaps you hunger for knowledge regarding the actual technology involved. Consider me your learned yeoman purser.
The iPhone touch screen uses a system called "projected
capacitive" technology, and won't that sound impressive when you casually
drop it into conversation? It's essentially a grid of very fine wires
sandwiched between two layers of glass. It registers your touch when the
electrical field among the wires is broken. What's more, projected capacitive
screen don't technically need to be touched at all -- they can detect the
proximity of your finger from about 2 millimeters away. Thus, you can use
feather-light strokes to navigate them. Previous touch screen interfaces (interfacii?)
required more brute force, relatively speaking, thereby requiring use of a
stylus or -- in a pinch -- your fingernail.
Observers expect that this new-generation tactile technology will make touch-screen the interface of record for all gadgets into the foreseeable future. And a big part of that, or course, will be because Apple's iPhone will popularize the technology worldwide. According to a recent AP report, shipments of this advanced strain of touch screens are projected to jump from fewer than 200,000 units in 2006 to more than 21 million units by 2012, with the bulk of the components going to mobile phones.
Touching, nicht wahr?
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