Slashdot Mirror
Computer Mouse Heading For Extinction
slatterz writes "The computer mouse is set to die out in the next five years and will be usurped by touch screens and facial recognition, analysts believe. Steven Prentice, vice president and Gartner Fellow, told the BBC that devices such as Nintendo's MotionPlus for the Wii and Apple's iPhone point the way to the future, offering greater accuracy in motion detection."
But in practice, it will take a lot more than 5 years. 25 years, maybe.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
hahahhahahahaha I call bullshit on that. Taking all bets.
Because the mouse is old will never replace the fact it is an incredibly intuitive and powerful HID. You can use it all day without getting sore (mostly) and best of all, it wont accidentally trash half your files if you sneeze and move your hand at the same time.
The last thing I'd want is fingerprints smudged all over my monitor. I'll still with my mouse, thanks.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
So, to increase accuracy, I'm supposed to slap at the screen with my pizza-slopped fingers? Facial recognition? Maybe banging my head on my desk will act as a signal to restart Windows yet again.
Somebody who has some obscure input device, which will "kill the mouse", probably paid Gartner to conduct yet another bogus study that seeks to convince people what technology to use as opposed to demonstrate what they are actually using.
will be usurped by touch screens and facial recognition
I guess the guy never used touch screens, that's why he is so sure. And nobody "used" facial recognition so far, that makes it even a better idea...
The most basic issue here is the interface. People don't write with facial contortions. We write with our hands. Why? Because our hands are the most precise tools that we have, and they are well built for the task.
However our hands (and arms) are not good for holding them, for hours, in front of a vertical surface of a screen. Many screens are positioned so that the "touch" interface is therefore impossible. Besides, there isn't enough precision in our fingers even if we wear claw-like stylus. Mouse can be, and often is configured to translate larger movement of the sensor into a very precise, sub-millimeter movement of the cursor. This is necessary in most applications, selecting from a menu being an example. Touch screens do not allow this "magnification" of the movement, as well as any non-linear response (that is also common.)
The input devices will likely change over time, but unless our bodies change also the mouse or a touchpad interface will remain useful for a long time, just like a keyboard. I personally believe that we will have direct brain control over the mouse and keyboard functions earlier than we will be able to replace the mouse with a better mouse - it's a simpler task. It's also probably possible to design a crude AI that is just enough to decode speech; but the speech interface is not very efficient either - try to talk for an hour and see what happens to your throat.
All these predictions are just noise made by people who want to attract undeserved attention. There is nothing wrong with a mouse as it is now, and there should be no rush to replace it with something that is not tested and by all reasoning can't even work. The mouse works, we test it for decades by now.
Never will, who wants to talk all day? Though I personally feel like voice recognition will become a supplement. I can imagine saying "close window" etc as being useful. Though, if you aren't alone, you are going to look like you have lost your mind. I also don't want someone walking past being able to tell my computer to trash half my files :)
This is, as always, wrong. Analysts never get this stuff right. The iPhone has shown the ability of a touchscreen with multi-touch to have a great interface. Notice that the iPhone was never a device with a mouse. Phone don't have mice (except for trackballs on some blackberries).
I'd love some of that multi-touch goodness in OS X. Let my trackpad start doing it. But let's get real here. We need mice.
All our interfaces are designed around them and keyboards. They are cheap (under $5 for a simple optical). They are precise. They are familiar. They need very little physical movement (just tiny wrist movements). A tablet gives you the precision a mouse does. I'd say they are far more likely to take over than generic touchscreen. Perhaps combos like Wacom Centiqs.
I'm w aiting for the FPS that figures out a way to use touchscreens for precision aiming.
The Wii has shown us some great things, but that's for games. How many people do you think want to waggle their way through creating powerpoint presentations?
I've got a Wii. What do some the best control schemes often use it for? That's right... a mouse! LostWinds (just finished, great game) uses it as a pointing device. Metroid Prime 3 uses it for aiming much like a mouse. Zack & Wiki (when not performing motions) uses it like a mouse. Every menu in every game uses it like a mouse. The console's own menu uses it like a mouse. And when Pikmin 3 comes out I'm willing to bet a fair bit of money that it will use the control mostly as... a mouse.
The mouse is just about the perfect 2D interface. There is probably a reason we've been using them for over 25 years (it's been about that long since the Macintosh came out, and I'm well aware they were available before that). When we get a real 3D interface (like some kind of hologram projecting surface/table) then we may need a new input device some of the time, but for now, the mouse will be around for a very long while.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Facial recognition doesn't even work at all, even on specialized HW, SW, and selected test subjects. In 5 years, maybe it might work occasionally. Not replace the mouse. Nor will any of those other brand new special skills input devices. Hell, the majority of PCs even now are probably about 5 years old, and we're about to plunge into a "recession" that won't even have the vast debt to prop it up that the past decade had.
Gartner has always been nothing but a PR mill to market "mindshare" of directions in computer industry trends. I've never read a Gartner report or employee (or "Fellow", which must really take bribing) that was anything other than "Big Computer Corp X wishes this report would come true".
Think about the gaming magazine "reporting" you read, and how it's all PR. Big computer corps, like Apple, Microsoft, Dell - and probably Sony, Nintendo etc, all trying to become "computer" corps or their synthesis - have even more money to buy reporting. And Gartner isn't even saying it's "journalism". It's like those 1990s Internet Bubble stockbrokers' in-house "analysts", whose reports always said that whatever stocks the brokerage was vested in would go nowhere but up. In fact, those fake analysts are still doing the same thing, and the market is still a wasteland because of it. Gartner has even less accountability, and even less of a track record of guessing right, rather than wishing hard.
I bet Gartner predicted in 1999 that by 2008 we'd all have Aeron chairs and foosball tables.
--
make install -not war
You can have my mouse when you pry it from my cold, dead, fingers.
The problem is, none of those technologies are superior to mice.
Look at your desktop. Look at where your monitor is. Look at where your mouse is.
Now, what is easier - reaching up to your monitor every time you want to move the cursor, or reaching over to the mouse?
Mice are more precise than fingers. Mice are less strain than pointing devices.
These analysts are idiots. Technology doesn't get replaced with new technology that doesn't work as well as the existing technology. And mice are better at what mice are used for than any other input device available in the desktop/laptop environment.
paintball
Alternative navigation methods have come up from time to time, but apart from the trackball and cursor keys, pretty much all of them have the same drawback: They lead to what's known as the "Gorilla Arm Syndrome". We humans aren't designed to keep our hands extended and not resting on something for any length of time, and after a while, our arms will feel like they've weighted down with lead. Then, when you quit, you feel you have arms the size of a gorilla. And then the pain sets in.
This is the main reason why touch screens never took off any of the three times they were marketed as the new and wonderful thing. My guess is that this is a fourth attempt, which will meet with no more success.
Even graphic tablets can cause G.A.S., unless they allow you to rest your wrist and arm while using it. If they're much bigger than a mouse pad, many people will have problems.
Ok, maybe it's just me, but when I see accomplishments such as "Gartner Fellow" bandied about, I tend to think "Mindless Drivel"
I skimmed the article. I may have missed a clause where the entire interview was taken downwind of a chemical plant. However...
Citing the announced Wii Motionplus dongle? Really? We were all ignoring things like the gyromouse and other presentation devices/gimmicks for years because all us desk slaves just didn't have the accuracy we would need that a couple extra accelerometers would afford us?
Facial recognition? That deserves a big "whiskey tango foxtrot", as the only thing I've heard of that is for authentication (granted, it tends to get foiled by showing the camera a picture, but that's a different argument) This is a replacement for the mouse, how?
Touchscreens..because pen computing begat tablet computing begat whatever this new thing is. Did someone fix the problem of gorilla arm and forget to inform the rest of the world?
I must agree with that anti-touching rule. I have a CRT and the fingerprints make me want to kill people.
On another note, what abouT FPS players? Does this analyst really think FPS players (of which there are MANY) will give up their mice? Not to mention the fact that touch screens require far more physical energy and require your arm to be lifted in order to use. Yeah, I don't expect touch screens to be anything more than a convenience where mice aren't available.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Indeed, I dont think I will ever give up my mouse, at best I might sacrifice it to say a tablet and pen, but a touch screen and voice commands just will never be accurate or quick enough.
As for dirty screens, maybe in 5 years time, they will have developed some sort of nano-gunk-eating stuff you can wipe on your screen that turns the gunk into oxygen, or a revolving protective cover (like outdoor CCTV camers) and then cleans the gunk off and uses it in some cold fusion cell to power the PC...
Besides, since screens seem to be getting smaller, I really dont see that coinciding with the lack of a pointing device, although, if the entire keyboard was a touch-pad (or two touch screens, one screen, one keyboard), and you held down the [use as mouse] button (somewhere at a corner) then release button, etc that might work.
Although, there's also the borg option, have some connection into your forearm muscles or something, or directly to your brain, then maybe the mouse would become "old school".
As for vocal things, that'l never work in public, unless its directional, and in offices you'd probably have to make their cages (cubicals) more air-tight, or have sound proofing, even though phones are common, they aren't quite as pollutive (?) as an almost constant ranting of commands at your PC.
The idea of the mouse dying out is entirely idiotic.
What am I going to do, reach my hand all the way out two feet in front of my face to drag a window across my dual 30" screens from one side to the other? Keep my arms constantly extended out in front of my face so I can touch the monitors?
Monitors are expensive enough as they are right now. Without adding touch screen ability to them. Not to mention that the typical home LCD can't exactly handle lots of finger oils and smudges regularly.
And yes, I'm totally going to write code or navigate the web with a Wii motion controller. Or an iPhone. Or by furrowing my brow on my face.
This guy is no Alvin Toffler. He needs to relenquish futurism to someone better suited.
That's true, but on the more-precise-than-fingers point, I think it's only correct when you're very strict about your definition of "precise". Keep in mind that you're taking a very flexible arm and hand with 4 fingers and an opposable thumb, and using it to control a device that's about as complex as a baseball bat. (Move it thump move it thump.)
Mice are specifically more accurate than fingers when it comes to accurately indicating tiny screen points in a way that strictly logical software can unambiguously interpret, but you're still losing a lot of flexibility of your hand and fingers as an input device just to remove this ambiguity.
Personally I'm skeptical if touch screens (as they are today) will replace mice, and generally I think Gartner's full of crap when it comes to this and just about everything else they claim to predict, but a mouse isn't exactly a perfect device. It just happens to balance accuracy and utility between humans and the current day's computers better than anything else we have at the moment.