Steve Jobs Was Wrong About Touchscreen Laptops

theodp writes "Don't believe everything Steve Jobs and Tim Cook tell you, advises The Verge's Sean Hollister. Gunshy of touchscreen laptops after hearing the two Apple CEOs dismiss the technology (Jobs: 'Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical.' Cook: 'You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not gonna be pleasing to the user.'), Hollister was surprised to discover that Windows 8 touchscreen laptops actually don't suck and that the dreaded 'Gorilla Arm Syndrome' did not materialize. 'The more I've used Windows 8, despite its faults, the more I've become convinced that touchscreens are the future — even vertical ones,' writes Hollister. 'We've been looking at this all wrong. A touchscreen isn't a replacement for a keyboard or mouse, it's a complement.' Echoing a prediction from Coding Horror's Jeff Atwood that 'it is only a matter of time before all laptops must be touch laptops,' Hollister wouldn't be surprised at all if Apple eventually embraces-and-extends the tech: 'Microsoft might have validated the idea, but now Apple has another chance to swoop in, perfecting and popularizing the very interface that it strategically ridiculed just two years ago. It wouldn't be the first time. After all, how many iPad minis come with sandpaper for filing fingers down?'"

Comments

It's very possible

[phantomfive]

It's very possible that the reason we think touchscreen laptops are a bad idea has nothing to do with Steve Jobs or Apple.

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very possible it has more to do with cheetos

Re:It's very possible

[ozmanjusri]

It's also very possible that the Asus Transformer range showed that a good touchscreen tablet/laptop combo is a useful bit of gear well before "Microsoft might have validated the idea".

What's the obsession with pretending Apple and Microsoft are the only computer vendors on Slashdot? Most of the stuff they do has been done before and better by more interesting companies.

Let's face facts, W8 is tanking because it's dull and irritating. Why keep talking it up here?

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

For years I have been telling people, DON'T TOUCH MY SCREEN, and now with Windows 8, people are going to start touching my screen. The Windows 8 UI on the a laptop is a confusing trainwreck. The Windows 8 UI is pretty good on a phone. I hope MS gets a strategy together soon and is able to attract some developers to write some native Windows 8 apps instead of iOS ports. But I digress. MS can spin this however they want, but don't you dare get fingerprints on my screen, oh and stay off my lawn.

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

This. How come no other comments mention this? I don't want to clean oily fingers off my screen all day, every day. Natural oils, not even junk food. I can deal with this on my phone, but not the devices I read/write large blocks of text into 8 (who am I kidding, 14) hours a day....

Re:It's very possible

[GeoBain]

Make that 14. I use the keyboard maybe a third of the time. But when I do, using the touchscreen along with a wireless mouse is a nice combo.

Re:It's very possible

[ozmanjusri]

Partly true. The original Transformer sold (and still sells AFAIK) at a rate of about 400,000 units a month. That doesn't compare with the nearly 1,000,000 Nexus 7 units a month Asus are selling.

It's not bad compared to other manufacturers though, or even the PC market, which is collapsing with a 21% fall in sales.

There was even a rare story about Asus here!

Re:It's very possible

[kelemvor4]

It's very possible that the reason we think touchscreen laptops are a bad idea has nothing to do with Steve Jobs or Apple.

I didn't know anyone actually thought they'd be a bad idea, I've wanted one for years. Too bad I don't have the cash to go get one at the moment...

Re:It's very possible

[Man On Pink Corner]

Honestly, I though the Cheetos factor would sink the iPad, too. Didn't happen.

Re:It's very possible

[mysidia]

What's the obsession with pretending Apple and Microsoft are the only computer vendors on Slashdot?

Microsoft is a software company, not a computer vendor.

They have a similar advantage that Google has over Apple. Their OS supports multiple different kinds of hardware, so the end user has more flexibility; it doesn't matter to them which computer vendor sells you the solution, and the Android transformer is a boon to Google's platform.

With Apple, you can only have hardware that Apple has specifically designed, which increases cost and limits your flexibility, expandability, and options.

Last I checked, you couldn't even swap a battery on your iPad, and they won't dare provide SD expansion card slots to add memory.

Google android has the disadvantage that the apps are essentially for one kind of CPU -- you don't get the flexibility to run the same code on both desktop OS and on tablet/smart phone; Windows 8 provides this added flexibility.

Re:It's very possible

[ozmanjusri]

https://www.google.com.au/search?tbs=li:1&q=original+Transformer+sold+(and+still+sells+AFAIK)+at+a+rate+of+about+400%2C000+units+a+month#hl=en&tbo=d&tbs=li:1&sclient=psy-ab&q=Asus+Transformer++400%2C000+units+a+month&oq=Asus+Transformer++400%2C000+units+a+month&gs_l=serp.3...701.701.1.1225.1.1.0.0.0.0.336.336.3-1.1.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.5XF4MVZNGKA&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=5173c837edf7494c&bpcl=39314241&biw=1920&bih=1059

N.B. Yes, posting a Google search as evidence IS an expression of contempt. If you're too lazy to check facts, don't challenge people who post them.

Re:It's very possible

[hambone142]

I have a tablet and a netbook as well as a couple of laptops and desktops. I find myself using the netbook most of the time. Portable, long battery life, real keyboard (although a little smaller) and a screen that I can read. Tablets are OK for some web browsing however I need to expand the screen to tap on very small hyperlinks. If I hook a keyboard to a tablet, what's the point? I may as well use my netbook. I find the touchscreens on darned near any device a PITA due to their small size and inability to type on them (I do type well).

Re:It's very possible

[hendridm]

A shame. My mother owns a Transformer, my brother owns a Transformer and my wife owns a Nexus 7. They barely ever get put down.

I, personally, haven't bought a tablet because I need and prefer a full laptop. However, my next laptop will have a touchscreen because it seems like a nice compliment.

I'm just waiting for a touchscreen laptop that also has a Thunderbolt port (yes, I know /. hates Thunderbolt, but I have a TB monitor, so deal with it). I'm eyeballing the HP Envy Spectre XT TouchSmart Ultrabook. My current laptop is getting pretty moldy...

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

All my cool, metrosexual, and hot chick classmates have an ipad. None of my cheetos-eating, basement-dwelling, nerd virgin classmates have an iPad.

Re:It's very possible

[phantomfive]

I don't know why people think touchscreen laptops are a bad idea, but we've had touchscreens for at least two decades in use commercially, and they've never managed to make it past niche markets. It's not because people haven't tried.

Re:It's very possible

[0123456]

It's also very possible that the Asus Transformer range showed that a good touchscreen tablet/laptop combo is a useful bit of gear well before "Microsoft might have validated the idea".

It's because I own a Transformer that I know touchscreen laptops suck.

Re:It's very possible

[LordKronos]

If you're too lazy to check facts, don't challenge people who post them.

I disagree. Any troll can post false "fact" after false "fact" fast enough to overwhelm anyone else's ability to check and disprove them. Therefore the responsibility should be on the person presenting the fact to provide a valid citation (if not up front, then at least when asked for it).

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

You just posted the whole search including the extra info Google uses to track your search.

Re:It's very possible

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Perhaps. But I just plug in a mouse myself. Just because there is a screen you can touch doesn't mean you have to touch it.

Re:It's very possible

[atlasdropperofworlds]

> Let's face facts, W8 is tanking because it's dull and irritating. Why keep talking it up here?

People who are actually using it disagree. It takes 1 minute to install an open-source start menu and voila, win7 with a bunch of improvements.

Also, look at the HP touchsmart. It came out before the transformer prime, and has a capacitive touchscreen and a Wacom digitizer. Sorry, but MS-based systems really were the first to be touchscreen laptops.

.

Re:It's very possible

[Darinbob]

It's because with the glossy screens the fingerprints show up more, and Steve didn't want to give up glossy screens.

Re:It's very possible

[timothyb89]

I have a TF300 that I run standard Linux on (Arch and XFCE). It's actually fantastic to have a touchscreen for some interactions, and the ability to make custom gestures is surprisingly useful. It's gotten to the point that whenever I use a normal laptop I accidentally try to touch the screen for scrolling, etc.

Re:It's very possible

[jbolden]

Have you been reading the windows 8 threads on /. for the last year? Lots of people thought they would be a terrible idea. I'm very glad that now that Windows 8 has the right hardware people are starting to see what a step forward it is.

Re:It's very possible

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Win8 metro UI is great on touchscreens. It's jarring on the desktop, but that's why there are start menu replacements.

Re:It's very possible

[Austerity Empowers]

You must not have young kids. I don't know what bizarre substances they form on their fingers, I do not WANT to know, all I know is that touchscreens preserve and backlight it for me.

Re:It's very possible

[guruevi]

It's very possible we already tried the idea in the ~2000's with the convertible laptops... by Microsoft... called Tablets.... Microsoft Tablet PC anyone???

Re:It's very possible

[slashmydots]

It's very possible that the reason we think touchscreen laptops are a bad idea has nothing to do with Steve Jobs or Apple.

You're right. They're off in la la land thinking you can put together a database of all streets and businesses in the US in less than a year so they'd be the last ones I'd ask about feature design. That said, touchscreens SUCK! How is it a compliment to the mouse and keyboard when I can do any imaginable task faster with a mouse?

Re:It's very possible

[foniksonik]

While true, it's also true that the same wipes you use to clean their grubby hands are remarkably good at cleaning touch screens too. Coincidence?

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

This x10. When I go to fix one of the 400 machines I am responsible for a keyboard is bad enough, I don't want to SEE all the grime I have to touch to do my job.

Re:It's very possible

[zullnero]

I wouldn't say it's tanking because it's "dull and irritating". I'd say it's because there's a very locked in user base that is very terrified of change in any form when it comes to Windows, and every time Microsoft releases something that is "very different" from what came before, those people drag their feet.

People use Microsoft products and approach them in a different way than people who use Apple products. There's a fairly different mindset. Apple people tend towards wanting "new and shiny" and Microsoft people want things that "work and do stuff". Changing stuff drastically flies in the face of "work and do stuff" the way they're used to. Every new major release has a year or two of gradual adoption, unless the previous release was a total mess (Vista springs to mind, but the difference between Vista and 7 is relatively minor). Only with Microsoft users do you find people using revisions of the OS that are over 10 years old. That's because they're used to using computers a certain way, with specific software, and they don't consider technology important enough in their lives to relearn it all.

Re:It's very possible

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Also, Cheetos & mechanical keyboards should be a worse combination, hygenically speaking and reliability speaking, given how many crevices there are in a keyboard. So if Cheetos is supposed to be a problem with touch screen, then why doesn't anyone backtrack that thinking to the keyboards?

Re:It's very possible

[tbird81]

True, but that is a large proportion of computer users.

Re:It's very possible

[tibit]

I don't know what kind of a laptop do you have in mind, but on what I consider a laptop a touchscreen would be an ergonomic nightmare. Are you sitting comfortably in an ergonomically sound position? Hands at the level of your elbows, resting on the keyboard or your desk? Now fucking raise your entire forearm 4-5 inches up, as would be necessary to point at something on the screen without elevating hands above the elbows, and keep it there. Tell me how it feels after you've kept them there for 15 minutes. I hope it clears any illusions.

It's not about Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else. It's about biomechanics and ergonomics of the situation. It's about the same reasons lightpens didn't pan out. It truly sucks to have to use them, and the problem wasn't their weight -- I've had extremely lightweigh ones, and they pretty much made you wish to embed the monitor in the desk because your arms would start killing you after an hour of use.

Yes, if you're standing up, touchscreens are a different ballgame. If MS wants to pander to people who work in fast food restaurants, well, good for them. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but the touchscreen market is pretty much limited to standing jobs.

Re:It's very possible

[dbIII]

Considering that it's a reply to an unbacked up and frankly obviously false assertion of only 13 people buying the thing I think the "citation needed" comment does deserve contempt.

Re:It's very possible

[Paradise Pete]

Do you really think that a year before Apple was sitting around and said "Hey, let's make a map!" ?
And the notion that "any imaginable task" on the computer can be done faster with a keyboard and mouse is just plain silly. 25 years ago you'd have been one of those guys who were claiming that using a mouse was ridiculous and that "any imaginable task" was better done on the command line.

Re:It's very possible

[jafac]

I deal with this on my phone even if I don't touch it. Ear-grease. Yep. I'm a human being alright.

Re:It's very possible

[Mr0bvious]

Not that I agree it's a real problem in real world use (not form my experience anyway), but to answer your question - because you don't need to look though the gunk on your keyboard to read your screen.

I don't think many are concerned about the the hygiene of touch screens, it's the discomfort one feels when looking at a dirty screen.

Though looking at my colleague's screens that point is somewhat moot....

Re:It's very possible

[phantomfive]

Responsibility for finding the truth rests on the person who cares. If no one cares, then no one will find out.

Which is why no one knows just how many penises I have.

Re:It's very possible

[Barlo_Mung_42]

As a parent I'm sure you know and are just in denial. It's a thin sheen of bugger / snot. Better to face the truth imo.

Re:It's very possible

[rat7307]

They are a computer vendor.

The Surface is a computer, it is sold as a Microsoft device.

Re:It's very possible

[houghi]

I disagree. Any troll can post false "fact" after false "fact" fast enough to overwhelm anyone else's ability to check and disprove them. Therefore the responsibility should be on the person presenting the fact to provide a valid citation (if not up front, then at least when asked for it).

Citation needed.

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is claiming windows is functional make one a windows proponent? I don't even have it on any of my systems at home, but have had to use it on various systems at work. But I recognize that is a matter of preference and that I get things done faster and with less frustration on a *nix system, not because Windows is unusable, and if needed, I can still get same things done on a Windows 7 or 8 system.

There are a lot of issues I've had with windows in the past, so in general, my opinion is Windows is worse than Linux. But you seem to be complaining about simply changing the UI, in which case that is something every other OS has dealt with at times (e.g. all of the recent bitching about Gnome 3 and Unity). And you seem to be equating the gui with the whole OS, because simply adding a UI option is not the same as downgrading it to the previous version.

There are plenty of legitimate complaints about Windows, and Windows 8, and yet the point was your complaint was just stupid. A third part UI tool, like the bazillion ones used in previous versions and other OSes to customize how an OS works is not indicative of a "colossal failure." Win8 might still be a failure if too many people don't bother to buy it because MS misjudged too much what people want, but it will take some time to see how that pans out business-wise. In the meantime, I'm going to upgrade Firefox version 17, but then downgrade it to version 2 by installing an addon that changes some of the UI...

Re:It's very possible

[sqrt(2)]

And I don't think he was wrong anyway. He wasn't wrong about them sucking, he was wrong about people being willing to put up with them.

Re:It's very possible

[WaffleMonster]

To make Win8 usable, you just have to install it. It is quite usable as is. Maybe not efficient, and probably not agreeing with the preferences of many people, but that is not the same as being unusable.

People have their own standards regarding what constitutes "usable". Those with a low threshold for nonsense or high standsrds could rightfully conclude windows 8 is unusable in its current form.

The question of usability is value judgement you do NOT get to make for others.

Re:It's very possible

[ShoulderOfOrion]

Win8 is like a quarterback throwing a Hail Mary pass at a baseball game.

Re:It's very possible

[517714]

A brief google search reveals that you have overstated sales by well over an order of magnitude: In the third quarter of 2011 partners reduced supply orders and company dropped down manufacturing volumes to 10 000 per month; this measure helped Asus to avoid overstocking in the warehouses and not to participate in sales of the devices at giveaway prices as HP did with TouchPad and RIM with its Playbook.

This appears to be a case of willful ignorance on your part and your contempt is misdirected. Perhaps we should anticipate a similar 97% reduction in shipments of the Nexus 7 in the second quarter of its production as well?

Re:It's very possible

[gagol]

Funny, I just disassemble, cleaned and reassemble my gamepad yesterday due to greasy deposits of various origin making the buttons stuck...

Re:It's very possible

[Psyborgue]

The hell are you talking about? Android apps only run on one kind of cpu? There are android tablets and phones running all sorts of CPUs, including intel. Apps are written in java and run inside a tweaked out virtual machine. I can run the same .apk on an arm based tablet and an intel based phone. The only disadvantage to this approach is speed, but JIT helps this, as have other tweaks.

Re:It's very possible

[Opportunist]

Actually, Win8 is like that dork kid putting a bull ring through his nose when he saw all the cool kids got piercings.

Re:It's very possible

[pmontra]

Many consumer laptops cost less than a smartphone that comes with 2 or 3 years mandatory contract and they're what most of the laptop market was made of so far: laptops left at home until people come back from work.
Anyway, my business laptop costs twice as much as my smartphone. I'm happy at scrolling windows using the touchpad, where my fingers rest while I'm not typing, but I'd love tapping the X buttons on screen to close windows or to hit dialog buttons: tapping would be much faster than aiming the pointer to the button and clicking. Same if I were using a mouse.

Re:It's very possible

[tsa]

But the iPad is easy to clean. Just lick it off.

Re:It's very possible

[a_hanso]

I keep reading this as the Anus Transformer. Must stop that.

Re:It's very possible

[TheRaven64]

I've just got a new Transformer Pad Infinity, which has a horribly unwieldy name but is a beautifully designed and built product. The department here is happy to buy tablets because they're very convenient for reading papers. I was sceptical of the tablet form factor: I was previously given an HP TouchPad, which has a beautifully designed UI (Android still feels clunky compared to WebOS in a number of areas) but was prematurely killed, and I rarely use it. I find that I actually do use the Transformer, and even with the keyboard attached I use the touchscreen quite a lot.

The secret to avoiding the gorilla arm syndrome here is probably twofold. First, it has a moderately competent trackpad, so when I'm doing heavily text-focussed things I just use that. I'm not using an on-screen keyboard when it's in the vertical position, so the number of times I actually need to touch the screen is quite small. Second, the screen is small and so I'm only moving my hands a small amount. I can basically touch the entire screen just by moving my wrist. On my 15" laptop, it would be a lot more cumbersome.

That said, the first application that I installed on mine was vim, so I'm probably a member of a fairly niche market...

Re:It's very possible

[PopeRatzo]

It's very possible that the reason we think touchscreen laptops are a bad idea

"We"?

Who's there with you? Or is it the royal we, as in "We'd like some of those petit fours, mother. Be a dear and bring down a tray, would you? One might starve waiting for dinner."

Re:It's very possible

[t0rkm3]

Heh... At my office we account for six. Once I demonstrated that I could dual-boot Linux and Android, so that it would be a very useful at the office, and could still be used by the significant other at home... they started breeding, setting up mated pairs(rsync) and otherwise carrying on.

ASUS needs a better marketing platform.

Re:It's very possible

[gwjgwj]

When I put your phone into my pocket, it automatically cleans itself. I do not do that with my laptop.

Re:It's very possible

[jbolden]

I don't write /. comments for a PR agency. I'm just a guy who happens to think Balmer is doing the right thing. There are people in the world who disagree with you.

As for features: all applications automatically conform to multiple form factors in terms of both display mechanisms and input mechanisms and thus allow for ubiquitous computing is the shinny feature. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0

Re:It's very possible

[ifiwereasculptor]

What, they actually sold a Surface?

Re:It's very possible

[chris.alex.thomas]

bwwawaaaahahhahahha, you sir made my day.....

Re:It's very possible

[catmistake]

It was neither Steve Jobs nor Apple that discovered the problem with a vertical touch interface, but Ivan Sutherland that discovered in 1963 that a vertical touchscreen was a terrible idea.

...because the blood runs out of your hand in about 20 seconds and leaves it numb...

Suffice to say, Apple will not be releasing a touchscreen laptop.

Re:It's very possible

[gwjgwj]

Not really. Some applications (e.g.Sygic GPS navigation) are written in C++ and only the GUI is written in Java, so you cannot just run the same apk on different platforms.

Re:It's very possible

[Jmc23]

Just proves nerds don't know how to use their bodies.

Teachers and chalk you know.

The real problem with lightpens was the cord, that movement restriction seriously affects you. (my dad made a lightpen for our apple II)

Re:It's very possible

[khallow]

I just find it surprising what becomes a touch screen when there are young kids around. Especially young kids with permanent markers or paint.

Re:It's very possible

[virg_mattes]

Mostly because replacing a grubby keyboard is a ten dollar affair, and even the grubbiest fingers don't render a keyboard too grubby to use properly in a day or three.

Virg

Re:It's very possible

[Dogtanian]

Considering that it's a reply to an unbacked up and frankly obviously false assertion of only 13 people buying the thing

Good grief. Unless you are badly autistic (and I mean that as a statement of fact, not abuse), it should be quite clear that its transparent "falseness" was because it was intended as a joke, quite clearly not expected to be taken literally and quite deliberately exaggerated for the sake of poking some fun at an underlying but less extreme truth.

One might reasonably disagree with (and attack) the underlying "serious" point that the Transformer sold poorly. However, deliberately treating what I assume you knew was an obvious joke as if it were ever meant to be taken seriously is the kind of stupid and inane point-scoring pseudo-argumentative silliness that gives Slashdotters a bad name.

Re:It's very possible

[rtfa-troll]

This is not wikipedia. Bald assertions serve to move the debate forward and show the baseless assumptions of the other side. If you think there are facts against what someone said state them. If you think that proving someone is completely wrong will help your case then provide the citation. If you can't be bothered then as in any debate, you lose. Just go and read XKCD for strength.

Re:It's very possible

[Uberbah]

If you're too lazy to check facts, don't challenge people who post them.

That's not how this works. It's the job of the person making the assertion to back up his claim - if you don't believe me, lets try a little experiment.

I hereby assert that you, ozmanjusri, like to spank your mother while she's in her underwear. Now, is it my job to provide evidence for that assertion, or your job to disprove it?

Re:It's very possible

[Desler]

They're off in la la land thinking you can put together a database of all streets and businesses in the US in less than a year

Which is why they bought data from established players like TomTom.

Re:It's very possible

[Anonymous Coward]

All my cool, metrosexual, and hot chick classmates have an ipad. None of my cheetos-eating, basement-dwelling, nerd virgin classmates have an iPad.

Thats because they use android. Because they are smart enough to know an android is far less expensive, equal if not greater in terms of hardware for a lot of models and googles open approach allows the owner to actual use the device as if they actually own it.

But really. WHat does better hardware, better pricing, better user ability and overall better product mean when you can walk around with a apple logo on your overpriced item?

Re:It's very possible

[Rockoon]

I don't know what kind of a laptop do you have in mind, but on what I consider a laptop a touchscreen would be an ergonomic nightmare.

I don't know how you use a touch-enabled laptop, but it also has a keyboard and mouse/trackpad.

You people seem to want to believe that its a tablet with a physical keyboard, rather than a laptop with a touch screen.

If you want a tablet, buy a tablet. If you want a laptop, why not get one with a touch screen?

"No, I dont want a microphone on my laptop.. voice recognition sucks.. absolutely cannot have a microphone on my laptop.. its a nightmare I tell you!"

Re:It's very possible

[Rockoon]

It's not because people haven't tried.

It was because they cost a lot more.

Re:It's very possible

[Gr8Apes]

Love the troll mods. They rock :)

Anyways - feel free to point out these "good" products prior to the iPhone 1 and iPad, and then state why they failed to perform like these 2 products.

Hint: You won't be able to, nor even for almost a 2 year period after each was released. There's a reason Apple has the marketshare they do, and it has NOTHING to do with marketing. In fact, I recall almost 0 marketing on the iPhone prior to announcement, and the same for the iPad. The latter had rumors swirling about with all sorts of negativity, and some jokes were even funny. There were predictions from all quarters that Apple would fail, like everyone else, in the tablet arena. Or maybe you're just wallowing in revisionism.

Personally, it's too bad Steve passed away prior to his "cracking the TV" industry. Had he had the same impact on TVs that he did with phones, we'd all be in a better world. (Yes, the major impact of Apple on the cell phone market wasn't the iPhone itself, but a quantum shift away from the throttling control cell providers exerted over hardware, but you'll probably argue that didn't happen either)

Re:It's very possible

[mellon]

It's nice to have strong opinions, but you are being a bit hysterical here. OP is right—touchscreens make a great compliment to mice. Sometimes you want fine pointing, and then a mouse is a big win. Sometimes you want to say "that!" Then the touchscreen is a win. Personally, I'd rather have an eyeball tracker and a microphone, but that is probably patented by some troll.

Re:It's very possible

[2fuf]

That's probably because the hot metrosexual chicks gently suck eachother's fingers after eating cheetos

Re:It's very possible

[nedlohs]

Because they can't draw or paint on a non-touch screen?

Re:It's very possible

[tibit]

The deal is, it's not something that you can use while using the laptop as a laptop. As a tablet -- sure. Laptop with upright screen -- nope. Since laptops are, with scant few exceptions, much bulkier than tablets, I'd much rather have the sleek tablet as a separate device. That's me, though.

Re:It's very possible

[AmiMoJo]

It's a thin sheen of bugger / snot.

I think you mean booger. At least I hope you do.

Re:It's very possible

[AmiMoJo]

It's actually so bad I hate using my phone as a phone now.

Re:It's very possible

[phantomfive]

Whether insanity or royalty, whichever makes me sound more impressive, please choose that option.

Re:It's very possible

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is that those things on the screen are too small for stubby fingers to hit accurately, unless you make them annoyingly large and lose all the advantages of having a nice screen in the first place.

Re:It's very possible

[towermac]

Post of the month.

Re:It's very possible

[AmiMoJo]

You can write Android apps in native code if you like, and Play automatically deals with getting the right binary to the device. IIRC most Intel based Android devices have an ARM emulator for those apps as well, just in case an x86 binary is not available.

Re:It's very possible

[AmiMoJo]

For the love of the FSM don't buy a HP laptop. Take a hammer and chisel to your nads instead, it will be more fun.

Re:It's very possible

[Kynde]

If you're too lazy to check facts, don't challenge people who post them.

I disagree. Any troll can post false "fact" after false "fact" fast enough to overwhelm anyone else's ability to check and disprove them. Therefore the responsibility should be on the person presenting the fact to provide a valid citation (if not up front, then at least when asked for it).

So true, I'm so sick and tired of such gish gallops often used by the AGW denialists.

"That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence""

Re:It's very possible

[Ragica]

And before Transformer was the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t, which is still being used here daily, and quite liked. It runs Windows 7 most of the time, but I dual boot Linux on it sometimes... specifically Kubuntu with the plasma netbook interface. Linux works pretty well, the main thing missing for me is "long tap" support -- lenovo and/or windows detects long presses and pops up context menu (like mouse middle click). Interestingly the S10-3t extremely rarely gets the screen flipped around to tablet mode. It turns out the clamshell is more convenient 95% of the time. Even reading in bed with it... just sit the laptop on the bed beside pillow and have the desktop rotate the display (or use FBReader's built-in display rotation). It sits up nicely with no hands needed, while you lay comfortably reading.

The full size lenovo keyboard is very nice on such a small thing; being able to touch click/drag things is icing on the cake.

Re:It's very possible

[Kynde]

It's also very possible that the Asus Transformer range showed that a good touchscreen tablet/laptop combo is a useful bit of gear well before "Microsoft might have validated the idea".

It's because I own a Transformer that I know touchscreen laptops suck.

And I, as an owner, too, will have to disagree because absolutely love it. There's future right there, no doubt on my mind.

Re:It's very possible

[toriver]

This is also why they eat Cheetos: It is cheaper than steak. And dwelling in your parents' basement is cheaper than having your own apartment. And being a virgin is cheaper than a girlfriend. All in all, quite cheap individuals. Pirating Android apps is just icing on the cake.

But you seem to lack knowledge about iPads. The number of Android tablets that can be called "better" is minimal at best.

Re:It's very possible

[UltraZelda64]

Perhaps it would be a problem if you to have to look down at your keyboard to type and saw nasty gooey gunk every time... and worse, even not looking, the stuff would make your keys slippery. But that's never going to happen unless you eat while or after typing, without washing your hands. Plus--if you have the ability to type without looking, then you would *never* have to look at it even if it is there. I tend to not eat while typing, but some things--like Cheetos--can slide, because they can be eaten with one hand, and I can type with the other. This sort of thing would certainly not be comfortable, and probably not even possible on a cell phone.

Still, the natural oils and sweat on our hands are enough to make screens look seriously nasty, while a traditional keyboard will keep purring away with no major difference in functionality or appearance. No Cheetos necessary. And those natural oils, no amount of hand washing will be able to completely eliminate. They're just there, always will be, and will reappear in relatively short time after washing your hands.

Plus... I'd rather get a $25 keyboard messy and have to clean it than a fucking $125 touchscreen on a complicated electronic device with speakers, buttons, etc. that by its nature should be kept *away* from water as much as possible...

Re:It's very possible

[pmontra]

You're probably right about the X buttons. IMHO dialog buttons are large enough to be tapped. I just tried a simulation with Ubuntu's Suspend / Restart / Cancel / Shutdown dialog.

Thinking about it, I think I'd like to convert to touch gestures some of the compiz key combinations I often use, or zooming in/out of pictures and pdf files.

Re:It's very possible

[khallow]

There's no such thing as a non-touch screen around young kids. Your TV is a touch screen. A wall is a touch screen. The dining room table. See where I'm going with that?

Re:It's very possible

[nedlohs]

That you have/know crappy kids?

Re:It's very possible

[wibblewibble]

As a parent I'm sure you know and are just in denial. It's a thin sheen of bugger / snot. Better to face the truth imo.

I believe the correct term is santorum.

Re:It's very possible

[khallow]

That you have/know crappy kids?

They come with a lot of crap. That sometimes ends up on the touch screens too.

Re:It's very possible

[ganjadude]

would a simple solution to that issue be a protective screen, similar to the ones on cell phones, but easier to remove and reusable? Some high end cell phone cases even have what i am referring to

Re:It's very possible

[ganjadude]

it only takes 1 though. options are a great thing arent they??

Re:It's very possible

[Hal_Porter]

You know it's going to sell because it comes with every PC. Still if you look at Vista the take up rate was very poor compared to 7 or XP. So tanking in this instance means the market share measured by Statcounter et al grows slowly. Look if people complain about it. If the complaints are about as loud as Vista then it's going to be replaced quickly.

I think it's more likely to be a Vista than a 7. I'd also hazard a guess that Windows 9 comes out quickly and and with an option to go back to the Windows 7 style start menu.

Re:It's very possible

[Psyborgue]

But what you're talking about is mostly the exception, rather than the rule. 99% of apps out there do not rely on a particular CPU, and in the rare cases they do, early marked as such (e.g. some tegra "enhanced") with alternatives available. Even then, as you note, generally the play store could handle this transparently.... if only game developers didn't demand you buy the app twice to get the tegra code and higher res textures. That's not an android problem. That's an asshole problem.

Re:It's very possible

[hazem]

then why doesn't anyone backtrack that thinking to the keyboards?

Simply because they don't have to see through their keyboards.

Re:It's very possible

[hazem]

When I used to work at a university maintaining computers, my kit always had cleaners and wipes, and the first thing I'd do to a computer is wipe it down (screen, keyboard, any obvious dirt on the case). This was not only for my own sanitation, but our seemed seemed a lot happier with a cleaned off computer. Even if it didn't work much better, they seemed happier, since because it was cleaner, we clearly did "something" to it. In customer service, perception is just as important as actual performance.

Re:It's very possible

[hazem]

I dont' know about CPUs, but some apps seem to only work with specific versions of Android. When my Nexus 7 upgraded to 4.2, several apps stopped working. And there are lots of apps for my Android phone that when I try to find them on the app-store say they won't work with my device (and these aren't phone-dependent apps).

Maybe the difference doesn't come from different CPUs on different platforms, but there is a problem with apps not working universally. I suspect the problem is that different devices are running different versions of Android.

Re:It's very possible

[NoMaster]

OP is yet another hipster New Yorker reader confused by the difference between a diaeresis and an umlaut

They meant to type "bügger"...

Re:It's very possible

[NoMaster]

(and let me thank /.'s execrable handling of non-english characters for ruining that particular joke...)

Re:It's very possible

[lennier]

touchscreens make a great compliment to mice.

Why hello there, Mr Logitech. Have you been working out? Your laser is shining especially brightly today. And what a shiny scrollwheel!

Me? Oh, the usual - laying around, looking attractive, letting random strangers pick me up and paw me all over with their greasy fingertips. It's a living.

Shall we do coffee?

Re:It's very possible

[shutdown -p now]

A Transformer is not really a touchscreen laptop, though. I mean, you can use it as one, but it's missing the point completely. You use keyboard/trackpad when it's a laptop, and switch to touchscreen when it's a tablet.

Re:It's very possible

[Gr8Apes]

You're focused on buttons - it's a red herring. The real innovation was the break away from the providers controls, and providing a phone that was actually a phone as envisioned by someone whose main interest was not in maximizing revenue to the provider's "store" of sub-par products. The cell phone market of 2006 is a lot like the TV market of 2012 - providers controlled what and how you accessed content. The iPhone broke through that, we can only hope someone does the same to the TV ISPs.

Re:It's very possible

[Dr Max]

windows phone 8 is doing surprisingly well, a lot better than actual windows 8.

Re:It's very possible

[Ozeroc]

A good idea. Back in my desktop support days I'd always clean the mouse "turds" off the wheels in the ball chamber. I couldn't imagine how people dealt with mice like that.

Re:It's very possible

[rtb61]

Of course dirty fingers have nothing to do with vertical or horizontal and any range of angles in terms of touch screens. Basically a typical Apple marketing lie to promote their product. When it comes to browsing selection devices pay attention to how much you move your mouse, how you arm and hand is supported and the ratio of mouse movement to on screen movement of your mouse pointer. The bigger the touch screen the uncomfortable it becomes to use for repeated selections over many hours, vertical, horizontal, or any angle in between it makes no difference. The mouse still remains the most comfortable, lazy, lounging around, browsing device, as long as it and your hand and arm can be effectively supported in your selected reclining position. As you move your mouse through a range of a couple of centimetres to move tens of centimetres on screen, even hundreds of centimetres on a big screen. Forget "Minority Report" style gyrations unless you want to get fit.

Re:It's very possible

[Psyborgue]

You're right about this, but the same thing happens with IOS. If you upgrade too quickly, a lot of apps break and it takes developers a while to get their programs working with the new version of the OS. Personally I wait a little to make sure my critical apps are updated.

Re:It's very possible

[dbIII]

We're getting way into weird territory here - some guy posted a blatant lie, joke or not, somebody challenged the obvious lie and then some idiot wrote "citation needed" on the challenge, and now Dogtanian is calling me autistic for suggesting no citation is needed? With such an inability to follow such a short thread, should I see your autistic and raise you ADD :)
Please at least attempt to read what is written before handing out a "diagnosis".

Re:It's very possible

[Gr8Apes]

While much of what you write is perfectly correct it in no way invalidates anything I wrote. My main point is to dispute the contention that a better product will necessarily sell any better than an inferior product.

If that's really your point, then I agree with you and present just about anything Microsoft as a case in point.

...Indeed the side effects on the cell phone market you attribute to the iPhone's success do appear an enormous boon. Though it's a bit much to claim people buying it originally did it with that in mind. It's also unclear as to whether those things would or would not have happened anyway without apple.

I made no such claim that people bought it with the intention of revolutionizing the existing system. The system was revolutionized because the phone existed and was attractive enough that enough people bought the phone to cause that shift in the larger vendor/carrier relationships. Without that shift, you would have iPhones , Blackberries, and junk. (Having owned "top" models in the "junk" category, I can most certainly attest that in comparison to today's phones, those phones were barely adequate as phones, much less anything else.)

What I'm saying (or trying to say) has little to do with the topic on hand to be honest. I'm not aiming to critique apple. I'm aiming to expose the chaotic nature of the market. Humans like narratives along with well defined cause and effect. Chaotic systems don't really possess such things. The best we can really say about anything is that it happened at all. Why it happened, not so much. If we could look back and say definitively why something happened, then we should be able to look forward and say something definitively will happen, but we cannot. So based on this I maintain that the original statement of yours I responded to (regarding nothing prior to apple's products taking the market over by storm) is fatuous. Particularly as you are so specific in the qualities the market killers need possess and may as well be asking for an example of somebody making the iPhone and iPad before apple did. Other than that I fully agree with everything else you have written although elements of it are flawed as outlined above. I would add that while I concede that it is oftentimes useful or even necessary to oversimplify things due to the limitations of the human mind, it's as well to be aware that you are oversimplifying things.

I was going to edit out some of that, and realized I needed to leave it as a whole for my purposes. First, yes, I agree that markets appear chaotic, and may even be so, I cannot say with certainty that they are, since that would be similar to attempting to prove a negative (no god, no (intelligent) life in universe, etc). From there, if you'll note my original post, I made some rather very simple statements, with only a single quality listed in addition to type of device: a touchscreen phone, with the implication of a touchscreen smartphone. The tablet just had to "be" and take marketshare. I'm not sure how you derived "are so specific in the qualities the market killer need possess" from that, nor how my statements were fatuous as they are merely observations of history in statement form, no more, no less.

For the simple: Show me another smartphone prior to the iPhone, that has as much marketshare. Or, show me one that is not a copy that came after and took that marketshare. The Samsung Galaxy SIII doesn't count, since it was enough of a clone of the iPhone hardware/software that even Google stated in an email to Samsung that they should modify their offering. I'd say that makes Samsung a copier, not an innovator, no matter how successful. I may soon get my hands on a Galaxy SIII for dev purposes, so I'll hopefully have first hand experience with it soon.

Re:It's very possible

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And that is why gestures will replace touchscreens, mice, and keyboards for human input within a generation.

Re:It's very possible

[virg_mattes]

The flip side is that it takes a year for a keyboard to get bad enough to warrant replacing, and it requires almost no cleaning at all in that time (slapdash cleaning once a week is more than most people bother with), where cleaning a touch screen is an almost daily affair. Add to that the fact that a grubby keyboard doesn't interfere with reading what's on the screen and the crud level just doesn't rise into awareness the same way.

Virg

Re:It's very possible

[Dogtanian]

We're getting way into weird territory here

Not at all. Someone made an obviously-exaggerated joke ("all 13 geeks who bought them love them!") that almost (*) no-one would actually believe was meant literally.

You took it literally in a spectacularly lame attempt at point scoring.. Er.... that's it. The only "weird" bit is figuring out who you were trying to fool with this nonsense. :-)

(*) Which brings us on to...

some guy posted a blatant lie, joke or not now Dogtanian is calling me autistic for suggesting no citation is needed

Not really. What I said was that it was so obvious a joke that only someone with an autism-related disorder could (in good faith) claim to have taken it literally.

In your case, it's far more plausible that you were just bulls******g.

Re:It's very possible

[kupe]

After all, touchscreen computers like HP's Touchsmart series have absolutely dominated the marketplace since their introduction 5 years ago, said nobody ... ever.

Re:It's very possible

[the Gray Mouser]

If you think ALL it is is a thin sheen of snot, then you're the one in denial.

Unnecessary validation: I'm a parent too :)

Re:It's very possible

[badkarmadayaccount]

Resistive screens, low battery life, sucky touch to pointer mapping. Convertible laptop form factor is the only thing they got right. Oh, and lets not talk about price...

Re:It's very possible

[gregorthebigmac]

Care to share a source on that? I've been searching high and low for an Android OS that will run on my Dell Latitude ST Tablet (runs on an Intel Atom), and I came up dry. I've been wanting to dual-boot win7 and Android on it, but so far I can't find an Android OS that will run on it.

Re:It's very possible

[guruevi]

The only thing that changed with their current iteration is the resistive screen, the rest remains the same.

Re:It's very possible

[badkarmadayaccount]

Bigger batteries are more realistic, and the pointer mapping is patchable software. One can hope.

Um, have you used OSX recently?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a ton of stuff that's basically useless in a non-touch environment (Launchpad, I'm looking at you). It's obvious Apple is planning for it eventually.

Re:Um, have you used OSX recently?

[Psyborgue]

I think Apple was more testing the waters -- seeing how many people would use it, and perhaps trolling Microsoft into making a gigantic tactical mistake. What Apple didn't do what force everybody to use Launchpad. Given that nobody is going around saying how much they particularly love the feature, I doubt Apple will force it on everybody. Then again, Steve is dead.

Re:Um, have you used OSX recently?

[Desler]

How is Launchpad useless without a touch environment? It's quite awesome to use with the trackpad.

Re:Um, have you used OSX recently?

[toriver]

Well, the change was to match touch movements on the trackpad (the large accessory one at least). But it was easy to revert.

Re:Um, have you used OSX recently?

[Dynedain]

Yet they disabled the age-old shortcut command-shift-a, which brought up the Applications folder in the Finder. I used to use that because you could key-type the first few letters to find the app. They killed it.

However, 10.7 does add a keyboard search to the launchpad which 10.6 doesn't have. Makes launching apps about as fast as the old way.

Re:Um, have you used OSX recently?

[Psyborgue]

Personally I've bee using spotlight to launch apps since the feature was released. Command + space then "ter" and enter launches terminal, for example. Didn't know there was a shortcut to the apps folder, but then again, I've only been using mac is since 10.3.

Re:Um, have you used OSX recently?

[Pope]

Their touch interface in all those cases are their multi-touch trackpads. No touchscreen needed.

Seriously?

[dinfinity]

" I'm not going to touch-type 70 words per minute on a touchscreen keyboard. But when I'm in the cramped quarters of a train, plane, or standing in a line — say, when the only thing standing between a critical email and its recipient is a few dozen words and a tap of the button marked "Send" — I can grab that Windows 8 laptop by its hinged section, one hand on either side of the screen, and tap out that message with my thumbs."

You have to be kidding me. That is the most ridiculous way to type anything on a laptop. Ever.

Re:Seriously?

[lightknight]

Indeed. Think about it -> even in economy class on planes, you have more than enough room for a regular laptop.

I can, however, think of one place where a tablet would work better than a laptop, and that's on a peak SEPTA train. Of course, that's also the kind of train where you probably wouldn't want to take out the tablet, for fear of someone spotting an easy mark.

Re:Seriously?

[MikeBabcock]

I'm confused about this whole article at some level. I love my Transformer Prime (Android tablet with docking keyboard) but when I'm using it in a primarily touch-based fashion, I disconnect the keyboard because its in the way.

Re:Seriously?

[pushing-robot]

Not exactly a compelling use case, indeed.

On the other hand, while typing I've noticed it's often faster to quickly jab buttons or perform gestures on the screen than to reach down and use a trackpad.

I agree that most screens will be touch screens...eventually. In the same way that most televisions will be 3D...eventually. It's still primarily a gimmick at this point, but it has some use. As the price goes down and the practical downsides are slowly engineered away, it will become a standard feature and applications will evolve to better use it.

(p.s. I don't own a touch screen laptop, but I do have an iPad with keyboard which works the same way...and, ironically, predates modern touch screen laptops.)

Re:Seriously?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Not exactly a compelling use case, indeed.

On the other hand, while typing I've noticed it's often faster to quickly jab buttons or perform gestures on the screen than to reach down and use a trackpad.

I agree that most screens will be touch screens...eventually. In the same way that most televisions will be 3D...eventually. It's still primarily a gimmick at this point, but it has some use. As the price goes down and the practical downsides are slowly engineered away, it will become a standard feature and applications will evolve to better use it.

(p.s. I don't own a touch screen laptop, but I do have an iPad with keyboard which works the same way...and, ironically, predates modern touch screen laptops.)

I think my aversion to the idea is the fact that currently most software makers are demonstrating that they have no sense of moderation when it comes to touchscreens. Almost simultaneously the Ubuntu and Gnome people, Microsoft - hell, everybody - decided that touch must be everywhere! and started running roughshed over their interfaces to force it into every nook and cranny, no matter inappropriate.

So I'm not really expecting the user experience to improve when this happens - instead I'm expecting to find my interface options to lose customizability and basic features.

Re:Seriously?

[lightknight]

Nonsense. My family can't stop dropping hints that I need to lose some weight, that they'd help me pick out a diet, or go 'walking' with me. I do, however, have the advantage of height (tall) and body build (broad shoulders), which prevents me from being thrown into any number of less favourable categories.

Re:Seriously?

[Darinbob]

On a plane the last thing I want to do is work. I'd rather just laugh at all the others who are working instead of using a legitimate excuse not to.

Re:Seriously?

[Seumas]

Put it on YOUR fat idiot!

Re:Seriously?

[camperdave]

I don't know what kind of planes you've been on, but the ones I've been on, to angle the screen properly, you have to have the laptop half off of the front end of the tray table.

Re:Seriously?

[jovius]

Well, the real problem is not how you use the device but the fact that it's felt obligated to use one in an overcrowded space and in a hurry.

Re:Seriously?

[jittles]

You must be short. Us tall bastards can barely even see the screen the viewing angle is so sharp on a plane. No. I bring my tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard when I fly. I put the tablet on the tray table and the keyboard on my lap and write emails, documents, or whatever other work I need to do. The only thing I don't do is code.

Re:Seriously?

[stephanruby]

" I'm not going to touch-type 70 words per minute on a touchscreen keyboard. But when I'm in the cramped quarters of a train, plane, or standing in a line — say, when the only thing standing between a critical email and its recipient is a few dozen words and a tap of the button marked "Send" — I can grab that Windows 8 laptop by its hinged section, one hand on either side of the screen, and tap out that message with my thumbs."

You have to be kidding me. That is the most ridiculous way to type anything on a laptop. Ever.

It's not that ridiculous. I've typed on my old Galaxy 10.1 that way.

That being said, if I'm really on a train, or in line somewhere. I'll often send my email directly from my phone, even if I have my tablet with me.

With my phone, I can easily type with one hand, and if the train is moving, hold onto something with my second hand. Plus, if I'm doing my email, I'd rather do it on my phone instead of a tablet because the people standing/sitting next to me don't get to see as much of my emails as they would see if I had them on my tablet.

Re:Seriously?

[dinfinity]

It's not that ridiculous. I've typed on my old Galaxy 10.1 that way.

Which is a laptop, right?
That would make your comment very relevant.

Re:Seriously?

[gl4ss]

Indeed. Think about it -> even in economy class on planes, you have more than enough room for a regular laptop.

you must be skinny. Us fat bastards find economy seating inadequate for comfortable laptop usage.

well, you'd find it impossible to use it sitting on a sofa too then. if you can get the tray down, you can use a laptop there. if you can't, maybe you'll get skinnier since you can't get the food and soda on the tray either.

Re:Seriously?

[kannibal_klown]

Agreed.
You have the width, and you "theoretically" have the depth.

But considering the chair in front of you is usually reclined a little, you're not going to have enough room to really flip the screen far enough back (so it's pointing up a little) so you can see it well.

Maybe with a small laptop (11" / 13") and if the guy isn't reclining. But fully reclined, the top of the seat in front of you is at the same X/Y coordinates as the edge of your seat... just 2'-3' higher.

Steve Jobs didn't write the BIBLE

[Anonymous Coward]

He could be wrong, and he could change his mind.

He's not Yahweh - think of him as KRS-ONE - full of contradictions but usually miles ahead of the competition.

Re:Steve Jobs didn't write the BIBLE

[TWX]

No, but he's the principal subject of The Book of Jobs...

The Book of Jobs
The "King Steve" translation

In the beginning, Intel created the microprocessor. And the microprocessor was without form or function, and hobbyists lay across the Valley of Silicon. And the brewers said, "Let there be bytes," and there were bytes. And the evening and the morning were the first wave.

Now Jobs was a man of ambition, and he walked in the way of Technology. And it came to pass that he was in the garden, and there he met with the Wozniak. And the Wozniak said, "Come, let us eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of ones and zeros." But they found the tree was barren of fruit, so Jobs and Wozniak fashioned an Apple that others who came looking for the tree might want to buy.

Now many tasted of the Apple and saw that it was good, and Jobs grew most prosperous. And he fashioned a new apple, which he called Mac, because its pictures were most sweet and because it attracted mice. And there was great rejoicing throughout the Valley of Silicon, and the people clicked their icons and waited for the floppy drive to respond.

The Apple grew large and strong, and Jobs proclaimed himself emperor. And Jobs hired a Sculley to help him care for the garden. And the Sculley brought together the holders of stock and he said unto them, "Verily, this Jobs understandeth not how a major corporation maketh its bread by the sweat of others' brows. So let us bring forth a great flood of water that will rain for forty ticks and forty clock cycles, and let us rid ourselves of him." And the holders of stock cried, "Hosanna!"

PROPHET AND LOSS

So Jobs was cast forth into the wilderness. There he wandered for many years until he dropped down onto his knees, weak with boredom. And he cried out, "Oh, Great CPU, do not forsake me. I have followed in your footsteps since teletypes roamed the Earth, and it hath rewarded me not--except in fame and fortune. Please, Oh Calculating One, give thy humble servant a sign of what to do next."

And lo, the last word he spoke rang in Jobs' ear. And Jobs understood that he must next build a NeXT.

And Jobs built his NeXT of black, and it was one cubit long by one cubit wide by one cubit tall, making it a cubit cubed. And to operate the system he hired many Eunuchs.

So it came to pass that the NeXT was at last ready, and Jobs showed it to the multitudes. And the multitudes were sore impressed by the NeXT's greatness, and they cried hosannas out loud and fell down on their knees and sang songs of praise to Jobs. Then they pulled out their cards of credit and purchased thus great numbers of computers running Windows.

And Jobs, most puzzled by the multitudes, cried out, "I shall stop making my NeXTs of black, and I shall sell the labor of my Eunuchs to those whose machines run Windows." But he did not realize many men were made frightened by Eunuchs, and many women liked them not.

Then Jobs did grow bored of the Valley, and he wandered out into the Point of Richmond, where he looked with envy to the Land of the Holly Wood. And he made for himself a Pixar, or at least he paid others to make it for him. And he said, "If the people will not buy my toys, then I shall tell a story of them and win great Oscar."

THE PRODIGAL FUN

Now it came to pass that as man did buy of machines that ran Windows, the Apple began to shrivel. And as it shriveled, those who holdeth stock did demand the head of the Sculley. And the Sculley was cast out into the wilderness, with naught to keep him warm save a parachute of gold.

But the Apple found no happiness still. For although the Apple's followers did proclaim their love daily and most annoyingly, they continued to leap through Windows in great numbers.

So the holders of stock were filled with great anxiety, and they gnashed their teeth and swore great oaths. And they asked many men of White to fill the sandals left by Jobs and th

Jobs

[girlintraining]

"Don't believe everything Steve Jobs and Tim Cook tell you, advises The Verge's Sean Hollister.

Interviewer: "Hey Steve, what do you think about Touchscreen laptops?"
Steve:
Interviewer: "That's amazing Steve. How long do you think before they go on sale?"
Steve:
Interviewer: "Steve, a lot of people seem to think you're wrong. Care to comment?"
Steve:
Interviewer: "Well, that's it for today! Tune in again tomorrow when we ask Abraham Lincoln what he thought about the play he went to!"

Re:Jobs

[kestasjk]

It's funny because he's dead.. *g*

Re:Jobs

[Paradise Pete]

Tune in again tomorrow when we ask Abraham Lincoln what he thought about the play he went to!"

"It was shorter than I expected and I didn't care for the surprise ending. Was that guy even anywhere *in* the play earlier?"

Re:Jobs

[kootsoop]

Is that you, Invisible Steve?!?!

Re:Jobs

[DiEx-15]

"Don't believe everything Steve Jobs and Tim Cook tell you, advises The Verge's Sean Hollister.

Interviewer: "Hey Steve, what do you think about Touchscreen laptops?" Steve: Interviewer: "That's amazing Steve. How long do you think before they go on sale?" Steve: Interviewer: "Steve, a lot of people seem to think you're wrong. Care to comment?" Steve: Interviewer: "Well, that's it for today! Tune in again tomorrow when we ask Abraham Lincoln what he thought about the play he went to!"

I can bet that interview would stink.

Really?

[bmo]

Touchscreens have been around for decades. If pointing your arm at a vertical surface was such a hot idea for 8 hours a day, why have we not seen touchscreens being used everywhere for the last 30 years? NEC had an excellent touchscreen in the mid 80s. This isn't new technology and writing articles presenting it as new tech doesn't make it new.

Gorilla arm exists. Fatigue exists. Keyboards and other stuff are better input devices than touchscreens and probably always will be, except for the times you *can't* have a keyboard or mouse/tablet/trackball/etc., like a factory floor, restaurant, bar, hospital cart in sugery, etc, where dirt, grime, bodily fluids are a threat to operation, or where ease of portability trumps having a better input device, like tablets or phones (styluses are passe).

If touch was so superior for every day use, we'd already be using it.

--
BMO

Re:Really?

[Z80xxc!]

This is slashdot, so I can forgive you for not reading the article, but for your convenience I'll provide the relevant excerpt here:

When Steve Jobs decried touchscreen laptops in 2010, he was merely relaying the common wisdom of decades of user experience research into "gorilla arm syndrome." Simply put, it's the idea that if you hold out your arm in front of a touchscreen for an extended period of time, it's not going to be particularly comfortable. However, that assumes an awful lot — what if you're not holding your arms out in space waiting to touch things, but resting them comfortably on a keyboard?

We've been looking at this all wrong. A touchscreen isn't a replacement for a keyboard or mouse, it's a complement. If I want to type things on my laptop and have enough room to comfortably open that clamshell and stretch out my arms, the keyboard's still my best bet. I'm not going to touch-type 70 words per minute on a touchscreen keyboard. But when I'm in the cramped quarters of a train, plane, or standing in a line — say, when the only thing standing between a critical email and its recipient is a few dozen words and a tap of the button marked "Send" — I can grab that Windows 8 laptop by its hinged section, one hand on either side of the screen, and tap out that message with my thumbs.

You're issuing a false dilemma by saying that it's all touch or all keyboard/mouse. It can be both, and that's the point of the article. Keyboards are usually better for typing, but using a mouse isn't always easier for pointing, and sometimes using a keyboard isn't convenient. Having touch, mouse, and keyboard all available makes sense, because you can use whichever is best for the situation you're in.

Re:Really?

[lightknight]

Well, it's easy to understand why touch surfaces are now the hotness -> the people promoting them need something, anything to entice customers to buy their latest product; and the people promoting them are not the kinds of people who need to use them for long periods of time to create content.

Re:Really?

[bmo]

Where did I introduce the false dichotomy?

I didn't say that touch is bad. I said it has its place. We could have been using touch in conjunction with keyboards, mice, and other input devices on office desktops for 30 years or more (Touchscreens actually go back a decade or so before that, and light pens even before that), but we haven't. There was no explosion of touch and light pens on the desktop. And as soon as the mouse showed up in large numbers, light pens pretty much disappeared, with LCD display technology putting the final nail in the light-pen coffin.

Because people actually dislike having to poke at a vertical surface all stupid day.

As the guy up in the thread there said, it's not because of Apple and Jobs that we hate touch on vertical surfaces, the hate goes back *much* farther than that.

--
BMO

Re:Really?

[donweel]

I don't remember NEC but Hewlett Packard had an IBM compatible that had a touchscreen monitor. I believe was around 1980, it used infra red beam grid. It did not sell. Lets face it taking your hand off the keyboard is non productive. At least the mouse is a shorter distance for your hand. If you are a power user you are going to use a bunch of shell scripts with short names and keyboard macros.

Re:Really?

[Belial6]

Complaints about gorilla arm with touch screens come from the same type of people who complain that their wrist gets tired trying to click out a report by using their mouse to click on a virtual keyboard.

Re:Really?

[Missing.Matter]

We could have been using touch in conjunction with keyboards, mice, and other input devices on office desktops for 30 years or more (Touchscreens actually go back a decade or so before that, and light pens even before that), but we haven't.

I think there are many reasons for this... foremost, interface design was focused around adoption of the mouse, which was also met with much criticism when it was introduced in a world of keyboard-centric software. But also, most touchscreens were not as accurate as they are today, and the ones that were as accurate were prohibitively expensive. It wasn't until the 2000s that we got really good mass-market capacitive multi touch displays.

Because people actually dislike having to poke at a vertical surface all stupid day.

You're still not getting it. It's not poking at the screen all day: it's poking at the screen where it makes sense and where/when touch is more convenient. Multi-touch interfaces have a real advantage that cannot be replicated with mouse and keyboard (i.e. to manipulate more than one object at a time). To dismiss this outright seems like dismissing the mouse in the 80s.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Plato "learning system" that was around at Illinois and other schools in the 70's/80's was touch screen with keyboard, and if you had to do more than an hour with it, it was tiring. Fine for one class' lab, but awful if you had to spend an entire night on it. Of course today's touch screens and UI designs are probably better, but there are thousands of people who got to experience gorilla arm in a production environment, many of whom went on to careers in silicon valley, and oddly the industry didn't jump on touch technology when that generation took over.

Re:Really?

[Z80xxc!]

As the guy below me says: you're still not getting it. The article isn't saying that people poke at a vertical surface all stupid day. It's saying that people type on a keyboard all day, and occasionally reach up to poke at something when it's convenient. (And, when it's not convenient to type, they can poke some more. And then go right back to typing when it's more convenient to do so again.)

You can hate on it all you want, and say that the base technology has been around a long time, but until you actually use the new technology for more than a few hours, it would seem that your opinion is based entirely on speculation and outdated experience. A 1980's touch screen is not the same as a 2012 touch screen.

Re:Really?

[Z80xxc!]

The touch screen is a compromise that doesn't work as well as a keyboard, or a mouse, but is a passable replacement for either or both in those times you don't have them. It is sure as hell not a compliment to them, because if you have a keyboard and mouse, you never use the touch screen.

A statement that is directly refuted by the experience of the author and others who've actually used modern touch devices. Also, isn't half the point of having a touch/type/mouse device that you can also use the touchscreen in those situations where using a keyboard or mouse is impractical, but have them available for when they are convenient?

Re:Really?

[bmo]

> which was also met with much criticism when it was introduced in a world of keyboard-centric software.

You know, I lived through that era and the era before that (the one where there were no microcomputers) and i knew of nobody who criticized the mouse.

I *did* know a lot of people who criticized the Macintosh for lacking a command line altogether, though, and the Lisa for being the expensive and slow machine it was, with rectangular pixels and the really weird floppies. I think you're confusing things. (Yes, the Lisa was slow. We had a later one in an office with the 3.5 inch floppies that ran our COGO program. You started it up and went to go make coffee. When you had coffee all set up, the machine was booted).

> It's not poking at the screen all day: it's poking at the screen where it makes sense and where/when touch is more convenient.

I am not some kid who has only known one kind of computer type through my life. My first experience with a computer was sitting at a paper TTY at the University of RI playing with my dad's homework running on the IBM 370. I have seen computers large and small and input methods from card stacks to the most frou-frou GUI that the industry has seen. I have farted around with 8 since the Dev Preview, within hours of its release. It's *not* convenient to be reaching up to touch the screen when you're sitting at a desk. It simply isn't. It's klunky.

As the size and distance of the screen and verticality increases, the klunkier it becomes. Orientation means something. Back before the days of CAD, drawing boards were canted at around 20-45 degrees. Nobody draws on a vertical surface. Touching a vertical surface to make sweeping gestures (akin to drawing) is a pain in the ass. Imagine an E size screen, vertically in front of you (because displays have been getting larger over time, not smaller) and you're required to touch the upper right or upper left or top part of the screen as 8 requires you to do so in metro mode.

Don't BS me.

Touch has its place. Trying to shoehorn it onto the desktop and laptop is one of the most misguided things I've ever seen, and then to call people who have tried it and criticize it based on their direct experience as "uninformed" at the very least, well, I have not enough middle fingers.

--
BMO

Re:Really?

[bmo]

Oh yeah, I forgot...

>capacitive touch

Capacitive touch was mentioned in the Dynabook paper. Yes, that one. Capacitive touch predates resistive.

Also, NEC had a touchscreen that was neither resisitive nor capacitive. It had a grid of IR LEDs and photodiodes at the edges of the screen and detected where your finger was by what photodiode you blocked. It never ever had to be calibrated. It was nearly indestructable, too.

--
BMO

Re:Really?

[jbolden]

Inexpensive capacitive touch screens are new. Resistive touch screens are older. Lots of technologies require upgrades before they go mainstream. But frankly resistive was rather excellent, remember all the people using Palm?

Re:Really?

[bmo]

It's too bad you posted as AC. This needs more visibility.

--
BMO

Re:Really?

[dbIII]

But also, most touchscreens were not as accurate as they are today

Wrong, a light pen gets you down to the pixel and resisitive screens have been about the same since they were invented - the things they were developed from were the old drawing board resistive tables that people were using to digitize drawings at very high degrees of accuracy. Shifting the goalposts to a type of touchscreen that was recently introduced and initially was less viable than existing touchscreens seems to be a bit of a dishonest way to find an irrelevant excuse than any honest sort of answer.
I think it will be like the DS where a big pile of the inital games apparently relied on the stylus but eventually the UI shifted more back towards the buttons, or the terminal form entry back in the day where people tabbed to the items instead of pointing at the screen with their light pen.

Re:Really?

[dbIII]

You started it up and went to go make coffee. When you had coffee all set up, the machine was booted).

Some things never change. Give a user a Win7 machine booting off a fast SSD and within a couple of weeks they'll have so much crap happening on startup that it takes just as long.

Re:Really?

[jafac]

Personally - this idea terrifies me.

I generally don't like User Interfaces that require BOTH the use of Keyboard and Mouse (ie. you must switch back and forth - as in, you enter data via keyboard, and can't continue to navigate with the keyboard).

I fear that adding touchscreens will further exacerbate LAZY UI design, and we're going to be forced to not only have computers that MUST have all three input methods (and drivers), but we'll be forced to USE them for everything.

This is going to be worse than gorilla-arm-syndrome. I guarantee it.

Re:Really?

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I agree that touch has its place. And I agree that for me the desktop isn't it. My mouse is still king there. But there is a very big place for touch on a laptop because the laptop is used in a wide range of ergonomic positions. There are lots and lots of times when a dialog pops up and it's just easier to reach out and touch the button than use the trackpad to maneuver the cursor to the right place and click the button. Also, web browsing is just so much more natural with touch.

Re:Really?

[Patch86]

Touch screens aren't free, in money terms. One of the premises of TFA is that "all laptops will have a touch screen one day". While it is certainly true that there's no harm in having every type of input available, do I really want to pay extra, have a sluightly heavier device with slightly lower battery life, so that it can have something that isn't relevant to my main use cases?

iPads and other tablets have proved that there's a market for devices which don't have the kitchen sink. The iPad has one button, one connector, no ethernet, no removable batteries or SD cards. In exchange it gets to be cheaper, thinner, etc. While it's true that it'd be great to have everything "just in case", Apple have proved that people are happy to buy a device that only has what is relevant to their use cases.

If my Thinkpad for work had a touchscreen, I wouldn't use it but barely at all. I certainly don't miss not having one. So if including one made the device less good in other ways, including one would be a retrograde step for me.

Re:Really?

[vakuona]

I am trying to imagine the scenarios the author refers to on a plane, and I can't for the life of me figure out why it is better to use a touch screen.

Once you have opened the laptop, you have a full keyboard and pointing device right there, so you can use that. Unless you have a super heavy laptop, or are particularly weak, using the keyboard and touchpad seems to be quicker and more convenient. In particular, using a touchscreen while standing up and holding it in your hands is more difficult because of the lack of tactile feedback, unless you have extremely steady hands (Have you ever tried to type on a smartphone keyboard with one hand while holding it with another?).

It feels gimmicky. Touch is very good for browsing the user interface, and I can agree that a vertical screen some distance away from you is not the best place to have a touch screen.

Re:Really?

[Uberbah]

As the guy below me says: you're still not getting it.

Pot.

It's saying that people type on a keyboard all day, and occasionally reach up to poke at something when it's convenient.

And if that was going to be a popular feature, it would have taken off already under the previous 30+ years we've had touch screens. Like bmo has said four or five times now.

Re:Really?

[VoidEngineer]

Here's the problem with your argument: Chalkboards. And whiteboards.

As I recall, chalkboards and whiteboards have been used everywhere for the last 30 years. The problem hasn't been vertical surfaces, gorilla arm, fatigue, and what not. Teachers and other professions deal with those issues all the time. The issue has been processing power, form factor, and ergonomics. But not ergonomics in the gorilla arm sense. Ergonomics in the sense of requiring specialized pens that can't be easily replaced, and requires exotic device drivers and software.

Re:Really?

[VoidEngineer]

Teachers don't seem to have a problem with whiteboards and chalkboards. Painters who use easels don't seem to have problem working on vertical surfaces. The problem isn't with the vertical surface. The problem is entirely related to manufacturing and design of the technology. Like requiring pens, for example. Or not having multi-touch capabilities (major ergonomic feature there - being able to use gestures - that wasn't present in earlier touchscreen form factors, due to manufacturing and programming challenges).

Re:Really?

[bar-agent]

The man's got a 5-digit user ID. You hooligans better sit up straight and pay attention.

Re:Really?

[Missing.Matter]

Imagine an E size screen, vertically in front of you (because displays have been getting larger over time, not smaller) and you're required to touch the upper right or upper left or top part of the screen as 8 requires you to do so in metro mode.

Seriously, this is the THIRD time it's been explained to you that this is not an all or nothing. If you want to interact with a portion of the interface that is inconvenient to do so with touch, simply do so with an alternative input method like mouse. How are you not getting this?

Nobody draws on a vertical surface. Touching a vertical surface to make sweeping gestures (akin to drawing) is a pain in the ass

I think artists and teachers would disagree with you thoroughly. As far as laptops go the displays are not vertical, and adjustable. I write on my tablet pc screen all the time to fill out forms and do drawing in photoshop.

Anyway, I didn't call you "uninformed" so I don't know why you're quoting me as if I did, but I do think you haven't encountered any instances in your life/work where touch is more convenient than mouse/keyboard in the applications you use. I also think unilaterally calling touch on laptops "misguided" based on your own limited experience is in itself misguided. Myself, the author of this story, and many other commentors of this story are direct evidence that refute your position that touch on laptops is not useful.

Re:Really?

[KiloByte]

If I had to click out a report on a virtual keyboard, I'd complain too. And touchscreens are not any better than that.

Re:Really?

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Millions of iPad owners say you're wrong.

Re:Really?

[RazorSharp]

There are lots and lots of times when a dialog pops up and it's just easier to reach out and touch the button than use the trackpad to maneuver the cursor to the right place and click the button.

ENTER

COMMAND+W

ESC

Are you suggesting I reach past my keyboard, where my hands probably already are, to touch the screen? And this is somehow supposed to save me time and effort? And keep my screen clean?

The fact is that it's not easier to just touch the screen. There are multiple ways to already deal with this issue and they work better.

Re:Really?

[RazorSharp]

But no one has provided an example of when this action actually is more convenient. Gestures can be done on a trackpad (hello MacBook), all other forms of input can be done with the trackpad/keyboard.

To me the touchscreen laptop is like a car that comes with a joystick that's on the dash above the steering wheel. You can use it to do the things the steering wheel does, but the steering wheel does a better job and is conveniently placed. The joystick is just added costs and has the potential to do bad things when brushed up against unintentionally.

Re:Really?

[kokako]

But that is just not true. I am a professor and very much dislike to write on a whiteboard for more than a few minutes at a time (and even more on a blackboard, with greater resistance). It is extremely tiring to write in this position where the writing surface is parallel to the body, as compared to writing on a piece of paper flat on a desk at 90 degrees or so. I don't mind writing a few words, figures or references on the whiteboard, but if I have any substantive material to convey visually to my students I will use a slide. A symptom of the problem is how difficult it is to write legibly on a whiteboard as compared to on paper. I'm not saying it's impossible; I'm not saying it is not practical. Of course it is useful to be able to write notes up on a board. But the main reason classrooms have whiteboards is not because it is easy to write on them, it is so that information can be conveyed to an audience of several individuals at one time. It is because it is easier to VIEW the information presented in this way, and not to facilitate writing in any way at all. This said, I haven't used a laptop with a touch screen, let alone a desktop monitor. But the tablet use case is much more like writing on paper where, again, the screen is at 90 degrees to the body. That seems ergonomically a more natural position requiring little muscle strain. Touch screens on laptops and desktops seem like a gimmick to me. I don't get it, sorry.

Re:Really?

[Belial6]

Only if you are trying to use the touch screen as a virtual keyboard. Don't do that! Use pencils, but don't poke them in your eye. Play with a basket ball, but don't use it as a suppository. Use a touch screen, but don't try to type on it.

Re:Really?

[caywen]

Don't BS us, either. Metro mode doesn't require you to touch the upper right or left of the screen. Swipe in from left - lower left works just as well. Swipe in from right - lower right works as well, and all the "charms" are centered vertically. The only top-gesture that is required is used to close apps, which is not a common use case since background apps are suspended.

If you're talking about apps with UI elements on the upper left or right, then that's pretty much any app on any platform, touch or non-touch.

Re:Really?

[caywen]

I invoke the "rewind to 1985, replace 'touchscreen' with 'mouse', and reread this response argument.

Re:Really?

[caywen]

No idea what his hate is you're talking about. Most touchscreen laptops I've seen have been oriented at an angle. Never all-in-ones can angle further down. Newer laptops can swivel open 180 or even 360 degrees (e.g. Yoga). In other words, the hardware is evolving towards making the touchscreen work well. Maybe it's not there, yet, but it will be. My mouse in 1990 was pretty crappy compared to what I use today. So was my monitor. Sadly, however, my keyboard back then was to die for.

Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[ModernGeek]

Microsoft never ceases to amaze me at their skill in manipulating the press, reviewers of tech, and a certain group of power users into pushing all of this crap down our throats. I take the word of the Independent Software Vendors that have chastised Windows 8 time and time again better than a bunch of pundits working for a bunch of sell-out bloggers and news agencies. Microsoft is a dying empire, with Windows 2000/Office 2000 being it's peak. Ever since then it's been down hill with the occasional plateau. I'm just waiting for someone else to come in and do better. Right now if you're looking to build a whitebox machine and load it up with the latest and greatest, you're going to be full of disappointment.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[lightknight]

MS was doing fine with Windows 7, but their fear is now controlling them. They saw Apple create a new market, one which should have been MS's; would have been, had they only refined the technology. Now they're freaking out, because Ballmer thinks he is having a B. Gates moment -> that moment when Gates realized his company was going to be side-swiped by the internet, and needed to change their strategy to survive; he is not, he is actually having a Marketing moment, similar to a mid-life crisis, when you are worried that because you are not considered the industry darling, you must be doing something wrong, so you start doing something, anything, to get some attention to validate your self-worth. It's the same thing that movie stars / record artists go through after they hit their 'peak'; they may still be on top, but since they measure themselves by relative or dynamic amounts (delta), as opposed to absolute amounts, a lack of change seems like they are failing.

If MS wants a new technology to pioneer, let them pair up with John Romero (or whoever it is) that is working on a new virtual glove interface. That's something that Apple hasn't touched yet, and something which even I am interested in. Tactile (smart metal, using a grid in the palm) feedback gloves, using a Bluetooth connection in each glove, to send and receive 3D information, with a mini-USB cable for charging. Like John, I am disturbed at the lack of progress in this realm, and have been considering building a prototype (I have been designing one) since the price for the components has dropped. This is where MS should be looking, especially since one of ID's people is looking into it. Of course, the question will be, if they do pioneer it, can they make a glove that 1.) works well, 2.) is easy to program for, 3.) integrates into Windows / Office, and 4.) is aesthetically pleasing to look at (the Hipster factor / Apple factor). Or will they wait for Apple to adopt it first, before considering it?

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[Man On Pink Corner]

It's the same thing that movie stars / record artists go through after they hit their 'peak'; they may still be on top, but since they measure themselves by relative or dynamic amounts (delta), as opposed to absolute amounts, a lack of change seems like they are failing.

Clearly Ballmer's next step should be to hire some storyboard consultants and videographers, and leak a sex tape.

It will probably look better than Windows 8.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[Keen Anthony]

I feel this has less to do with Microsoft and more to do with The Verge. Reading the article again, it spends as much time talking about Apple as it does talking about Windows 8 not sucking. Hollister makes a point to mention that Apple did not invent the first MP3 player or the first touchscreen smartphone, or the first graphical user interface, or the first solid state drive in a laptop. As an Apple fan myself, my gut instinct it to just dismiss the statement as typical of Apple haters that sell the fictitious storyline that Apple and Apple's fans claim invention above all else as opposed to taking existing things that aren't being used right and then making them work seamlessly. Then, Hollister immediately follows by pointing out that Apple likes to wait for a technology to mature, then "swoop" in and perfect then popularize it. Putting aside the fact that I've never seen mature MP3 players, GUIs, or touchscreen smartphones prior to Apple getting involved, the writing is designed to generate talk which, in turn, generates clicks.

The article is garbage. It's premise about touchpad laptops not sucking despite what Steve Jobs said isn't even accurate in context. Touch screens have existed for years. Anyone working at a steakhouse now could have pointed that out. Jobs' problem with touchpad laptops in 2010 was that 2010 era laptops were loud, hot, and big. Hand-writing recognition sucked. Jobs was correct. All those Windows powered touch screen laptops did suck, and they didn't want to be used vertically. Almost three years later, things have changed. We have Surface, Transformer, and ultrabook laptops, and higher pixel density screens. So no, NOT surprisingly touch screen laptops don't suck. That said, about the only use I have for a touch screen ultrabook type laptop is by my beside as a kind of info kiosk and Skype interface for when I'm on the road. Anywhere else where I want a laptop, I can use a real laptop with far better performance.

Hollister should have concluded with it a GOTO 10 statement. And as one person above already put it: cheetos. Cheetos are a reason touch screens suck and I don't want them on my laptops. As it is now, I'm constantly polishing my phone and iPad.

I wouldn't count out Microsoft yet. Surface and Windows Phone 8 are exciting. So Microsoft has to settle for being third in the mobile space for a while, so what? There's still Windows and Xbox. The people who use those products either love them or are in some way forced to use them.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[del_diablo]

Basically this.
Microsoft is a company thats history consists of unethical backstabbing, lack of polish and vaporware. Remember that dual tablet thingy that could have been awesome that disappered into thin air? Some of us sure do. All those amazing Tablets that more or less died because the interface for touch was awful? What sorts of devices that ran Windows CE? The default settings for Windows, and especially Windows update? Netscape? Vista and the OpenGL controversy? AppLocale still being a solution to a silly problem? The Xbox being competetive because its competing?

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[Anonymous Coward]

Reaching for ice pick to jam into brain to destroy all trace of the visual that's implied here.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[colinrichardday]

But I'd still prefer using a Windows 8 touch screen.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[lightknight]

Now there's a mental image I did not need.

Meh, with Ballmer, it will hopefully be something lighter -> did he recently get a new sports car? Is he trying to use the lingo / 'words of the younger crowd'? Is his new cellphone some horrible color not normally associated with a man his age (fusion pink, lots of glitter, IDK)? Has he suddenly tried to 'reinvent' himself with a new wardrobe? Has he suddenly changed the way he addresses people? And so on. Only people close to observe him will know definitively; but if it's the case, I'd recommend a sabbatical until he 'finds' himself, preferably on a tropical island, surrounded by scantily clad women, and copious amounts of cigars and alcohol.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[jbolden]

No 2000 was not the peak:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2009/7/30/1248970573155/Microsoft-chart-001.jpg

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[atlasdropperofworlds]

That idiot John Romero. He's making shitty casual games with a group of nitwits at Loot Drop. Perhaps you're thinking of that Canadian guy (article about the glove)

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[_xeno_]

I'm just waiting for someone else to come in and do better. Right now if you're looking to build a whitebox machine and load it up with the latest and greatest, you're going to be full of disappointment.

I dunno, I installed Windows 8 on my desktop computer, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Mind you, this is because my expectations for Windows 8 were so low that the fact that it isn't a complete disaster is pleasantly surprising. I mean, it only took two installs before trying to open "all apps" on the Start screen didn't crash everything. (Well, the second install was a "refresh," which is basically a complete reinstall under a different name.) And I only rarely have to log out and back in again to get things working.

I mean, all and all, Windows 8 isn't that bad. The upgrade process from Windows 7 doesn't work (hence the "refresh"), and the new Metro UI is buggy as hell, but if you entirely ignore Metro's existence and just focus on things like the reworked task manager...

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[jafac]

my experience with Windows 8 was okay as well.
As soon as I figured out how to dismiss the Metro screen. (heh), I actually really like the new copy dialog. (you know, when you're bulk-copying files from your other machine to the new one) - it actually shows you what the hell is going on. For the first time in Microsoft history, (and I'm talking about being a user since the DOS 2.0 days!) you can actually tell when a copy job is slowing down, what rate data's transferring, etc. It's nice. If I could transfer JUST this feature to Windows 7, there would be absolutely NO reason to upgrade AT ALL.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[future assassin]

If MS wants a new technology to pioneer, let them pair up with John Romero (or whoever it is) that is working on a new virtual glove interface.

Too late its already been done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93iDhnBcMGo

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[dbIII]

Putting aside the fact that I've never seen mature MP3 players

There were plenty. You are confusing the software on the personal computer that is used to put tracks on the mp3 player with the device. What made the iPod look "mature" was a 2nd or 3rd version of iTunes with Gracenote on a Mac putting tracks on the iPod. By then the device was solid state (just like some before the iPod) and USB (just like every other mp3 player before the iPod), so was starting to look as good as it's competitors on it's own merits, but it was really iTunes on a Mac that made it a mass market device.
I'll reserve comment on iTunes for MS Windows, I don't want to use so many four letter words that I'll have none left over for special occassions.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[Keen Anthony]

Maybe there were then, but I certainly wasn't thinking of desktop computer software. I had a slew of those earlier MP3 players (the devices). I hated every one of them. Somehow I never got around to buying any of the Creative ones, so maybe that would have swayed me. Admittedly, I was pretty biased against MP3 to begin with.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[dbIII]

My father still uses a little Benq 128MB with an LCD screen that I gave him back from before the iPod existed - a few spoken word radio podcasts fit so that's enough for a few hours. It's the size of a USB stick which makes it handy so still gets used at times even though I got him an iRiver mp3 with digital radio more recently.
I doubt that many of that first generation of firewire plus mechanical hard drive iPods are still in use. Once solid state storage exceeded what they had they became pointless things that needed frequent recharges, with a very difficult to replace battery and they communicate with what is now a rare interface.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[Tom]

Apple likes to wait for a technology to mature, then "swoop" in and perfect then popularize it.

They do. If you stay with "technology". Apple often comes in after the technology matured, but before there are mature products built on it - and provides them. Multitouch is a good example. It was invented elsewhere (there is an old TED talk that I think is the first public presentation of the tech), and some companies had products. One of them - TouchStream - was bought up by Apple and something like a year later we get the iPhone.

Re:Microsoft never ceases to amaze me

[Pope]

Solid state? Funny, my 5th generation iPad has a hard drive.

massive muscle build up

[Xicor]

holding your arm out for long periods of time causes a lot of strain on the muscles. i would gather that ppl who use these touchscreen laptops will after a while start growing muscle in their main arm. kindof like ppl who fap too much.

Color me skeptical

[michaelmalak]

I don't even see the mouse as complementing the keyboard. The lack of accelerator keys on web sites/browsers is frustrating, the inability to alt-tab out of the various VMs and VNCs is frustrating. Touch is going in the wrong direction.

Here's the direction computers should be going in: Intelligent User Interfaces. Computers should guess the next noun/object or verb/action and list them in descending likelihood -- kind of like IntelliSense. Quick keyboard commands 1-9 or first-letter/auto-complete select out of the prioritized list. We're so far away from that that file selector dialogs don't even default -- let alone remember to! -- sort reverse chronological. (Nor do they remember last directory, cross-application)

OK, mouse is good for panning 2D (Google Maps), and zooming and sliders. Maybe there's something touch is better at than both mouse and keyboard, but I don't know what that might be.

First priority is to fix keyboard UI.

Re:Color me skeptical

[Jmc23]

Working on it.

Re:Color me skeptical

[Areyoukiddingme]

File selector dialogs don't remember or default to reverse chronological sorting, but the GTK+ Most Recently Used menu does. And it even generates numeric prefixes for shortcuts.

At least, it did in GTK+2. Dunno what it does in 3.

Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to say:

[Z80xxc!]

Do or do not. There is no try.

Until you've actually used a touch/laptop hybrid device, don't go knocking it. When I say "use", I don't mean "try", I mean actually used it for day-to-day tasks for a couple weeks. Not "poked one in the mall and didn't know how to do everything right away, so I gave up," or worse yet, "saw a picture or video online and haven't even tried one in person." Spare me the "but I know I won't like it," because until you've actually used the device, you don't know.

The overwhelming opinion of people I know who have actually used these devices that are neither a tablet nor a laptop, but really a bit of both, is that they work well and are not just a gimmick. New things can take some getting used to. That doesn't mean they're bad.

It would be worthless for work

[Grayhand]

Anything that forces you to break concentration and shift into another mode kills productivity. It's why mice have been so hard to replace. I can easily use a mouse and keyboard at the same time. Having to reach up to do an operation would seriously piss me off and cut my productivity in half. For everyday playing people love gimmicks but I think people will get tired of it fast. It's why i hated to see Windows go down that road. If vendors start requiring it to use software I'm going to have to find different software. He said they were a bad idea and I have to agree, he didn't say they wouldn't sell some before people got sick of them.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that forces you to break concentration and shift into another mode kills productivity. It's why mice have been so hard to replace. I can easily use a mouse and keyboard at the same time. Having to reach up to do an operation would seriously piss me off and cut my productivity in half.

So you type with one hand too, huh?

Re:It would be worthless for work

[Anonymous Coward]

>Anything that forces you to break concentration and shift into another mode kills productivity. It's why mice have been so hard to replace. I can easily use a mouse and keyboard at the same time.

You do realize that old farts said the same stupid things about the mouse? "The mouse will kill your productivity because you have to take your hand off the keyboard home row to use it. It's just a fad." Guess we all know how that turned out.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[Missing.Matter]

I can easily use a mouse and keyboard at the same time. Having to reach up to do an operation would seriously piss me off and cut my productivity in half.

Then how about only using touch where it makes sense and saves you time, and stick to keyboard and mouse where it makes sense and saves time. My favorite example of this is in photoshop. When you select a layer, you get a bounding box with anchors at each corner. With mouse you can then rotate, scale, or translate the layer... but only one at a time, and in the scaling case only along one axis at a time. This makes the process of properly placing a layer iterative. That is, move it, scale it, rotate it, scale it again, rotate it, until you've got it just right.

With multitouch, this could be done in a single fluid gesture: move your fingers to translate, pinch your fingers to scale, spin your fingers to rotate, and it's a completely natural intuitive gesture. I yearn for a day when this is possible in Photoshop, and I will gladly move my hands from keyboard and mouse to the screen in this scenario because it is much more efficient with touch than with the mouse.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[0123456]

With multitouch, this could be done in a single fluid gesture: move your fingers to translate, pinch your fingers to scale, spin your fingers to rotate, and it's a completely natural intuitive gesture.

Yeah, because getting pixel-accurate scaling and rotation is just so easy when using big fat fingers instead of a mouse.

And the problem is not that touch could be useful in some situations, but that the interface has to be designed to be usable with a touchscreen, which means it becomes incredibly tedious with a mouse; for example, the big, huge buttons all over the place so you can press them with your fingers, and the wonderful 'gestures' you have to create with your mouse instead of just clicking on the damn thing you want to do.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[Missing.Matter]

Yes, in fact it is easier on the experimental interfaces I've designed and tested. As for big huge buttons, it's called modality: the right interface for the right input adjusting for what you're currently using. Seriously, where is your vision? The right interface doesn't exist, but people like you seem to think its impossible and never will. I think that's very short sighted.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[Arker]

You do realize that old farts said the same stupid things about the mouse?

We were right.

Guess we all know how that turned out.

With a mass industry selling mouse interfaces to the technically clueless, and a niche industry catering to those of us that are trying to do real work to help us work around this problem? Yeah, exactly.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[dbIII]

It will be a while. It took them ages to even get UNDO and they've only recently introduced the multiple window mode that was in gimp since the first version.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[houghi]

I see some places where it could be useful and a nice addition to both the mouse and keyboard. Especially on a portable.
I do not see it on a desktop, not because I would not want it, but because the screen is not at arms length.

If I try to touch my screen without changing my sitting position, i.r. no leaning forward, not moving my shoulder forward, I can't. So I would have to move forward and that is not convenient. Not much. About 2 centimeters, but still.

Arms length is often said to be the ideal distance. That might have been true in the past. Not so much for the larger screens we are using now. 1920x1200 24" are mostly placed at the end of the desk. The exceptions I know of are people who have very bad eyes.

I see how they placed them at our company of 500+ people and with nobody are those screens close enough.

The reasons are two fold. First you want to be able to see the whole screen with the least head movement possible. Second you want to be able to use your desk for whatever you like and you can not reach stuff that is behind your monitor.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[flimflammer]

That's the only scenario you could think of in which someone would be using a mouse and keyboard at the same time? General typing?

Re:It would be worthless for work

[silly_sysiphus]

Sounds like you need either a ThinkPad or one of the Lenovo USB keyboards with a TrackPoint, then. The TrackPoints take a little getting used to, but they're surprisingly quick and efficient, and you never have to take your hands off the home row to move the mouse. It's really quite elegant. (HP, Dell, and to a lesser extent Sony and Toshiba have similar looking sticks on some of their business products, but the Lenovo (originally IBM) version is the best).

Re:It would be worthless for work

[Jmc23]

You're just a bottle of sunshine aren't you. Bet everybody loves you death.

Never consider your lack of foresight and imagination a reason to dismiss something.

All of this and more is available in my UI.

Re:It would be worthless for work

[zippthorne]

And you couldn't do this zoom+rotate effect with a touchpad or pen tablet?

Re:Its stupid on a laptop or desktop

[Z80xxc!]

The Surface Pro does include touch support - 10 point multitouch, in fact. It happens to also have an active digitizer to support pen input. It can do both.

The fact that you didn't know that implies that you really have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to s

[bmo]

It's funny how the criticisms of touch get brushed aside and people like you and SINternet insult the people criticizing.

"You haven't used it long enough!"
"You're a luddite!"
"You're lazy!"
"It's really great, you're just old!"
"Look, this 3 year old can open a program! If you don't like it, you're stupider than a 3 year old!"

And on and on it goes.

Good job selling us on this. Really. Good. Job.

> New things can take some getting used to

Hey, this isn't marmite in this sandwich. It smells like shit! Hey, wait...

"Just take smaller bites!"

--
BMO

Re:Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to s

[Z80xxc!]

So you're suggesting that we should never have transitioned from horses and buggies to motor cars, because driving a car takes some getting used to? The fact of the matter is that if you haven't used something, you can't make an informed opinion of it. You can have an opinion, and you're welcome to have that opinion, but it won't be an informed opinion.

After using my Surface I keep touching my monitor

[elabs]

It's true. Windows 8 has ruined non-touch monitors for me forever. It's just so easy and natural to want to reach up and touch the monitor now. In fact I get very frustrated when it doesn't respond. All screens should be touch.

Re:Laptops DO need touch

[Dunbal]

I find I touch the screen of my Windows laptop, and get frustrated when I realized it isn't a touch screen. But that's NOT because a vertical touch screen is any good. It's because I'm so use to using tablets now that I EXPECT it to be there on Windows boxes.

If you see a picture of food on your monitor, do you try to eat it too? I mean after all, you've eaten food before so you'd expect... see where I am going? I think your problem is that you have to adjust your brightness.

Typical Crack-Smoking Article

[Crypto Gnome]

Full of apologising for crack-brained-isms of Windows8.

I for one cannot imagine using a touch-the-screen solution on the desktop or laptop.

On the other hand (er, so to speak) I am seriously looking forward to non-contact gesture technologies like Leap Motion.

Reaching forward and touching an exact spot with your finger (eg an Icon, a screen-control widget) fundamentally DOES NOT MAKE SENSE for anything other than a tablet solution.

On the flipside, reaching out towards your screen for a broad-scale gesture (swipe to move an app the the other screen, maximise an app, finger-zoom or select an area, control 3D space {google earth, etc}, shuffling a bunch of images onscreen, etc) seem completely natural. Touch-screen-ing an 82 inch display makes sense, but at desktop scales that's like sitting 3 inches from your monitor - and even then it really only makes sense because you're now using that display as an advanced information kiosk not as your personal computer (different interaction rates, different interaction precision for common usage).

Having said that, there's no sane reason why in the future we will not see our displays using BOTH interaction methods (ie fully capable of direct-touch as well as Gestures in 3D Space). But I'm also sure they (er, the main computer/OS) will include some kind of basic voice control as well.

Re:Typical Crack-Smoking Article

[tftp]

Touch-screen-ing an 82 inch display makes sense, but at desktop scales that's like sitting 3 inches from your monitor

I have a 25" LED monitor in front of me. I can barely touch its center with a fully extended right arm. My fingers don't reach the edges of the screen unless I lean forward. Why would I do that? This is bad for posture, this is bad for vision. From my position in the chair I simply cannot touch the monitor.

But even if I could touch it, just imagine how much effort would it require to swipe across such a large monitor! I could do it a few times; but in the course of just reading the fine Slashdot one needs to scroll a hundred times. This is not feasible, and I have no interest in ever getting large touch monitors. As matter of fact, one of my friends has one - and the first thing he did he asked me to disable touch. It has no function there. It is good only for palm-sized devices, where touch and gesture operations are not just natural - they are also energy-efficient.

Re:Typical Crack-Smoking Article

[PCM2]

I for one cannot imagine using a touch-the-screen solution on the desktop or laptop.

But TFA is correct. I've spent a day messing around with a tablet running Windows 8, touching away, and then when I go back to a regular PC with a monitor -- also running Windows 8, FWIW -- I automatically start reaching for the monitor for the first couple of moments. And this is for the Desktop UI, too. Once you get used to certain habits on one device, you want to do the same thing on other devices, especially when they are running the exact same OS and everything looks virtually identical to you. You know the touch points are supposed to be there, so you reach for them.

Whether this is a "good" thing or not is open to debate.

Re:Typical Crack-Smoking Article

[Crypto Gnome]

Touch-screen-ing an 82 inch display makes sense, but at desktop scales that's like sitting 3 inches from your monitor

If you continued to read the rest of my comments you'd see I was meaning these massive displays make sense because you're NOT USING THE COMPUTER, you're just using a PHREAKINHUGE DISPLAY (think touchscreen enabled TV WeatherMan, lecturer in a classroom flipping electronic charts, etc)

Re:Typical Crack-Smoking Article

[jedwidz]

Yup, that's the use case that gives you gorilla arm - vertical screen in front of you.

I suspect the claim that touchscreens on notebook give you gorilla arm are either fabrications or a genuine misunderstanding.

I doubt there's a big fundamental difference between touching a notebook screen and using a tablet, at least in terms of where the screen is. A lot of people prop their tablets up in a similar position to a notebook screen anyway.

One concern I do have is that the notebook needs to absorb the torque of a firm prod near the top of the screen. Having to be gentle in order to avoid tipping the notebook would lead to extra muscle strain.

At first glance this means the hinge needs to be extra stiff (and/or lockable), and the notebook base needs to be extra heavy (and/or anchored). Aside from the touchscreen consideration, these are all bad design for a notebook. A foldout back support, like on a photo frame, might be better.

So basically some industry shill's opinion...

[Alex Belits]

...and of all things, it's an opinion that Windows is great. Why, exactly, is is posted here?

Re:Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to s

[Man On Pink Corner]

More like, should we transition from horses and buggies to llamas and rowboats?

Because that's what Microsoft is now expecting us to do with Windows 8.

Useful even before ASuS Transformer, Vadem Clio?

[linuxtelephony]

Anyone remember the Vadem Clio/Sharp TriPad? I do. For all it's clunkiness, if it wouldn't had such a problem with audio quality that would have been my first "tablet" (back in 2000 or 2001). [Oblig. wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vadem_Clio ] The whine during media playback killed it for me, and I wasn't willing to settle for the price so I ended up returning it. Other than that, and WinCE, it was a very useful device.

I have had the ASuS TF101 plus keyboard now for about a year and I still like it, even if my daughter has taken it over. Plus how many people run the iPad in landscape/vertical using a special case as a stand? I know I do. I can touch type pretty quick on it too (though I prefer it more of a slant then strictly vertical, probably about 60 degrees up from the table). And don't forget about the Lenovo S10-3t convertible? It was the first "laptop" with a touch screen that I've used, and even though the 1024x600 display kills the usability IMO, I still have a hard time putting it up on eBay because I find the touch screen form factor useful in a pinch.

The bottom line is the touch screen laptop is a very usable configuration and I'm surprised it's taken this long to see more of them. I think an almost perfect machine would be something like a macbook air (either 11 or 13 inch), with a quad core i7 (or comparable), 16 gb of RAM, an iPad 3 retina display w/touch for the display, a detachable keyboard (ala Transformer) or possibly rotating keyboard (Vadem Clio, Lenovo Yoga). It should also have 5+ hours of battery life and not get uncomfortably hot. I don't ask for much. :)

Bad Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I being so unreasonable to expect one computer to perform as well as another computer?

I know the Windows box sellers are trying to pretend that Windows boxes are computers and tablet are toys, but that's not real. My Transformer Infinity is no toy. It's far more powerful than my Acer One laptop running Windows 7.

Is one food and one a computer? Or are they really just both computers?

Re:Bad Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's a toy, because you can only install "Apps" on it.

i hate dirty fingerprints on my screen

[brainscauseminds]

I like my touchscreen phone, but I hate the fingerprints on it. As for my computer, I clean my laptop screen and external monitor once a week to get rid of all that dust and cr*p that gets on it. The idea of going with my sweaty fingers all over it gives me goosebumps. How would I dare to show anything to my boss or co-workers in my computer if the screen is full of s**t?

Re:i hate dirty fingerprints on my screen

[jtownatpunk.net]

^THIS^

Back in the CRT days, "pokers" were annoying. There's no need to physically touch the screen to point at something on it. Just get close. It was worse with early LCDs because they were very fragile. Pokey-McGee could destroy a $500 14" monitor with a single jab. "Do you see the colors bloom when you do that? That's not a good thing!"

At least we have Gorilla Glass and similar compounds to protect the panels these days but I still wouldn't want to work on a schmootzy screen or have people smear my laptop screen with their "french fry" fingers flicking thru a document instead of using the PigUp/Down keys. And I certainly wouldn't want to have to clean my 27" monitors every day because of the practice.

I like my tablet but I have to keep a microfiber cloth handy to wipe the prints off it. Same with the phone. It's tolerable because these are "sometimes" devices that I don't stare at for hours a day.

Re:i hate dirty fingerprints on my screen

[c]

> Back in the CRT days, "pokers" were annoying. There's no need to physically touch
> the screen to point at something on it. Just get close. It was worse with early LCDs
> because they were very fragile.

Greasy fingers are nothing... I work with meteorologists. Back in the CRT days, it was standard practice to markup weather charts right on the CRT itself using coloured grease pencils.

Guess what office supply disappeared real fast when we upgraded to LCD's?

Re:i hate dirty fingerprints on my screen

[bkk_diesel]

I like my tablet but I have to keep a microfiber cloth handy to wipe the prints off it. Same with the phone. It's tolerable because these are "sometimes" devices that I don't stare at for hours a day.

Wow, you really sound like the life of the party.

Re:i hate dirty fingerprints on my screen

[jtownatpunk.net]

Did you have something useful to add to the conversation or was that the extent of your contribution?

Re:i hate dirty fingerprints on my screen

[boley1]

Real Job, Real Experience, Real Place, with fire and smoke and occasional explosions. You would recognize the initials. We received a touch screen device. Very cool. Very expensive (money was not a problem). I was trying to get my point across to the operator, so I pointed (OK. I POKED) at the object on the screen.

It was not a good day. No one was killed. No equipment was damaged. I don't even think we really lost any data or too much schedule. But the implications of what could have happened were obvious. It was an often repeated story, that resulted in an un-official but institutional ban on all touch screens in the facility for the next 20 years.

Today I love multitouch, especially on tablets, phones and on my laptops and desktops when used with a horizontal trackpad or mouse with a touch surface.

Not sure I'll ever feel good about touching a vertical screen though.

Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[ozmanjusri]

Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

Microsoft says it has sold more than 40 million Windows 8 licenses, but the information is worthless in absence of key data the company won't divulge.

We don't know because Microsoft isn't saying. We don't know how many of the 40 million licenses come from low-cost upgrades, from volume licensing sales that kick in automatically, or from direct sales to consumers. And we don't know how many of the 40 million licenses are sitting on systems that have yet to find a buyer.

So why won't Microsoft provide a breakdown? What is it hiding? Its silence speaks volumes or, perhaps more accurately, low volumes.
 

http://www.informationweek.com/software/windows8/microsofts-windows-8-numbers-meaningless/240142865?cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[ozmanjusri]

and all you'll be left with is your conspiracy theories.

You mean Information Week's conspiracy theories. I just copy/pasted.

Here's SMH's conspiracy theory:

Windows 8 sales in Australia and overseas are below expectations, with one US expert describing its user interface as "a monster that terrorises poor office workers and strangles their productivity".

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/windows-8-sales-flounder-as-critics-pan-clumsy-interface-20121126-2a2d0.html#ixzz2Drq6iNt7/

The Register's conspiracy theory:

Reports that Windows 8 hasn't been moving as briskly as the industry had hoped continue to emerge, with major retailers reporting slow sales and Microsoft insiders allegedly describing the initial numbers as "disappointing."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/19/retailers_report_slow_win8_sales/

Reuters conspiracy theory:

Consumer sales of Windows-powered personal computers fell 21 percent overall last month, figures released by a leading retail research firm showed on Thursday, indicating a lackluster debut for Microsoft Corp's Windows 8 operating system.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/29/us-microsoft-windows-idUSBRE8AS12Y20121129

ComputerWorld's conspiracy theory:

Microsoft has been touting its claim of 40 million Windows 8 licenses sold as evidence of a booming launch. But analysts and Asian PC makers beg to disagree, and say sales of the new operating system have been sluggish.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/windows/21410/windows-8-sales-are-sluggish-not-booming-say-analysts-and-asian-pc-makers

Looks like the whole damn world's in on it!

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[dbIII]

I love the quote at the end of the SMH article:

A Microsoft Australia spokesman said "we won’t be discussing sales at this point" .

Of course after a year and a service pack or two I'm sure sales will be discussed quite loudly.

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[adamstew]

Fact: Microsoft is selling exponentially more licenses with Windows 8 than it did with Windows 7.

Huh? Microsoft themselves has already admitted that Windows 8 sales are at nearly the EXACT same pace as Windows 7 sales.

Okay... How about actual web usage: http://www.zdnet.com/statcounter-windows-8-license-sales-not-yet-translating-into-usage-7000008148/

Even though Microsoft sold as many licenses of Windows 8 as they did of Windows 7, Windows 7 saw much higher actual usage after one month on the market compared to Windows 8 after one month on the market. Windows 7 made up 4.93% of internet users 1 month after launch compared to Windows 8's 1.31% 1 month after launch. That paints a pretty bleak picture of actual Windows 8 usage. Even Windows Vista managed to get nearly 2% of web browser share after the first month.

So lets assume that both statistics are correct. Microsoft sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8, the same as Windows 7 for the same time period AND Windows 8's web usage 1 month after launch is only 27% of Windows 7's web usage 1 month after launch. Let's add in a few more facts, like NewEgg saying that windows 8 sales are slow and that sales of Windows devices are down 21% from last year since the launch of Windows 8. Based on these facts, we can extrapolate a story.

The story I extrapolated is this: Microsoft sold 40 million licenses of Windows 8 in several ways: 1) end users taking advantage of the cheap $40 upgrade option that has never been offered before, 2) the volume license sales of Windows that are now Windows 8 licenses that are almost ALL being downgraded to Windows 7 because Microsoft no longer sells Windows 7 licenses, and 3) a whole TON of licenses to OEMs so they could get the initial supply of Windows 8 devices in to sales channels for launch.

So lets go over these sales paths:

1) The end user upgrades are legitimate sales of Windows 8. However, I would expect these numbers to be much higher than the initial Windows 7 upgrade sales simply because of the huge discount that didn't exist for the Windows 7 launch. The $40 upgrade price is either a 60% or 80% discount depending on whether you would buy the home or professional edition. I would expect to see a small rush of people buying to take advantage of the lower price...even over the normal PC enthusiast sales of people who must have the latest-and-greatest. The $40 upgrade option would also explain why direct to consumer upgrades of Windows 8 are selling at a faster pace than Windows 7 did. When you give a very hefty discount to pretty much everyone, people are going to jump on the deal.

2) volume license sales: Business need Windows licenses and you can only buy Windows 8 now. So even though the business is installing Windows 7 with those Windows 8 licenses, they are still being counted as a "Windows 8 sale". These are licenses Microsoft would've sold whether Windows 8 was released or not. Also, i'd be curious to know whether Microsoft is including any previous Windows 7 licenses with Software Assurance as a "Windows 8 sale" as well.

3) OEM sales: This is where I bet Microsoft sold the bulk of their Windows 8 licenses. OEMs had to buy their initial set of licenses to cover their initial stock of Windows 8 devices being shipped to sales channels. World wide PC sales for 2012 are expected to be around 350 million units...or about 30 million PCs per month. I would also expect the sales numbers t

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[recoiledsnake]

Please update your numbers, Windows 8 sales doubled during Thanksgiving.

http://microsoft-news.com/black-friday-boosts-windows-8-net-use-in-us-above-2/

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[adamstew]

Okay... That still puts Windows 8 usage at less than half of what Windows 7 usage was at this same point in time (5% vs 2%).

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[jan0278]

how is volume licensing not sales? aren't those volume license used by humans? also the contradicting fact is that corporates(volume players) are usually late to upgrade compared to consumers. Bottomline, 40 mil or 40 K its all about what one likes.. it'd be a boring world if everyone liked the same thing

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[Zontar The Mindless]

It must be really tragic to live a life so utterly devoid of worth or meaning that you've nothing better to do than make up stories about your invisible corporate friend.

Re:Microsoft's Windows 8 Numbers Meaningless

[Missing.Matter]

Sorry to reply to you a couple days after you posted this, but after I read your post I got busy and didn’t have time to finish my reply. You inspired me to do some data mining, and as I’ll try to show I think the data is actually pointing in the opposite direction than your post concludes.

Your story is consistent with the facts you’ve presented, but you haven’t presented all of the facts. Allow me to present the other side of the story to try and add some more context to help your extrapolation:

Huh? Microsoft themselves has already admitted that Windows 8 sales are at nearly the EXACT same pace as Windows 7 sales

No, what was said is that Windows 8 sales are in line with Windows 7. We can look at the historical figures to see how Win7 sold; over the course of its lifetime Windows 7 sold on average a pretty flat 20M licenses a month. In the first few months of release it sold an average of 26M licenses a month; during its first 70 days on sale, MS Win7 sold 60M licenses. If they sold 40M in the first 30 days, that leaves only 20M units to sell over the next 40 days including the Christmas season and Black Friday. Selling at this rate (15M a month) is well below what Win7 sold during the rest of its lifetime (20M). The numbers don’t just make sense.

However, what does make sense is that current sales of Win8 are in line with Win7. As I’ll show later, current market share growth of Win8 as measured by statcounter is, in fact, in line with Win7.

Okay... How about actual web usage

Sure, let’s take a closer look though, instead of just reporting a simple difference and calling it a day. Foremost, if you take a look at the actual data, Win8 is growing much differently than Win7 did when it was first released. While Win7 market share grew linearly after launch, Win8 is growing either quadratically, or at least has hit an inflection point and will continue linear growth that about matches (or slightly exceeds) Win7.

Take a look at these figures, derived from worldwide statcounter data. (Statcounter doesn’t publish Win8 data on its own yet, but did so for the period of 10/1 – 11/28 here. To get Win8 stats outside this range, I took the average ‘Linux’ and ‘Other’ (both of which have no growth; average daily change for Linux is .0002, and .002 for Other) percent share from the linked data, and subtract that from the current ‘Other’ data, and what’s left is a good estimate of Win8 share.)

The first chart shows the market share of Win8 over the past 14 days (11/1912-12/2/12), and Win7 over the comparable 14 day period in 2009 (11/15/09 – 11/28/09). If you fit a line to this data, you can see that Win8 is growing at a rate comparable (actually a bit faster) to Win7. The second image shows growth of Win7 over the first quarter of availability, and Growth of Win8 until today. The chart also contains two Win8 growth projections: quadratic (fitted to all the data) and linear (fitted to the past two weeks of data). Even though the quadratic curve is a better fit, the linear projection is probably more likely to pan out and shows Win7-like growth. Either way, what’s clear is that Win8 is not growing the same way Win7 did (linear right out of the gate). There was either a slow start and its growing linearly now, or it’s growing quadratically.

Finally in the figure, I have a comparison of percent growth since launch. You keep making reference that Win8 is behind Win7 in absolute terms, but you are not revealing that Win7 started at a much higher percentage than Win8: 2.21% vs. 0.38%. Even Vista started at a high percentage, at 0.6% according to your w3sch

Re:Laptops DO need touch

[Pentium100]

Do you really want to take the keyboard with you?

Yes. I even bought a clamshell UMPC (Viliv N5) instead of a tablet so that I would not have to carry a separate keyboard. The builtin keyboard is not very good (because it is very small), but it still is better than using an on screen keyboard or having to carry around a separate keyboard.

Speaking of on screen keyboards - to me touchscreen-only phones suck. They are difficult to use with one hand because I cannot slide my thumb on the keypad and only press the button I want to press - no, I have to lift it up from the screen and there is no way to find the button without actually looking at the screen.

todays news...

[pbjones]

Steve is dead, the company moves on...
If you look at MacOSX on a laptop, it uses the big multi-touch mousepad instead of a touch screen. Win8 needs a touchscreen because they put a tablet UI on a PC. Different OS, Different requirements.

Touchscreen desktops too

[tannhaus]

I have one of the Gateway 6971 all-in-ones. I paid the $15 or whatever to get the Windows 8 upgrade. My computer before this one was a 24 inch iMac I'd had for 5 years. I have to say that I don't regret the change at all. When it comes to reading a website, I'm more likely to reach up and scroll than even use the scroll wheel on the mouse. When I'm playing music or watching videos, I don't have to be sitting at my computer desk. All I have to be able to do is touch the screen. The article is right. It complements the mouse and keyboard and allows for more relaxed use of the computer.

Keen observation

[Waccoon]

"A touchscreen isn't a replacement for a keyboard or mouse, it's a complement."

Gee, thanks for listening to feedback from the community for the last few years.

Re:More numbers to prove Win 7 beat win 8

[Billly Gates]

Actual usage statistics from statcounter did a comparison with this year and 3 years ago. Now tell me how Windows 8 is the best selling OS ever!

Windows 7 was popular and already registered for like 2 months before launch as people were on the RCs and passing along eval copies. So these users did not buy all at once which was why Windows 8 had a higher spike, but Windows 7 had more users overall who just purchased a key for the RC copies and Windows update turned them into the full versions.

Based on the fingerprints I've seen...

[AcquaCow]

We've been touching monitors for quite a long time without any issue. It's been completely unnecessary up until now, but I doubt there will be many issues with monitors finally responding to user touch and doing something useful in return.

-- Dave

Medical

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in medical and we've been using touch screens for years. The radiology tech. who took your last xray and sent it to PACS might have done it without ever touching the keyboard. Of course Vertical touch screens work; they've just been very expensive for quite some time!

Re:Medical

[Osgeld]

hogwash, they have been around since the 80's and only at a slight premium

you dont see them everywhere because they are not good for every situation

Shilling

[John Biggabooty]

This article reads like something a cheerleader on Microsoft's payroll wrote. It it is, that should be disclosed. I am not impressed with Windows 8 at all.

Sandpaper

[guttentag]

After all, how many iPad minis come with sandpaper for filing fingers down.

I've been using an iPad mini daily for about three weeks now, and I've had this subject raised by smartass coworkers and passers-by. I couldn't find any official smart covers for it in stores, so I made a "smartass cover" out of glue, magnets and sandpaper. It's a lot cheaper than paying $40 for an official cover that doesn't even include sandpaper! Now I tell them the iPad 3 (which I was using daily until I got the mini) should include sandpaper so you can grip it with one hand and type with the other.

Re:More numbers to prove Win 7 beat win 8

[Billly Gates]

Netmarketshare shows similiar data without iOS too.

But 2009 was in the worst recession since the 1930s and many people were terrified the financial market would still freeze still. IN that case keeping older PCs make more sense so there is alot of factors. Still it sold as many like myself were looking to dump Vista and felt XP to be too obsolete and old to use at that time unless you really had too.

Re:More numbers to prove Win 7 beat win 8

[atlasdropperofworlds]

I wouldn't be surprised if 8 was slower to get going than 7. There is some good stuff in there for power users, but once you install a start menu (of which there are many), it ends up being just a fast-booting win7 for everyday use.

They are putting in some good ideas, but I'd prefer they still treated desktop users as first-class citizens. I like the idea of having the option to save your email settings and messages, contacts, calendar, desktop settings, and applications (albeit only the windows store ones) in the cloud, so that setting up another system takes far less effort. I chose the option to sign into the OS in the same way I sign in to my android phone, and a lot of stuff is set up for me. The notification system has been modernized at least, but I sure do wish they could "desktopize" all the metro apps for users like me, and having the OS be modal and able to run in tablet OR desktop mode, and you could switch whenever you felt like it, would have been the right approach IMO.

Full touch is not compatible with mouse controls

[SuperKendall]

The article seemed to really be talking more about gestures than touch controls in terms of touch making sense on laptops.

I think there's an inherent gap between touch and mice/trackpads for computer use, and the reason is hit target size.

To support touch you have to have targets way larger than a mouse cursor based system does. How can you really design a UI that is good for both users?

Gestures, sure I can see that... although even there I still think doing them from a device like a trackpad makes as much sense (granted the article claims he prefers doing them on screen).

Re:The market has spoken

[Pentium100]

So what if everybody uses their devices differently than I do? If everyone was jumping off a cliff I still wouldn't jump.

Yes, those devices don't sell in volume and that means that the choice of these devices is limited. Still, to me it is better than no choice at all (i.e. having to use a "popular" device).

Typing a command in a CLI (over ssh or whatever) or writing a document is not very comfortable with my UMPC, but it would be horrible on the touchscreen "keyboard". Most people don't do that. I don't care. Using a tablet and a separate keyboard wold mean that I have to carry the tablet, the keyboard and a stand for the tablet and there would be no way of using it with the keyboard without putting it on a desk (I can thumb type on my Viliv faster and more accurately than on a touchscreen "keyboard"). Most people don't care about that. I don't care about their not caring.

Re:Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to s

[bmo]

Cars are mostly superior to horses.

It's your claim that keyboards and mice are buggywhips. Prove it. Prove that direct experience of those who have been poking and swiping at Windows 8 since the dev preview on desktops are wrong.

--
BMO

I own a Surface

[iONiUM]

Through my work, I get almost every tablet/thingy that comes out. I got the Surface RT the day it came out because of this, and have been using it since as my replacement for my Nexus 7, eee Netbook (ubuntu), and in tandem with iPad mini.

I see all this shit on Slashdot about how much W8 sucks, and it's true, for desktop. If you took the "desktop" mode of W8, and put JUST THAT on desktop with a start menu, then it's solid (just a win7 upgrade). If you take W8 Metro (or whatever it's called now) and use JUST THAT, it's about 80% of what you want on a tablet. I say 80% because the gestures, while powerful, are really unintuitive.

As it is, I have to say, as someone who actually USES the Surface, it's a nice device, and Metro is actually rather pleasant to look at (yes, there's no apps for it). In addition, the gestures are nice, if you learn them. And, in addition to all of that, having a "desktop" mode on the tablet (the keyboard includes a trackpad) is also nice, although it feels disconnected. I think Microsoft hasn't gotten it perfect, but I think they are on the right track.

As a side note, I don't know why there's so many pro MS articles on Slashdot lately..

Re:I own a Surface

[Psyborgue]

As a side note, I don't know why there's so many pro MS articles on Slashdot lately

I noticed that too. The Bill Gates borg logo also seems to be gone. New ownership, perhaps?

Re:More numbers to prove Win 7 beat win 8

[Billly Gates]

Windows 7, like XP has the advantage of being mature and super stable. Windows 7 has been around since Vista and is not as experimental. Yes, there are still some issues in networking that XP does better with AD and com port access, but Windows 8 has been known to freeze up or exhibit some issues because of its newness.

On my 2007 laptop it only runs in 1024 x 768 as the perfectly fine aero drivers for Windows 7 are not 8 compatible. On my newer phenomII desktop I am typing this in I experienced some glitches with GPU acceleration in Firefox and IE 10. There as a bug in SWTOR but I do not remember what that an update fixed.

Users report it can reboot endlessly too. For corps who like stability Windows 7 is a winner and so is for professionals. Windows blue/9 next year if rumor is true with an annual update will mature it more.

Touch screens are not that bad

[Osgeld]

when its not your only option, we have a handful of them scattered about at work and yea, its actually handy to just point at something, especially when there is a group involved, which is the situation we use them in.

still not going to give up the ole keyboard and mouse, but touch screens can have uses on desktop/laptops

Touchscreens for all?

[Knight of Shadows]

What about those of us whose electrical conductivity are beyond the norm? There are people that cannot use touchscreens with accuracy due to their bodies own electrical impulses (I can't wear a digital watch, for instance, or a smartphone with a touch screen for more than a few seconds before it becomes unusable)). Are these people going to be forced to adapt to a world where they cannot use computers due to the propagation of a trend technology, where people are led to believe the next thing coming down the pipe is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Simple truth is: if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Personally, I have as much use for a touchscreen, and Windows 8, as I would a second anus. And can you imagine trying to play WoW or anything more complicated than a flash-based game on a touchscreen? Are these people insane? Oh, wait . . . we're talking about Microsoft here, so of course they are. . .

Re:Touchscreens for all?

[shutdown -p now]

And can you imagine trying to play WoW or anything more complicated than a flash-based game on a touchscreen?

Did you miss the whole part of TFA where it talks about how touchscreen does not replace mouse and keyboard, but complements them?

No, you probably won't use it while playing WoW. Then again, you probably won't be playing WoW on a 10" laptop/tablet convertible...

Re:Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to s

[ColaMan]

We transitioned to cars because there was a great many advantages to do so - speed, load carrying capacity, etc, etc.

What are the advantages of using a touchscreen over a keyboard/mouse in everyday situations?

Mobile? Well sure, if you're wandering around and you want to quickly tap something out or go through a few apps, there's a good advantage to a touch screen.

But at the office? I don't know. The time taken to take your hands off the keys, reach out and tap something... is that quicker than getting the mouse and clicking? I don't really know. I'd suspect that that with my setup (2 x 24" monitors) it's going to be slower. And I'd bet that if I was forced to use a touchscreen in an office situation where I still had a keyboard, I'd be learning a lot more keyboard shortcuts quick-smart.

Re:After using my Surface I keep touching my monit

[Zibodiz]

This. I have Win8 on my Fujitsu T5010, and love touch scrolling with it. So much more natural. I've touched my office monitor and my wife's laptop screen a couple times now without thinking. I love having a convertible laptop/stylus/touch PC (the T5010 has a 'dual digitizer'; the active stylus digitizer is awesome for my comics, but the touchscreen is better for games/surfing/reading), and I'm never switching back to an ordinary laptop.
Oh, and by the way, I'm a web developer who has written thousands of lines of code on a convertible tablet pc. That's what the keyboard is for.

Lenovo Yoga

[jimmyhat3939]

I got one of these for work the first day they came out. Here's how I use it:

* At the office, I use it like a traditional Windows laptop, running virtual machines and whatnot for development.
* On the train, I turn it into a tablet and read books, play games, read the newspaper and magazines. There's a great PDF reader and a Kindle app. Also, I use it in a singing group I belong to for my sheet music.

In short, it's a laptop plus an iPad.

Also, I've had zero problems with smudging on the screen. I've had the device for over a month and have never cleaned the screen. Maybe I'm just super clean? I keep it in a soft case made for a Mac Air, so maybe sliding it in and out of that case cleans it off.

Re:Lenovo Yoga

[jbonomi]

I have the same machine, also got it the day it came out. For me, it was the laptop/tablet hybrid I've always wanted. Largely, my experience and use has been much like yours. My screen does get a bit smudged, but I can only really notice that when the screen is off. I'd imagine some people might not like the size and aspect ratio of the screen in tablet mode, but I think that may be the only compromise.

Re:Lenovo Yoga

[shutdown -p now]

The only catch is that, according to the specs on Lenovo website, it weighs 3.4 lbs. That's okay for a laptop, but pretty heavy for a tablet. It's more than two iPads.

Re:More numbers to prove Win 7 beat win 8

[tibit]

I've just installed Win 8 on a VM, and it doesn't boot any faster than Win 7, even after repeated boots. YMMV, of course.

The various gestures are a pain to execute if the real screen extends past what Win 8 imagines the screen to be -- namely the VM's window. I'd go as far as calling Metro interface's mouse gestures useless on a windowed VM because of that. For the desktop mode, the number of applications people typically use is very small anyway, so you might as well throw the common shortcuts on the desktop and be done. For other things, keyboard shortcuts are OK.

Win 8 seems rather unpolished. The settings are haphazardly scattered between the Settings App and Control panel. I don't mind the apps, they look nice and fluid, but they won't even let me have their own kool-aid if I have to go to desktop mode just to do the basics. I was expecting that every application that came with Windows would be ported to Metro. That MS hasn't done that pretty much dismisses the whole Metro exercise in my mind. Fucking stick to it or go home, MS, mmkay?

Can it use Windows Phone apps?

[SuperKendall]

There are something like 20K Apps for Windows Phone 7 out already that were supposed to be able to run just fine on Windows Phone 8, I thought you could also run those on Surface as well - is that the case?

Re:Can it use Windows Phone apps?

[iONiUM]

No, that is not the case. WP7 apps are written in a Silverlight-based environment, whereas WP8 apps (Metro style) are written in a HTML/JS environment.

Re:Can it use Windows Phone apps?

[SuperKendall]

I thought there was still a compatibility layer that let the old apps run... I know going forward they had to move to the new HTML/JS form.

Re:Can it use Windows Phone apps?

[shutdown -p now]

WP7 apps are written in a Silverlight-based environment, whereas WP8 apps (Metro style) are written in a HTML/JS environment.

If by "WP8" above you meant "Windows 8", then you're wrong - Win8 apps can be written in HTML5/JS, yes, but they can also be written in C++ or any .NET language, with XAML as the UI framework.

If you actually meant "Windows Phone 8", then you're still wrong - WP8 apps are still written in .NET/XAML. The framework's a bit different, but it still looks mostly like Silverlight. It's also irrelevant, since Win8 does not run WP8 apps, or vice versa.

Also, "Metro-style" describes all of the above - the word "Metro" itself was introduced in WP7 to describe its UI.

One sentence solution

[SuperKendall]

Grounding wrist-strap and a long dangling cord.

Re:One sentence solution

[Knight of Shadows]

So I need to wear accessories just to implement the newest fad tech to be pushed down our throats in order to make others rich? I'd end up using the cord to strangle those responsible. . .

Re:One sentence solution

[Dynedain]

So I need to wear glasses just to implement the newest fad tech (cars) to be pushed down our throats in order to make Detroit rich? I'd end up using the earpieces to poke those responsible...

Re:One sentence solution

[Knight of Shadows]

Actually, it's the Arabs and Oil companies that are the winners there. Nice try, but . . . no, for so many reasons. Funny, though. I'm all in favor for an alternative to cars, actually. Instead of touchscreens, I want the jetpack they promised us, or a flying car, or a personal spacecraft, as Mars is actually looking sweeter all the time.

Re:Its stupid on a laptop or desktop

[JimboFBX]

Why stop at 10? I can think of 21 points on my male body to poke the screen with.

Nintendo DS - or fucking light pens!

[dbIII]

The touchscreen on the NintendoDS is nice but you don't use it for everything. Back in the day, I'm told that light pens provided a touchscreen interface that was functionally equivalent to what you get on these laptops, or there were (and still are) external tablets, but for most things both really suck in comparison to keys and mice. Then there's piles of other devices with touch input so I've got no idea how you can seriously assert that the HP touchsmart was anything new. Is it some kind of joke that went wrong?

Re:Whose jumping off the cliff?

[Pentium100]

Well, my UMPC fits in my pocket. A bigger tablet would not, so I would not be able to carry it everywhere (or would have to carry a bag just for the tablet)
My UMPC has the capabilities of a normal sized x86 laptop (a bit older/slower one but I can still use the same software, except games of course). I can do almost everything that I can do with my desktop, though it is slower.
Have you tried using ssh with the on screen keyboard? Or any task that requires a lot of typing?

Microsoft is jumping off a cliff because they are alienating their longtime customers (business desktop users) by making the UI less usable with keyboard+mouse. The iPad fans won't use a Microsoft tablet (because it is too much like a desktop) and I sure as hell would not use Windows on ARM (if it is going to be incompatible with my old software I might as well use Linux). So, Microsoft is in the middle - disliked by both sides.

Office will never be able to fully support touch - unless on screen keyboards became as good as normal keyboards for typing lots of text.

And yes, I know that I am in a niche market. I want my portable computing device to be a "mini-desktop", I use my phone with one hand and not always looking at it and I do not jump on new technology just because it is new (it has to be sufficiently better than what I have for me to upgrade - the requirements increase as the upgrade costs increase).

Headline correction

[wonkey_monkey]

One Guy Disagrees With Steve Jobs About Touchscreen Laptops, Either Could Turn Out To Be Wrong

The Psion 5 (launched 1997)

[mha]

Anyone who's had a Psion 5 and stared on in disbelieve when the rest of the world went crazy over the (in comparison) absolutely useless Palm organizer had incontrovertible proof literally in their hands that a touch screen on a keyboard device is GREAT. Those who think that's different from a laptop - it is not, you used the Psion 5 just like a tiny laptop, only that instead of a mouse you touched the screen - with a pen, but that was okay. Working with this setup (back in 1997!!!), directly touching what you wanted to on the screen, felt MUCH MUCH MUCH more natural than the mouse-keyboard combo. So at least to ME this article is no news at all.

Psion 5: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5
Palm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_(PDA)

But windows 8 sucks

[WaffleMonster]

I have no problem with touch displays and people purchasing them. Everyone should be able to make their own decisions and purchase whatever works for them.

I do however have a big problem with metro and everything it stands for.

The only way to obtain metro apps is thru vendor curated environment with full editorial control over what is or is not available. This is unacceptable. Enabling such aggregations of power will ultimatly lead to abuse (See shit apple is doing to shut down apps which compete with their interests or do not meet their decency standards) Such structures are ultimatly dangerous to a free society if vendors and content ultimatly get their way and eventually succeed in locking down the general purpose computer.

Severe limitations regarding display of multiple metro apps on screen makes metro unusable to replace "windows" on large displays.

Fads and memes of the day are not "the future" as Hollister asserts... no matter how much coolaid has been consumed.

Re:But windows 8 sucks

[ruir]

Pity I already spent my moderations points. Mod parent up.

laptop woes

[unixisc]

I don't see an advantage of this to normal laptops. Only possible advantage over a tablet - you can use a real keyboard as opposed to the virtual one that appears on the screen, which may be more comfortable to type, but not if it's a laptop form factor.

Only thing - in more recent laptops, I've seen the touchpad come in the way of typing, and unlike previous laptop models, the stupid thing can't even be disabled, despite forum hunts. Sticking a mouse in an USB port? Nothing. No PS/2 ports, so I can't stick a PS/2 mouse in it, even if I had one. I got 5 of these in the office, and everybody complains how typing is a pain since the cursor automatically moves when the palm accidentally touches the touchpad. Nothing that I do will disable them. Previous models would have a separate switch to disable the damn thing, but not any more. Only other solution, which I haven't done, is attach an external keyboard to the other USB port i.e. have a docking strip like solution. This would be the only advantage of such a solution - get rid of trackpads altogether, and use either the touchscreen or the mouse.

Re:laptop woes

[Jmc23]

or you could stop buying cheap laptops with missing parts like Dell.

Re:laptop woes

[hairyfeet]

Somebody is modding me down (How DARE you not drink the Win 8 koolaid!) so I don't know if you'll see this or not, but if you do here is how i fixed that very problem here at the shop..touchfreeze. With touchfreeze they can toggle it on and off via the taskbar, it also has an automatic mode that will disable the touchpad when it detects typing so most of the time they won't even have to think about it, its all good. HTH.

Re:laptop woes

[AmiMoJo]

Touchscreens are faster than using a touchpad or even a mouse for some tasks. My favourite example is the bank of volume sliders.

But yeah, I'm not convinced I want a touchscreen laptop. Then again I don't want a 10" tablet (except just to bask in the glory of that gorgeous Nexus 10 screen) so I guess I'm not a typical example.

Re:laptop woes

[unixisc]

Does that work on Windows 7 though - that's what I'm having the problem w/

Re:laptop woes

[unixisc]

Control panel & Mouse settings gave me nothing. Neither did the forum hunt. I'll try Touchfreeze & see how it works, assuming that it works on Windows 7.

Re:laptop woes

[hazem]

I also sit here looking at the 24" monitor I'm using and imagining how my arms would get really tired if I had to spend all day swiping and poking at it.

Also, one of my pet-peeves is when someone touches my monitor with their finger, or worse, the tip of a pen. It drives me crazy! So I don't think I'll ever be happy with a touchscreen monitor for normal work.

But I do have a small android phone and recently got and fell in love with my Nexus 7. However I've come to this conclusion: touch-screens are great for entertainment devices, but for most real work, you need a keyboard and decent monitor.

Well, in my world, "real work" tends to be using things like answering emails, using Excel and typing code (SQL, Python, VBA, etc.). Typing a long email on my little phone is ridiculous, but it's sure handy in a pinch and for monitoring my email when I'm away. But even on my Nexus, where I have the "hackers keyboard" (a "must" because it shows numbers at the same time as letters and has a tab key), an "Office Suite", GNU Octave, and can even ssh to other computers, it's still not very easy to do productive work. A spreadsheet on a touch screen is hard to use, and typing out python code via ssh is something you only want to do for a quick fix. The only real work thing I do with any frequency on my Nexus is answering emails, and even those tend to be short. For longer emails, I've actually hooked up an external keyboard to it.

Now at work I recently got a new computer. Because I've taken up cycling and bike-commuting, I wanted a smaller computer (my last laptop was this HP Workstaion behemoth that always brought chuckles as I brought it into a meeting because it was so huge). But because I do virtualization, I wanted an i7 processor. Among those options at work, the only one that matched that was one of the Lenovo "convertables"... laptop by day, then swivel and pivot into a tablet by night. It even has a little stylus for precision work. Now this was cool when I first got it but since that first day, I haven't pivoted it into a tablet again.

Now, as for my Nexus 7, it's been a fun little computing device. It's great because it's light and fits in my trunk bag on my bike. It also decent for browsing the web and looking things up. I also use it a lot for reading (more than I thought I would, but I just bought a bunch of my O'Reilley books for $4.99), and for playing audio books as I go to sleep at night (there's an app that will stop the player after some specified time, which is great for picking up where it left off).

So all said, I love my 7" tablet but it's not really that great for serious work, and I really doubt a larger tablet would be much better. For real work in my world, I need a keyboard, multiple windows, and a mouse.

But that's just my case and experience. That said, I do want to go to a store and play with the 10" Nexus, but I doubt I'll buy one. In the 10-11 inch size, I'm much happier with my little Acer Netbook... it's nearly as portable, but has a keyboard. But then that leaves me with 4 main computing devices in my personal space.

Note: if I had been on my Nexus, this post would have been much, much shorter.

Re:laptop woes

[hairyfeet]

Actually it was built for Win 7 unixsc,, which is why you have to pretty much use automatic in win 8 since metro don't have a taskbar. Give it a try, i bet your users will love the hell out of you for it. Like I said its pretty much set and forget, auto mode detects keystrokes and turns off the touchpad as long as they are typing so they really don't have to do anything once you've installed it, it'll turn the touchpad on when not typing and off when typing, couldn't be easier.

hell I liked it so much i installed it on my win 7 netbook, works like a charm and keeps me from blowing a blood vessel because as you know on those 12 inch netbooks there isn't a lot of room between the keyboard and the touchpad and I was bumping the damned thing constantly. with touchfreeze i never even have to think about it, I start typing in word or a website anjd i can brush against the touchpad all day long and nothing happens. HTH.

Re:laptop woes

[unixisc]

Oh thanks. That's been the biggest pain in my office. I'll try it & let ya know

Re:laptop woes

[unixisc]

Tried it. It works. Thanks!

Re:laptop woes

[hairyfeet]

You are welcome and any time you run into another weird head scratcher feel free to just drop me an email, the address is in my UID. Working in the shop i run into those "little niggling problems" all the time so I usually have some free little tool for this or that problem.

Re:laptop woes

[the_saint1138]

For Windows 7:
Start Menu -> Right Click "Computer" -> "Manage" -> Device Manager (under system tools) -> Mice and other pointing devices -> Right click on your laptop's touchpad and click "Disable".

Make sure you've got another mouse to control the computer with after doing this :)
Hope that helps!

Re:laptop woes

[gregorthebigmac]

If you used Linux, you could disable the trackpad, and you wouldn't even have to open a console to do it, if you used Ubuntu. It's right there in system settings. Proprietary Windows software stopping you from using linux? Run windows on a VM inside Ubuntu. It's incredibly easy.

Re:laptop woes

[unixisc]

Actually, that was one of the first things I tried - didn't work! Touchfreeze worked once I installed it. I don't mind the touchpad itself - I just want it out of the way when I'm typing.

The Old School way of handling this

[RobertLTux]

if somebody tries to touch your screen with Naked Fingers you pull out your slide rule quickly calculate the need strike force and then SNAP THEIR HANDS OFF AT THE WRIST (with your slide rule of course)

seriusly this is why they have those very cheap styluses

Trackpads

[Rational]

It's possible that touch screens are an improvement over the unspeakably shit trackpads most laptops come with. The same isn't necessarily true for Macs. My personal guess, though, is that Hollister is just trolling.

Raise your hand

[jamesl]

All commenters who have used a Windows 8 or Windows RT touchscreen, raise your hand ... I thought so. Until you've spent some time (real time, like a few days) with a Windows 8/RT device, you're just speculating.

Windows 8/RT touchscreen computers (Surface, laptop) are far better devices than Windows 7 laptops with touchpads or those silly eraser things. And once you've spent some time with Windows 8 touchscreen, you'll not want to go back.

And for those unhappy with typing on a screen, get rid of all your iPhones and Androids.

This comment written on a Surface RT.

Re:Raise your hand

[Tapewolf]

And for those unhappy with typing on a screen, get rid of all your iPhones and Androids.

Mine has a rather nice keyboard.

Re:Raise your hand

[jbonomi]

And once you've spent some time with Windows 8 touchscreen, you'll not want to go back.

I agree with the sentiment, I'll not consider buying a laptop without a touch screen after my experiences. In addition to Windows 8, I'd love to try KDE's Plasma Active, but I haven't been able to get it to run on my machine yet.

That settles it then

[john82]

If that heralded sage of technology, user experience and public reaction Sean Hollister of Verge says touchscreen laptops are a success, who am I to argue? After all, how often was Jobs right about those things? And Sean Hollister has been a tech writer for what, two weeks?

Not a bad idea

[Monoman]

Touchscreens on laptops will probably take off because the trackpads and the little rubber pointers are cumbersome to many folks. I don't know if the touchscreen will replace them but it will definitely improve the overall experience.

If you already own a tablet

[tepples]

I think the point was supposed to be that if you already own a tablet, you don't have to buy a netbook.

Re:If you already own a tablet

[hazem]

I've had a 11" netbook that I've been using all summer and really enjoyed it. I took up bike-commuting and it's great having a small computer I could take to work and to class.

I also recently got a Nexus 7 tablet. And I love it! It's even handier to carry around on my bike and is great for general entertainment.

But for getting any kind of work done (the kind of work I do anyway... Excel, SQL, VBA, Python), I really need a keyboard.

When I'm out on my bike or flying somewhere, the small tablet is awesome and a great way to do things like keep up on my email, mess around on the web, look things up, etc. But if I had to only have one, I'd give up the tablet and keep the netbook. Just too much of what I do, even in entertainment, requires typing a lot - and typing all those odd characters that don't show up by default on a tablet's virtual keyboard.

If you think of them as tools, they're really designed for different jobs. One can be used in place of the other, but neither does well replacing the other.

That's why I own a netbook

[tepples]

If I have the base of my 13 laptop sticking into my abdomen such that my ribs are hanging over it [...] I can get the screen a little past vertical

Which is exactly why I bought a 10 inch laptop instead of a 13 inch laptop.

Re:Its stupid on a laptop or desktop

[recoiledsnake]

Wow, what's up with prolific posters like you and BMO getting facts so wrong but still getting modded up? Slashdot has gone into full retard mode.

Re:Before the eight-hate arrives, I just want to s

[tepples]

When I say "use", I don't mean "try", I mean actually used it for day-to-day tasks for a couple weeks. Not "poked one in the mall and didn't know how to do everything right away, so I gave up,"

So must people spend half a thousand dollars on a product before being allowed to say anything about it? If so, Slashdot discussions are about to get lonely.

or worse yet, "saw a picture or video online and haven't even tried one in person."

For me, with some products, it's occasionally more like "I tried to try one in person but none of the three stores I was in had one in their showroom."

Discontinued

[tepples]

I don't care about their not caring.

You will when you can't buy a replacement for a broken device because the manufacturer has discontinued it in favor of a higher-margin product because nobody else bought one. Look at how laptop makers have dropped their 10" laptop product lines over the past two years. Even ASUS, which pioneered the category with the Eee PC, discontinued it in September of this year. You do end up with "no choice at all".

Re:Discontinued

[Pentium100]

But the alternative is to use what the others are using and getting no choice at all even faster. At least now I could still find my UMPC - I didn't have to buy a tablet or a touch phone. Maybe when my N5 breaks beyond repair I will either have to buy a tablet/touch phone or an old N5, but for now I had this choice.

Glossy screen.

[csumpi]

I looked at a bunch of laptops recently while shopping for an upgrade to my current one.

The touch screens are really cool. For example the Yoga from Lenovo is a beautiful, well designed laptop with solid build. Probably the laptop with the best design and build quality right now. I agree with the article that touch is an additional way of interaction, not a replacement of touchpad/mouse.

However there is one major flaw with the touch screen laptops: they all have glossy screens. No anti glare coating magic removes the harsh reflections. Without sitting in a pitch dark room, they are pretty much useless for any type of serious work.

What's wrong with gorilla arms?

[De_Boswachter]

There's nothing wrong with gorilla arms! http://tinyurl.com/dancing-ballmer

Maybe Apple's story would be different if...

[divisionbyzero]

they had an OS that would work with a touchscreen on a laptop. OS X isn't really a touch OS. As OS X and iOS merge look for the story to change to: "We've cracked the interface problem with touchscreen laptops! Now go buy our latest laptops with touchscreens!" I am not knocking Apple but that's the historical pattern.

Touch screen laptop = touchtop?

[butchfoote]

Will this create a new class of devices? I think so. Touchtops should also have a removable "touch tablet" when you don't need the keyboard and connector platform.

Here's when it makes the most sense

[MrEdofCourse]

Sitting with a computer in my lap, or even on my desk, I feel no desire to reach out and touch the screen... not with a decent gesture based trackpad like the one on my MacBook.

However, standing over the shoulder of someone, it makes perfect sense to touch the screen as opposed to push them out of the way to use their trackpad. It also makes sense sometimes standing over your own computer, especially when demonstrating something to people.

Here's the thing, other than cost, there really isn't much downside to adding this functionality, and the cost may not be that significant, so why not add it?

Re:Here's when it makes the most sense

[csumpi]

Only until the next MBP and iMac comes with a touch screen. Then you'll be here telling us that Apple finally cracked touch screen laptops and desktops, how it revolutionized your life, mobile computing (again) and the milky way (a first time ever for mankind).

Re:Every 7" iPad mini *does* come with sandpaper!

[csumpi]

Wow. Thanks for explaining that.

I have another one for you. SJ also said that the 3.5" screen was the perfect size for a phone. But when the original droid came out three years ago, I thought the extra .5" and higher resolution made a HUGE difference. Now Apple also has a 4" high res screen (translate: retina 4). Any insights on that?

While you're at it, since my wife got a Samsung GS3, it seems to me that the extra .8" (4"->4.8") makes an even HUGER difference. Thoughts on that?

If you don't want to stop there, the phone on my wish list is the Samsung Note 2, with a 5.5" screen and a stylus. Any explanations to the +1.5" and stylus, or are these all failed products until Apple finds the perfect size? What is it going to be? 4.7"? 4.85"? 5.35"? 5.65"? And what about the name for the stylus? The magic stick? The magic brush? The infinity pen?

Uses for a touchscreen laptop ..

[dgharmon]

Zoom in, pan left-right-up-down. Moving your arms from keyboard-to-screen-and-back-again is tiring ..

don't know what planes you're flying on...

[Chirs]

The economy flights that I've been on barely have enough room to fit the laptop (with screen closed) on the tray. There is ZERO room to open up the screen and tilt it back far enough to read comfortably (at least not with my 14" one....maybe with a smaller screen it might be possible).

Your problem, not ours

[SuperKendall]

So I need to wear accessories just to implement the newest fad tech to be pushed down our throats

Touch screens are hardly being pushed down OUR throats. They are what most people prefer.

If you are not one of those people, obvious discomfort will result - so you just need to figure out how best to handle that in your own life, with a good option NOT being the grinch-like attitude that if something bothers you no-one should have it.

There has got to be some way that touch screens could be rendered useful to you.

Re:Your problem, not ours

[Knight of Shadows]

Never underestimate one's ability to make it someone else's problem. And by 'people', you actually mean 'sheeple'. And no, there does not 'got to be' a way that touch screens could be rendered useful for me, unless it is to shove them up the ass of those that believe so, and give our proctologists a giggle. I find the entire concept ridiculous, as I do most of today's attempts to indoctrinate our young to 'indispensable' technology that does nothing to improve the human condition, and only serves to generate money for corporate slime-balls, and turn human beings into automatons serving the wills of their corporate masters. As for a grinch-like attitude, it serves me a hell of a lot better than blindly following those that have failed to raise the bar for us as a species, and leave said bar rusting in the shit and mud that is the norm for the human race. Please report to the nearest Soylent Green manufacturing facility for immediate processing.

Newton

[J05H]

Steve Jobs on the Apple Newton MessagePad 2000, "If it doesn't have a trackball it's not a computer. Kill it."

Re:Its stupid on a laptop or desktop

[Dynedain]

Simultaneously? That's either a really big screen or some impressive contortionist skills.

Manipulation Vs Selection

[zacherynuk]

Touch screens are nice; especially on EPOS systems. However, a true compliment to a keyboard and mouse would be a touch-less screen; the mouse and keyboard already do 2D perfectly. What we need is a 3D controller which does not rely on contact. a controller we can use on desktops, laptops, multiple - projectors - head mounted displays and everything in between. Hell, we could use it with an android phone, streaming to your TV - something like leap motion. http://leapmotion.com/

Re:After using my Surface I keep touching my monit

[jbonomi]

This has been my experience as well. I got a Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13, and after 3 days I seemed to take touch for granted. I mostly use it as a regular laptop, but some things, like scrolling a web page or a document, are just easier and more intuitive with touch. I guess you could call me a believer. I'll never buy a non-touch laptop again, whether for work or play.

Speaking as a laptop user...

[Tastecicles]

...Yes, he was wrong. I'm typing this on my Panasonic Toughbook CF-M34 which has a (pitifully small) touchscreen as well as netbook-sized keyboard. Over the past decade or so all I've wanted has been and continues to be a full-sized laptop, nay desktop replacement, with a fucking TOUCHSCREEN.

I don't want to have to go Surface for what I want, not least because I don't want a keyboard module that splits after a month. I don't want a tablet, I've got a tablet and you know what I use that for? It's the UI for a jukebox cabinet in my living room. I want a LAPTOP with a TOUCHSCREEN.

And contactless gesturing (Kinect has this, some of the smartest smart TVs have this, why is this not standard laptop tech yet??). And built in 3G (iPad has this in the bag, but for prior art look to Panasonic - most of their Toughbooks have built in GSM modems). And Bluetooth AS STANDARD. In most low-to-mid range laptops this isn't even an optional extra - you have to plug in a USB wart and pray it works. Global positioning? If they can fit this into a PHONE they can fit it into a LAPTOP. Can I start on very high definition screens? Or shall I just leave that to manufacturing constraints (the fact that most laptop panels are made using the same fabrication processes and even the same production lines, as HDTV panels so that's just a cost-saving measure on the part of Samsung et. al)? Hell for that matter, let's have a DAB/DVB tuner in there - if they can fit that on a USB wart (of which I have several examples) they can find an inch of space to fit it inside a laptop chassis.

Touch screens are great!

[pwileyii]

I had a touch screen netbook with Windows 7 on it and I loved it. I found myself trying to use the touch features on non touch surface (my other computer at home and my work computer) only to be disappointed when it didn't work. Unfortunately, the netbook was slow and not really up to par with what I wanted, so I opted for a less feature rich and less useful Android tablet. Since then, I've wanted to go back, but I cannot justify the cost. On a laptop or desktop computer, touch is NOT a replacement for the keyboard, although it is could be a replacement for the mouse if the applications are designed with a touch screen in mind.

We large fingered Folks

[slimepit]

I use a stylus. Solves my problems. Beaucoup Dinky Dow in the Tropical Alaskan Interior. Stylus even works with gloves. Icing up is the real problem this time of year. Minus 35 degrees.

cost convenience etc

[hicksw]

... If Cheetos is supposed to be a problem with touch screen, then why doesn't anyone backtrack that thinking to the keyboards?

Maybe because crap USB keyboards cost a dollar or two, and can be hot-swapped when then cheeto-out. Try that with your touchscreen.

You've got the wrong end of it

[dbIII]

I'm referring to the "citation needed" idiot that came later - as should have been obvious.
I don't care what other baggage you've got. I wrote what I wrote and nothing else.

Re:You've got the wrong end of it

[Dogtanian]

I'm referring to the "citation needed" idiot that came later - as should have been obvious.

That wasn't as obvious as it should have been, but now that you've made it clear, I accept your point. However...

Considering that it's a reply to an unbacked up and frankly obviously false assertion of only 13 people buying the thing I think the "citation needed" comment does deserve contempt.

I still think attacking the literal joke instead of the underlying implication is rather missing the point. Of course the figure of 13 is "obviously false", it's an exaggerated *joke*, so that in itself proves nothing. It would make more sense to have attacked the underlying point that was being made humorously (that the original Transformer supposedly sold poorly), but... whatever.

Re:You've got the wrong end of it

[dbIII]

I didn't attack the joke but instead the citation needed idiot, here it is again and leave your own baggage out of it:

Considering that it's a reply to an unbacked up and frankly obviously false assertion of only 13 people buying the thing I think the "citation needed" comment does deserve contempt.

"Obviously false" is not incompatible with "lame attempt at humour via obvious lie". The joke was OK, the idiot that demanded proof as if the joke was real and anything contradicting the joke need proof was not IMHO, then the utter tool that then questioned the citation given is one step beyond. That is why I responded, and your autistic baggage (along with the weasel "not that I'm saying you are" bullshit) can go back into the realms of fantasy where it came from.

Ah Americans

[boley1]

Ah Americans.

+1