Google Earth and the z-axis
The Google Earth iPhone app was released a few days ago, and I knew it would be cool because the desktop version was such a huge achievement. But I didn’t know why it would be cool in the context of the iPhone. And now I do. And now I’ll tell you.
Do you remember in 2006 when a guy named Jeff Han demonstrated his multi-touch display and it got linked all over because it was the closest thing we’d seen to ‘Minority Report’? And then eventually that display was appropriated by CNN and then poked fun at on SNL? And the DNA of that display can be found in the iPhone?
I’ve wondered why my iPhone has been so eager to let me use two fingers to scale an image in the Photos app, for instance, but never to let me rotate an image. Is the processing that much more intensive or is Apple most concerned about simplicity as users learn to adapt to multi-touch? I’d begun to forget that a third axis even existed.
Now, I’m sure that there have been games that allow for z-axis rotation, but I don’t really play games on the iPhone, so when I launched Google Earth and noticed, accidentally, that I could spin the globe beneath me, I had an “Aha!” moment. It was like I was feeling in a whole new dimension. I encourage you to try it.
