The Guitar Is a Better Musical Instrument Than an iPad. (But Wait…)
As musical devices go, it’s hard to beat the guitar. However, the CTO of Qeexo, Chris Harrison, multi-touch devices like the iPad have a chance to catch up. From GigaOm:
The iPhone has been called a pinnacle of multi-touch interfaces. Chris Harrison, professor at Carnegie Mellon and CTO of Qeexo, doesn’t agree: He believes that a centuries-old tool like the guitar provides a far better touch interface than even the most advanced smartphone or tablet, because the guitar can capture captures a lot of rich dimensions of touch — like vibration, or how hard the guitarist is pressing — whereas touchscreens are primarily concerned with touch location.
The relative limitations of our current touchscreen interfaces are going to become even more important as smart home or smartwatch interfaces become more prevalent. The touchscreen simply wasn’t meant to be shrunk to a few centimeters across. “The smaller the interface gets, the dumber the interface has to get,” Harrison said at the Gigaom Structure Connect conference Tuesday. “Which is a huge problem for human-computer interaction.”
