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The Age of Touch Computing
DigitalDame2 writes "In 2009, touch computing will go mainstream. More and more devices will be legitimately touch-enabled with gesture controls for browsing through photos, tossing objects around the screen, flicking to turn the page of a book, and even playing video games and watching movies. In fact, Gartner analyst Steve Prentice told the BBC recently that the mouse will be dead in three to five years. PCMag has a full look at touch computing — the past, the present, and the future — including an interview with Sabrina Boler, touch UI designer."
Also why would I want to be waving my arms at my CRT or LCD screen?
Just earlier today I was thinking about this. I believe that one possible sollution to the "gorilla arm" syndrome is to put the monitor in the place of the keyboard, and move the keyboard a bit down.
The second issue to address (all this IMHO) is the visual feedback. I believe that in order to make touch-based interaction feel more natural, the applications will have to present the information in a more familiar way.
In general, I believe that touch computing can be real and can have advantages as well, however, I also believe that using touch computing does not directly means keyboardless computing as they serve a different purpose.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Touch computing fails in every way possible.
I like my monitor perfectly clean. Using displays all covered in finger grease drives me nuts.
Your hands conceal parts of the screen while you're using it.
You can move a mouse over a greater distance much more quickly than your entire hand. It's also much easier to get to a specific pixel / small area with a mouse than with your fat fingertip.
People keep lauding the Minority Report UI like it's a good idea. Do you really want to have to hold your arms up like that and move them around all day?
Positioning the screen ergonomically for use as in input device puts it in a position where you're hanging your head looking down all day. The minority report problem obviously applies if you position your screen at the optimal viewing position.
Others have already mentioned it, but lack of tactile feedback is a big one. This is particularly important for programs whose UIs aren't that great. You hit the touchscreen button - the button didn't move and there was no sound. You can only guess that your button "press" didn't register because nothing happened... but you don't really know. I see this on ATMs all the time.
How is wasting half of your screen real estate on a keyboard a good idea? Oh, you can bring it up dynamically? Oh great, well then I guess you don't get to use keyboard shortcuts. That sucks.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.