In February 2006, Jeff Han wowed the audience at the TED Conference with his lab’s developments around multi-touch interfaces. When the iPhone became available in June 2007, members of the general public began to realize how the multi-touch screen would revolutionize the way people interact with machines. As one would expect, it took a little bit of time before the competition such as the Android-based G1, Palm’s Pre, and Microsoft’s Zune HD followed suit with their multi-touch offerings.

Multi-touch interfaces make all the sense in the world especially for activities such as sifting through and viewing photos and videos. So why is it taking so long for manufacturers of dedicated digital cameras and camcorders to update their now outdated interfaces? Canon and Sony had better wake up and smell the coffee. Multi-touch is where it is at. That is where it has been at for the last couple years.

Seriously, Canon and Sony, bite the bullet and license the technology. Spend a few R&D dollars and design an intuitive user interface so that consumers don’t have to repeatedly click some stupid button next to the LCD screen to jump from one image to the next. C’mon, somebody on the design team must own an iPhone or iPod Touch, right? Why isn’t that dude speaking up at the design meetings? Grow a pair and tell the rest of the people in the room that they are designing product like it is 2006.

I’ll tell you what, I’m ready to plunk a few bucks on an HD camcorder this holiday season, but I swear, if I’m looking at the same old shitty interfaces to navigate through photos and video clips come December, I’m gonna hold off and keep using the old standard def Handycam that I bought back in 2005. And I’ll convince all my friends to wait for multi-touch too. Then you (the spineless executive) will have to regurgitate the same excuse you used last year about how the economic downturn softened consumer demand and that is why you didn’t hit your numbers. F that shit.

Heads should roll for not embracing technologies that would drastically improve the value of your products and get customers to open up their wallets. In certain years, you might need to truly innovate to offer product that is a significant improvement over last year’s model. This year, you just need to be an “also-ran” in the multi-touch race to take your products to the next level. Now is not the time to count all the buttons in your factories that have yet to be assembled into your current product line. Stop thinking about how big a write-off it would be if you didn’t use another one of those buttons again. Instead, do yourself, your company, and your customers a big favor and start acting like it is 2009 (and late 2009 at that)!