Inventor screwed - while taxpayers sent a clown on holiday
This is a disturbing, cautionary tale of quasi-government
and its bungling. It describes how Britain could have led the recent advances
in touchscreen technology, developing kit capable detecting more than one fingertip
at once, years before Apple did – if it weren't for the nation's
treacle-footed, self-serving quangocracy.
Today, thanks in large part to the multi-touch graphical
interfaces in iPhones, iPads and iPods, Apple has turned itself into the
biggest tech company in the world. The Cupertino goliath could have entered the
mobile phone market well before 2007, but it waited for a leap in
user-interface design that enabled the manipulation of on-screen things using
one or more fingers – pinch-to-zoom and similar gestures, in other words.