TUIO Multitouch for iPhone: Browser App Hack Replaces Rejected App
MSAFluid for processing (Controlled by iPhone) from Memo Akten on Vimeo.
TUIO is a simple but powerful emerging protocol for multitouch control for live music and visuals, as used on the powerful live tangible synth reacTable. Apparently no one told Apple, however. While the App Store rubber-stamps useless toys like fake cigarette lighter flames, they bizarrely rejected a powerful application by a leading digital artist that would enable standardized TUIO control – for free. (More back story below; see an example in action above.)
As a blogger, my reaction is usually to whine and pontificate, for better or worse. The engineering approach would be to find some hack away the problem. That’s what Andrew Turley did with the TUIO protocol. So, Apple won’t allow an app that does the trick? Why not go back to what developers did before the SDK, and just use the iPhone browser?
As Andrew explains it:
After reading the story I started thinking about seeing how far one could push Safari as an application platform, using web apps to get around Apple’s tight control of the app store. Since you would be connecting to another computer anyway to use an OSC application, why not just have the app be a web app running on a web server somewhere on the local network? The web server can then take care of things like sending out OSC messages or playing music or doing whatever it is people want to do.
To that end I created a little system that implements the TUIO protocol. You use an iPhone to run a web app, which in turn talks to the web server, which in turn sends OSC messages.
/* Buy links if custom fields not null and not in cat or search results */ ?> /* End Buy links if custom fields not null and not in cat or search results */ ?>








