Thread: iPhone / iPod touch interface?

isn't the iphones touch screen special in its abilities to multi touch?

seems like that is holding back that idea right there...

If you are talking about running the iphone os x on our mini that will never happen (without emulation) because of the architectural differences between the iphone and a standard computer.

honestly I love the iphone and its interface but I see alot of flaws that would be a problem running it as a car FE

there is a app that you can run on your phone to make it a remote control for your pc...

google it...

RemoteBuddy

I love RemoteBuddy

Well, as for multi-touch I would think that to be doable with the car touchscreens. The way I understand it, they use a resistive matrix overlay. With the right processing, two points should be able to be seperately identified similar to the way the Macbook touchpad works (though I believe that is capacitive, similar coordinate system). Remotebuddy is a bit off topic since the Mac mini comes with a remote, and I can use it without looking at it. What I'd really like is just the iTunes slider interface and the on-screen keyboard simce the one that comes with OS X sucks, but if the whole package was there already for the iPhone I'd take that. Right now I'm using a logitech full-size board with a touchpad built in, pretty neat actually.

Logitech keyboard w/ touchpad

Sorry for my lack of knowledge on the Mac, I'm a PC guy when it comes to programming (Assembly - [TASM, MIPS], C, C++, Visual Basic). Maybe when this semester is over (post-graduate part-time after work) I'll pick it up and possibly collaborate on one of the front ends.

Originally Posted by blackbox1

Well, as for multi-touch I would think that to be doable with the car touchscreens.

Actually it's not, at least not in the true sense of the meaning. The problem is that the panel itself, it's controller, and the driver all need to be involved to create a true multi-touch (like the iPhone) interface. It's true you could replace the driver itself, but neither of the other two components would understand the input so wouldn't pass on the "correct" information to your driver. The other problem is that these touch screens are horribly inaccurate (double clicking, trying to drag something across the screen, etc..).

You could "fudge" it to have something very similar at the driver level, but it would probably eat up more CPU (vs a dedicated controller doing the input interpretation) and not work as cleanly as one would expect. For example since the chances of someone putting both fingers down at the same time is pretty slim, you could look for a second touch+hold within a few ms and then base the "pinch" gesture on if the cursor moves towards or away from the original click.

-dave

Sorry not sure what you are looking for. Remote buddy seemed to be what you were looking for. Did you look at the features for the iPhone.

http://www.iospirit.com/index.php?mo...jcode=html-141

Sorry if the title was confusing. I was not looking to use an actual iPhone to control the Mac Mini. What I'm looking for is to have a front-end interface on the in-dash 7" touchscreen that has the look and feel of the iPhone or iPod touch (big icons, big text, on-screen keyboard that zooms in on the key you're currently pressing, big slider to browse music collections, fast forward, and control volume, etc). Basically, an interface that I can fat-finger instead of having to use the stylus for.

Remote buddy does look pretty cool though if I had an iPhone for use with my Macbook Pro at meetings and the like.

Ok gotcha. Sorry but don't hold your breath for that one to come around.