You could start by drilling up.
The larger point is this: Our interfaces are driven almost entirely by available technology, rather than developing the technology necessary to create better interfaces. Classic example: If you're typing this on a laptop, there's a camera pointed at your forehead. This is because screens are opaque. So when you skype your friends, your relatives, your boss, your clients, they look at your forehead and you look at theirs. No big deal, right? A limitation of the technology, and we move on. Yet we're left with a nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right.
As it turns out, eye contact is a big fucking deal. However, it's also an incredibly expensive and cumbersome problem.
That didn't stop Apple from battling it. It's been five years, though, and we haven't seen anything... so it's one of those ideas that wasn't judged perfect enough to roll out.
There are all sorts of patents like this: back when I was doing videoconferencing design, it was astonishing all the cool ideas Philips was coming up with. They were patenting whizz-bang ideas all over the place, doing crazy shit, solving problems and rockin' it like they were the PARC reincarnate. But then Philips decided that they would never make their money back in the zero-margin world of projectors, so they killed the division. And all those patents were left to wither on the vine.
Here's a funny one: Philips solved 3D. Straight up. Fuck glasses. Fuck everything. Philips figured out how to run an image through processing behind a lenticular filter that gives you legit, parallax 3D. Works on TVs, works on devices, works on anything you shine light through. The best part is that the closer you are to the device, the more 3D you see - as you get further away, the image blends gracefully into 2D. Seamlessly. No glasses. No fuzz. A 3D TV off axis is a 2D TV, and the better your viewing conditions, the better you see it. Costs next to nothing. So who'd they license it to?
(Say what?)
Right - so the company with the most to gain from stupid 3D glasses at giant front-projection movie theaters controls the patents for glasses-free 3D at home and on the go. And they've got one guy showing it off at about two or three tradeshows a year.
'cuz if they rolled it out for real, it would require a complete redesign of every movie theater on the planet.
I only know of that one patent sitting at Apple doing nothing. I never worked there. I would imagine they're sitting on just as giant a treasure trove as Philips is. At the same time, Apple is the company that killed buttons for phones. They're the champions of the 1-button mouse. So I think it's safe to say they don't give the first fuck about ergonomics.
- The larger point is this: Our interfaces are driven almost entirely by available technology, rather than developing the technology necessary to create better interfaces.
Very true. The problem with it is that we either need a) someone with that long-term vision and resources or b) an existing technology being used for a new interface and catching on. The former reminds me of Apple after they bought NeXT and the second seems improbable with today's glassy swipey touchey surfaces.
- Here's a funny one: Philips solved 3D. Straight up. Fuck glasses. Fuck everything.
Yeah, now that you mention it, I remember that. Philips basically made Eindhoven a city and they did some cool demos of that technology in that area, such as a nearby themepark (it's WOWvx tech, it seems to be the same you described although I don't know enough to tell).
- As it turns out, eye contact is a big fucking deal. However, it's also an incredibly expensive and cumbersome problem.
Are you a fan of Errol Morris? He invented a device he call the interrotron to solve this problem when he conducts interviews. Is a system that projects his face onto the lens of a camera, so that he can maintain eye contact with his interview subjects, while they're actually looking at the camera and not him. He feels that it gives a more intimate view of his subjects to the audience, a view which is normally lost in documentaries. Coincidentally, he used to make commercials for Apple, too; not sure if he ever prodded them on the topic of video chat, but it wouldn't surprise me.
I've seen that. It's less of a problem in an interview situation because the conversation is necessarily 1-sided with augmentation. When we do those interviews we can keep nagging the subject to look at the camera; Morris's approach basically lets him misappropriate a teleprompter. We've been putting those on iPads through split screens since iPads came out.