You Can Touch This – By Hrvoje Benko, Microsoft Research
More than two years of hard work, countless prototypes, and intense collaboration with team members around the globe are just a few of the things that went into the creation of the Microsoft Touch Mouse, a new device created exclusively for Windows 7 that we announced today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
I’m Hrvoje Benko, one of the researchers behind the new Touch Mouse and I actually work for Microsoft Research. This mouse started as a research project back in 2008, mostly as a brainchild of my colleagues Dan Rosenfeld, Shahram Izadi, Nicolas Villar, John Helmes and me. Back at the start, we were all interested in the idea of merging the precision and pointing benefits of standard mice with the rich interactions that we had with multitouch devices, such as Microsoft Surface, and wanted to see if we could bring multitouch interactions to the desktop without losing the benefits of interacting with the keyboard or the mouse.
So over the next year we worked on several hardware prototypes and many application scenarios in what became known as the “Mouse 2.0” project. You may have heard about it before – we showed five prototypes publicly in October 2009, and ultimately settled on the “Cap Mouse” (image at left) to develop into a consumer product. We chose the Cap Mouse for many technical and design reasons, but mostly because it allowed for flexibility in the design of a wireless device, with rich multitouch gestures, while still having a familiar form factor for people to grip their mouse and easily point and click. We worked in close collaboration with the Hardware team and the Cambridge Innovation Development team to develop a new multitouch mouse for Windows 7.
The mouse you see today is the best input device for Windows 7. It does everything you’re used to doing with a mouse, but also adds gestures with one, two or three fingers. The gestures work like this:
- One Finger lets you manage the content of a document or webpage – moving one finger lets you precisely scroll in any direction and hyperscroll through long documents with a quick flick of your finger, while using your thumb lets you move back/forward easily through your internet browser.
- Two Fingers lets you manage multiple windows by maximizing, minimizing, restoring, and snapping them side-by-side.
- Three Fingers lets you navigate the whole desktop – three fingers up to display all of your open windows for easy task switching or three fingers down for clearing the desktop entirely.
Here is a video to demonstrate just how this works – take a look:
I’m excited to finally be able to share this mouse with you. Touch Mouse is our stake in the ground with multitouch PC input devices and is really just the beginning of things to come. Looking forward to hearing what you guys think about it.
-Benko
P.S. For more information about me or my other research projects take a look at:
http://research.microsoft.com/~benko
Awesome. Though I’m curious why zoom & rotate gestures are absent. I would think Rotate could be accomplished by keeping your thumb still and using your ring finger to swipe in a either direction for CW/CCW rotation. And Zoom could be accomplished by the commonly accepted two finger pinch in/out.
10:07 am JohnCz
How much will it cost is the question. Pretty cool though.
1:01 pm George Sharara
When do we get a Trackball with the same capability? There are many of us that have problems with using a mouse all day long.
1:01 pm Larry Nail
wow cool news…great gadget…good job microsoft team
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1:22 pm http://www.healthdurbar.com/
Awesome. I’m running Win764 via bootcamp on a new iMac, so I’ve already got a ‘magic’ touch mouse – does this mean I’ll be able to use the Touch Mouse drivers?
1:25 pm Wolf
[CES2011] My endless greed on mice can never be fulfilled! Really love the bluetrek & 2.4G nano-receiver tech, too. Wonder when touch mice for gaming will be available. That would be something!
5:48 pm Taehoon Liu
Is there any plan to give all these new techs to your old trackballs? Log**ech released a new trackball just few months ago, and I’m sure that Microsoft will do better.
7:53 am Tai-Wook Kim
This is a real credit to Microsoft innovation. Apple comes out with the Magic Mouse and the boys at Microsoft finally get it apart and copy it. Success!
11:20 pm Robert
Hi, that can be innovating, but Apple made it out first.
Anyway put Trackball Optical as it was in production.
1:32 am João
Does this mouse work with KVM switches?
5:27 am Greg Marshall
also, does the back/forward gesture work for lefties?
5:59 am Greg Marshall
Hallelujah! I nedeed thisyou’re my savior.
10:54 am Lotta
Holy concise data baatmn. Lol!
2:15 am Lettie
If you’re redanig this, you’re all set, pardner!
4:18 am Jacoby
Its really awesome because its too good and nice shape i really surprise when i look this first time.I am really inspire and want to share you things in my social media accounts and also link up with my website http://trickydocs.com
this sounds cool and just start with windows related solutions.
3:57 pm John
Hi, Hrvoje Benko, I saw the introduction of this mouse and got it at once.
I see there is a light on the mouse. But what does this light use to and why it doesn’t on on my mouse?
5:27 am Gahao