The Apple Core

Jason D. O'Grady & David Morgenstern

How many touches can an iPad touch?

By | May 10, 2010, 11:16am PDT

Summary: How many simultaneous touch events can the iPad handle? Mac and iPhone developer Matt Gemmell found out. The answer points to how collaborative the iPad can be.

How many simultaneous touch events can the iPad handle? Mac and iPhone developer Matt Gemmell found out. The answer points to how collaborative the iPad can be.

In his blog, Gemmell wrote how a test program he wrote worked and showed that the iPad can take 11 simultaneous touches. There are a couple of YouTube videos showing the test and results.

As I mentioned in a post about the iPad’s future roll in business computing, one of the device’s strengths is its potential for collaboration in small teams.

It can be used by several users simultaneously, passed back and forth, to annotate a document or brainstorm ideas. It’s like a whiteboard but up close and personal.

Supporting up to 11 touches, we see that the iPad is engineered from the ground up with this capability.

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David Morgenstern has covered the Mac market and other technology segments for 20 years.

Disclosure

David Morgenstern

Freelance journalist/blogger David Morgenstern has nothing to disclose.

Biography

David Morgenstern

David Morgenstern has covered the Mac market and other technology segments for 20 years. In the recent past, he founded Ziff-Davis' Storage Supersite, served as news editor for Ziff Davis Internet and held several executive editorial positions at eWEEK. In the 1990s, David was editor of Ziff Davis' award-winning MacWEEK news publication as well as its successor title, eMediaWEEKly, which focused on multiplatform professional content creation. His byline can be found online and in print publications including CreativePro.com, Peachpit Press' Mac Bible and Popular Photography.

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RE: How many touches can an iPad touch?
DeusExMachina 24th Jun 2010
@Bruizer
Whoa whoa!! Easy with the intelligent facts, there, Bruizer. What do you think this is, an intelligent discussion?!? This could get ugly!
0 Votes
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Ipad's future role in business computing, not roll.
That just seems so tacky. Please at least make it a power of 2 like 16.
0 Votes
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It is a practical limit
Bruizer 11th May 2010
@AzuMao

It is a power of 10 1. iPhone has 5. Ipad has 11 and that gets rather crowded.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: How many touches can an iPad touch?
DeusExMachina 24th Jun 2010
@Bruizer
Whoa whoa!! Easy with the intelligent facts, there, Bruizer. What do you think this is, an intelligent discussion?!? This could get ugly!

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