That's really cool... I didn't know the iPhone could already handle multiple simultaneous touch tasks (i.e. rotate and scale 5 photos while pulling out one photo and moving it around).

I don't own an iPhone yet, so maybe this is common knowledge. In any case, the iPhone rocks and is on the market now instead of an insanely expensive prototype that may or may not come out within a few years (i.e. M$'s BA table).

Well, maybe not the most poorly written article ever, but it's pretty high up even for Macnn.

No, that is NOT a "Microsoft tech". MS announced their thing after the iPhone was demonstrated with the multi-touch functions such as 2 finger zooming.

In addition, implementation of the exact thing that photoboard does has been show on Mac site for 2 years, before iPhone was announced. Again, that video is shown with OSX dock.

By the way, photoboard has been available for awhile now, probably half a year already... Reporting a little bit late???

there's already an app that does something similar to this.. it's called JAMD from getty images.

I'm probably missing the purpose of being able to spin and reorient documents on the desktop, but could someone explain what this is a substitute for in the real world. I'm wondering if there is some type of project that needs stuff to be slid and spun around on a real table like it's done in this virtual desktop.

It seems great that things can be manipulated like that, but for what purpose. I would normally take one document from a stack and work on it.

There might be some use to this if three or four people shared one desktop and you would be able to pass documents or reports to different people after you finished with it. I figure you'd still want to move documents to orderly stacks and not have them all scattered about a desktop.

that is really well done. Fluid stuff, which surprised me.

I would say it needs a real purpose, though - like making what you set up into the backdrop image or something. That would be cool. Otherwise, I don't see the point after you mess around with it like two times, go "wow," and then go, "Wait, what did I pay for?"

Being a sucker for slick over substance, I coughed up the big $0.99 for this app. The wow factor is easily worth the buck. You can, in fact, take a screen shot of your "collage" and that in turn can be used as your "wallpaper." My only gripe with the app would be that changing backgrounds seems to wipe out any "collage" you have in progress. It would be nice too, if you could add your own background images. Overall, 4 out of five starts.

"Microsoft's Surface technology," - sorry you don't win a prize. Microsoft is merely more visible and their version is crappy at best.

They didn't start much of anything until after peopl like Jeff Han and companies like Apple began diving into Multi-touch. Not the other way around.

The difference is that no one ever pays attention until after Microsoft bastardizes it.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeffhandemoshisbreakthrough_touchscreen.html

Hi!
I'm one of the developers of Photoboard and I thought I might just leave a comment...

So, first of all, we do NOT copy microsoft tech. If we copy anything, then the UI used in Minority report...

@Surfman: The iPhone supports a max of 5 touches at once. If you use a sixth finger, it gets stuck. But you probably won't want to do that anyway...

@dliup: Yeah, we've created a Photoboard version for iPhone os 1.1.x some time ago. But it's only been a few days since the iPhone Os 2.x version is out.

@JohnnyFife: Yeah but ours is better... even though I don't know the app you are talking about :-P

@Constable Odo: This is NOT an productivity app. It's just extremely cool. (The update will make it even more cool, stay tuned).

@bfalchuk: What feature do you want?

@trevj: Adding own background images is on the list...

Have fun!