The whole idea of system-wide gestures seems wrong and un-iOS like.
The whole point of the iOS interface is that each app has its own mechanisms for accomplishing things that are optimized for that app alone, and the device is just a container that enables each app to do this.
So when you're in the web browsing your app, the experience is that you're using a device that has been made for web browsing. When you're in a calculator app, you're using a device that was built to behave like a calculator.
There are certain standards and techniques that all apps adopt when they handle similar tasks (like swipe to delete a row in a list or pinching to zoom and 2-fingered drag to pan) but those are all implemented by that specific app.
If the app decides that a 4-fingered swipe is the natural way of representing 'go to previous page' then thats what it will use.
Now, with a system-wide gesture, the container is peeking in through the application's interface and putting its stamp.
Until now, this was the function of the home button which was clearly outside the app's interface. Looks like that's changing now.
4 finger swipe already exists on OSX as a system wide gesture for Expose and Application switching. No, it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison as OSX doesn't depend on gestures as heavily, but the tradeoff is well worth the benefit.
You no longer need to push on a physical button to switch between apps!
Re: the container peeking through the application's interface.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing either. I'd argue that consistency can (in some cases) be more important than giving application developers total control. Have you ever been to a site which intercepts right clicks so that you can't copy and paste?
I don't know, I think I'd rather have a physical button that I can press with the hand I hold the phone with than have to do a four-figured operation on the screen.
Correct. At least, that's the info that's currently available. :) If you try fitting 4/5 fingers on the phone, it's way too small to work well anyway. I don't expect them to show up there. If they do remove the button, I'd expect to see it only removed from the iPad.
I feel the number of fingers used in a gesture maps well to the 'scope' of the gesture, that's how I have BetterTouchTool set up. I use two-finger gestures for things like scrolling and zooming (content-level), three finger gestures for things like back, forward, next tab, previous tab (window- or app-level) and four fingers for expose/task switcher/hide all windows (multi-app/OS level).
Zooming isn't necessarily defined as a system-wide gesture, but more of a convention. I believe the rules say that your app will get rejected if you use a pinch gesture for anything but a zoom-like operation, but it isn't enforced by the system because there could be other valid reasons for having two fingers on the screen moving in a way that might seem like a pinch gesture if viewed out of context.
These new iPad gestures cannot be overridden by your app because the OS will cancel touch events out from under your app and take them for itself when it detects the gestures are in progress.
For VoiceOver (which I've not spent a ton of time investigating yet), it seems the app doesn't even get the touch events until a VoiceOver action is "committed" in some way. VoiceOver basically overlays the entire screen with an invisible window and intercepts all touches, so it basically redefines how apps work and defines a set of its own gestures regardless of what you might have defined in your app.
I don't think that will be possible. From the video, it looks to me like the three-finger gesture is only for switching between apps, and having an app intercept it would be jarring. For instance, if you were swiping through your recent apps, and got to the browser, you wouldn't be able to move on using the same gesture, and it would be like hitting a brick wall. In fact, I imagine that individual apps won't even be able to capture these gestures, because the system will catch them first, and interpret them as app-switching.
I believe 3 finger gestures are used by VoiceOver so there's a possible conflict there, but VoiceOver is a system wide on-off setting so I don't know if that'd be a good enough reason not to use them as shortcuts. VoiceOver more or less redefines how you interact with apps anyway, so I'm not sure it'd bit a big problem, but Apple may want to avoid having too many different actions for different combinations of fingers.
The reason Apple included these gestures in the beta was so that developers could test them and see how they function when used inside of their apps. The kinks in third-party apps will hopefully get worked out if there are any.
The Uzu app for iPad uses up to 10 fingers. It is a particle visualizer, only notable to me because it was reviewed by Ars Technica. The video linked from the review gave me the sense that it was a labor-of-love for the creator and probably fun to use for 10 minutes, but not enough to cause me to purchase it.
On further thought, if the Xavier Institute had an app for training its mutants that possess hand-borne energy powers, this would be it.
"Cut the Rope" is a popular iOS game that reguires 4 or 5 finger movement on some levels to cut multiple ropes simultaneously. I can recall at least one level that would be near impossible to complete on 4.3, as it requires imitating the new gestures.
Possibly, but the iPod nano doesn't have a home button and instead uses gestures for everything. Perhaps the nano was partly an experiment to see how well that concept worked in the wild.
Getting rid of the home button would be very interesting/nice, since it is one of the last things that keep the iPad from being truly orientation-agnostic. (The rest being the power switch, speaker and the headphone jack, but these don’t matter that much.)
On 4.3, this would be a four finger swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar and a swipe from left to right on the bar to reveal the sound controls in any device orientation. Works pretty smooth, i'm running it now.
Because it is an interesting UI/X innovation? And as the other poster said there's quite a few apple users on HN who would appreciate the info (I know I did)
Even if you're non-Apple users interested in UI/UX, the news will be of interest because in this field most everybody ends up copying Apple. flamesuit on
* WebOS, imho, has the much better UI than apple now
* And 2nd, it's, imho, desired if Google, apple, RIM, Microsoft, Nokia and HPalm copy from each other.
The whole point of the iOS interface is that each app has its own mechanisms for accomplishing things that are optimized for that app alone, and the device is just a container that enables each app to do this.
So when you're in the web browsing your app, the experience is that you're using a device that has been made for web browsing. When you're in a calculator app, you're using a device that was built to behave like a calculator.
There are certain standards and techniques that all apps adopt when they handle similar tasks (like swipe to delete a row in a list or pinching to zoom and 2-fingered drag to pan) but those are all implemented by that specific app.
If the app decides that a 4-fingered swipe is the natural way of representing 'go to previous page' then thats what it will use.
Now, with a system-wide gesture, the container is peeking in through the application's interface and putting its stamp.
Until now, this was the function of the home button which was clearly outside the app's interface. Looks like that's changing now.