10 Aug 2010

Windows 7 Tablet vs. iPad [Video]

Watching this and reading "Tapworthy," something became quite clear to me (beside the really rough zooming and screen redraws on the Windows device): Microsoft doesn't understand the significance of 44px. They're squeezing standard Windows controls and UI elements onto a touch device without consideration of the size of those controls. The average human finger needs a UI element to be at least 44px, roughly, in order to provide consistent and dependable response to taps. That Outlook ribbon and the taskbar don't appear to give that much room to the finger.

The visual clutter in the Windows apps on that device also showed that they were not designed for a device with the size and human-device interaction of a touch tablet. This is what makes or breaks a device.