A friend of mine recently asked how many simultaneous touch events the iPad supported; I wasn’t sure, so I promised to write some code to conduct an experiment and find the answer. I got around to doing so, and the answer is: eleven.
I’m sure you can imagine the response from certain colleagues regarding that number (not just “this one goes up to eleven”, but also “ten fingers and a…”, well, quite.) I thought you might want to see it in action, or play with it yourself. There’s a screenshot below:
Colourful touches galore (click for a bigger version).
You can also see a video on YouTube, which is embedded below. Please note that the videos show only ten touches, but I previously established (with Lauren’s help) that the iPad supports exactly 11. You can reproduce the result yourself using ten fingers and the pads of your thumbs, or lowest knuckle-joints of your index fingers, or your nose and chin (or just ask a friend, which will look less odd).
And here’s a video showing the new touch animations. It’s just not sci-fi until you have Spinning Arrows From Space:
And finally, of course, you can get the source code from my subversion repository (requires iPhone SDK 3.2, etc – if you don’t know how to get code from a subversion repository, see the note at the end of this post). Trivial but fun!
I’ll hopefully be posting a few more experiments in coming weeks/months, so feel free to follow me on Twitter to stay up to date. I will also whorishly link you to my Amazon wishlist if you’re feeling grateful.
(Footnote: We went to see Iron Man 2 the other night, and the touch-tracking appearance was definitely loosely inspired by all of Tony Stark’s nifty holographic computer UI toys.)
[...] aplicativos para iPhone e Mac OS X e também disponibilizou o código do aplicativo de teste em seu blog. Ele explica que a aparição de somente 10 dedos no vídeo foi proposital – para aqueles que [...]
[...] sullo schermo del dispositivo potrà usare tutte le sue 11 dita. Matt “Legend” Gemmel ha sviluppato una applicazione Open Source per testare quanti tocchi simultanei possono essere riconosciuti dall’iPad e ha scoperto che [...]
[...] dowodem na podparcie tezy o „szczęśliwej jedenastce” jest specjalnie napisana do tego celu aplikacja. Matt Gemmel z Instinctive Code pochwalił się światu tym oto filmikiem: [...]
[...] Instinctive Code developer, Matt “Legend” Gemmell (a man whose personal motto appears to be, ‘Modesty is Lying’) has sat down to make code that seeks the answer to this question. Gemmell’s made the source code of his software available (requires iPhone SDK 3.2) and plans a few more experiments in the coming weeks. Oh, and for the short attention span people, the iPad supports 11 simultaneous touches. Just in case you headbutt it in the middle of some complex adventure game, we guess. TAGS: apple, ipad, multi-touch, touches [...]
[...] ujjas multitouch Matt Gemmel kíváncsi volt, hogy az iPad hány ujj érzékelésére képes, ezért írt erre a programot. Kiderült, hogy az [...]
[...] via AKPC_IDS += "1104,"; Kommentare [0] [...]
[...] iPad-Multitouch erkennt elf “Touches” Wir wollen hier nicht die Frage aufstellen, warum das iPad elf Berührungen simultan erfassen kann, wo der Mensch doch nur zehn Finger hat. Hier das Experiment von Matt Gemmell: [...]
[...] a friend’s question: How many simultaneous touch events can the iPad take? Read on for the answer.iPhone OS developer Matt Legend Gemmell set out to answer the age-old question of how many simultaneous touch events an iPad can take [...]
[...] a friend’s question: How many simultaneous touch events can the iPad take? Read on for the answer.iPhone OS developer Matt Legend Gemmell set out to answer the age-old question of how many simultaneous touch events an iPad can take [...]
[...] الفذ Matt Gemmell يجيب على هذا السؤال بالتجربة العملية .. لنخلص في [...]
[...] imposible que no te detecte un toque ya que, por lógica, sólo tenemos diez dedos.Vía: Matt Gemmell TwitterFacebookMenéamedel.icio.usGoogle Buzz Dirección para [...]
[...] Vía: Matt Gemmell [...]
[...] Matt Gemmell | iPad Multi-touch Leia mais: #apple, #iphone, #mac, #mattgemmell, #software, #tecnologia Share [...]
[...] | Matt Gemmel Tags | Dedos, ipad, iphone, ipod Touch, multitouch, pulsaciones, tactil Más [...]
[...] ever wondering how many finger touch your Apple iPad can detect simultaneous? The iPhone developer Matt Legend Gemmell wrote an app to answer the [...]
[...] الفذ Matt Gemmell يجيب على هذا السؤال بالتجربة العملية .. لنخلص في [...]
[...] Vía | Matt Gemmel [...]
[...] Vía: Matt Gemmell [...]
[...] touches can the device handle? It turns out the iPad can handle 11 simultaneous touches. Developer Matt Gemmell has tested it, reports [...]
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[...] La prueba se ha realizado con un software desarrolado específicamente para la ocación por Matt Gemmell (el código del cual está disponible vía [...]
[...] lo tanto hablemos de noticias especiales para un día como este. Resulta que un ser humano llamado Matt Gemmell ha creado un software especifico para demostrar cuantos dedos puede soportar el iPad [...]
[...] und wo kann man sich den sourcecode laden? Unten auf "via" klicken, oder alternativ diesem Link folgen. Follow me on Twitter Zitieren + Antworten [...]
[...] The iPad… these go to 11 – Link [...]
[...] the iPad really? Its a touchscreen interface that can handle 11 simultaneous touches at a time (see http://mattgemmell.com/2010/05/09/ipad-multi-touch). It is a network device with Bluetooth, WiFi and 3G connectivity. It’s a storage device, it [...]
builds like a charm! thanks for putting this out there, its nice to see people releasing code like this just for the hell of it.
Was wondering if it was possible take tuio input from diy multi-touch tables and control an iphone/ ipad screen.
[...] Experiments show the iPad supports eleven simultaneous gestures (multi-touch). Very cool. [...]
[...] the number of fingers we all have, you might assume Apple stopped at ten, but you’d be wrong. Matt Legend Gemmell discovered that the iPad can in fact handle all ten of your fingers, and then [...]
Hello. I wonder if you can help. I am interested in buying the ipad but am frustrated that out of thousands of apps that are boasted, there is none that offers a video kiosk mode (eg. for handing the ipad around the audience at a presentation asking them to view a custom video(s) without them navigating out by mistake and landing up on You Tube! Is there an application that by physically blocking the home button (which I can do by building a video kiosk ‘frame’) that just allows touch functions of playing the specific video and onscreen ikons for other video clips (eg just like a webpage). I designed a touchscreen jukebox/video kiosk five years ago but it is too large to cart around. The ipad would be ideal to mount in a sleek wooden “kiosk”. Check out my prototype at http://www.woodesigner.com
Hope you can help
Jeremy,
I know alot of people are looking for a nice case like this. Hoping someone develops one soon.
[...] Matt Gemmell was recently asked how many simultaneous touches the iPad could handle. It’s a good question, and one I’m surprised hasn’t been answered yet. So he whacked together some code, and found out. [...]
[...] iPad Multi-Touch is a cute little project from the inestimable Matt Legend Gemmell showing how to handle the eleven (11!!) simultaneous touch events that the iPad supports. [...]
Thanks for the app. A friend of mine picked up my iPad and immediately asked for an app that displayed multi-touch technology so I came back here and downloaded it.
One error message I kept getting was that the .plist for the debug-iphone build had a minimum OS of 4.0 which took me a while to track down and change to 3.2. Maybe that is something to do with the new Xcode 4.
Thanks again
[...] iPad Multitouch – An example of how to use 11 simultaneous touch events from Matt Gemmell. [...]
Matt, I find your multi-touch app very interesting, but note that it cannot “keep up” with even a single touch in that there’s always a gap between finger and screen image.
I’ve noticed the same with other apps. Is this simply a processor limit do you think? I’m surprised because following a single touch is surely quite like tracking a mouse, and even the slowest machine can follow a mouse without a gap.
Would be grateful for your input,
regards,
Peter