[IxDA Discuss] Apple's Gesture Dictionary

[Mark Schraad]

>Mark: "Explain to me, a coherent BUSINESS strategy for giving the
>rights to Apple's gesture technology away so early. How will this
>benefit Apple?"
>
>Pauric: Point taken, but, we're in the BUSINESS of advocating the user.. or
>shall I just go home, farm some potatoes and let the BA do UCD all by
>themselves?
>
>My argument is that while we sit here on verge of a new interaction
>paradigm, we can go segmented & closed or with a universal language &
>differentiate on good design.
>
>I believe the entity that defines the first universally adopted
>language will reap greater rewards in the long term.  I confess that
>I'm having a hard time quantifying this strong hunch, but open
>standards seem to last longer and gain wider adoption.  Proprietary
>can win in the short term but generally withers as the crowd moves
>on.
>
>Let me turn your question around.  We are going to have a multitouch
>gesture language for the foreseeable future. How does a closed
>language benefit Apple?
>
>If you want to do business in the world today, you have to speak
>English.

I am no expert in open systems, but my hunch is that they work better when spawned from cross company initiatives - or when a community collaborates to create something better (W3C). In some cases it seems that lose licensing can afford this sort of standardization as well. The licensing of drop down menus and mice for navigation seem to be everywhere. I am unaware of any company other than apple licensing this technology from Xerox. 

This is just the sort of collaborations that professional associations and academics are equipped to facilitate (and a very few forward thinking companies).

Mark