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'Gorilla Arm' Will Keep Touch Screens From Taking Over
Hugh Pickens writes "With Windows 8, Microsoft has made a billion-dollar gamble that personal computing is taking a new direction and that new direction is touch, says David Pogue. It's efficient on a touchscreen tablet. But Microsoft expects us to run Windows 8 on our tens of millions of everyday PCs. Although touch has been incredibly successful on our phones, tablets, airport kiosks and cash machines, Pogue says touch will never take over on PCs. The reason? Gorilla Arms. There are three big differences between tablet screens and a PC's screen: angle, distance and time interval. The problem is 'the tingling ache that [comes] from extending my right arm to manipulate that screen for hours, an affliction that has earned the nickname of gorilla arm.' Some experts say gorilla arm is what killed touch computing during its first wave in the early 1980s but Microsoft is betting that Windows 8 will be so attractive that we won't mind touching our PC screens, at least until the PC concept fades away entirely. 'My belief is that touch screens make sense on mobile computers but not on stationary ones,' concludes Pogue. 'Microsoft is making a gigantic bet that I'm wrong.'"
It hurts like hell to use a touch screen for hours.
I use my iPad regularly for work, for extended periods of time sometimes. As an extremely portable platform, it isn't all that bad for typing larger amounts of text, though it is not ideal. I've tried using it as a mini laptop by standing it upright and using a Bluetooth keyboard. That's the setup that Microsoft envision, apparently. And you know what? Turns out the thing that I've been missing most on my iPad when using it standalone for typing/drawing isn't a keyboard. It's a mouse, or at least a trackpad. A mouse offers precision and speed; no click and hold necessary since a mouse has buttons. A touchscreen is more useful on other cases perhaps, but or a lot of common tasks it can't beat a mouse.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The biggest problem I have with my Galaxy Tab is sites that rely on mouse over messages and mouse over drop down menus. Since there is no mouse cursor, I can't activate the message or drop down. nfl.com is a good example of this. You can navigate to "scores" easily but getting to "standings" is problematic. All of the sites that rely on a mouse cursor or Flash can be rebuilt to support tablets but I'm not sure this is an improvement.
The lack of mouse over messages is a problem with icons as well. If I don't know what an ambiguous icon does, the only way to find out is to poke the icon or wade through documentation.
Stop propagating the myth Steve Jobs started that few people bother to test first hand.
Here's some articles from people who actually USED Windows 8:
Surprisingly, touchscreen laptops don't suck
Touchscreens and the Myth of Windows 8 ‘Gorilla Arm’
Nope. Sorry, but you're wrong. I'm fairly fit, if less fit than I was 20 or 30 years ago. I routinely perform "strenuous" labor. And, I've done so all my life. Arms simply aren't designed, or meant to be held out in an extended position for long periods of time. If I exert myself, I can lift a fifty pound sack of feed, and hold it out at arm's length. It isn't going to stay there very long, because the entire body is entirely off balance, and the arms are straining to hold it there.
Almost 40 years ago, a high school shop teacher challenged some of the jocks to hold a broom out at arm's length, and extended in a horizontal position. They held it there for only short periods of time, like 15 to 45 seconds. Big, strong boys, who were the epitomy of health. Most of the time, the wrist gave out first, sometimes it was the elbow.
I've tried this at work. Half a dozen guys standing around, nice examples of healthy human specimens, I challenge them to hold a broom out. Carpenters generally do better than others, but even though they have developed quite strong wrist muscles, I've never seen anyone hold that broom out, level and steady, for more than 90 seconds.
We simply aren't built to hold our arms out horizontally for long periods of time. That is why metro-type GUI's will never replace more traditional desktop environments. That is why the Linux world has forked Gnome2, and many of us simply abandoned Gnome3.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
We have the monitor sitting where it does because it is easy and non-stressful to look at. You keep your neck in a neutral position and can see what you are doing. Your mouse and keyboard are then on the desk for the same reason with regards to your hands. If I move the monitor down to the desk, I'll suffer from neck and back pain in a hurry, because I'll be working hunched over.
Also, if you make your input and output device the same device, then you have the problem that your hands are blocking a large part of your output device. My keyboard is pretty large and my hands block off most of it from view when I type. Why would I want to do that with a display?
You could have two displays, but then the question is again why. Keyboards are mice offer excellent tactile feedback because they are physical devices. I can touch type at 80wpm+ on a physical keyboard, literally with my eyes closed. I can't come anywhere near that on a touchscreen.
Touchscreens are useful only in some situations, mainly where you have a limited amount of space and as such your display and input devices need to be the same. There is just no reason to want them on the desktop. They are more expensive, and less usable, than what we already have.
I think people forget that touchscreens are NOT new. They've been around for a long time, yet there's been no interest in bringing them to desktop computing on a large scale. There are plenty of reasons for it, ergonomics top among them.
Sorry for the double reply, but I'm getting really annoyed by people who make the distinction between "apps" and "programs". There's no difference at all. The word "app" is a shortening of "application", i.e. what Mac OS calls a program, or executable. Apps are not inherently small, or less fully featured things than programs, it just happened that the first platform to call them "apps" all the time lent itself to small programs, not giant ones.
You will find that the right side of the keyboard contains a wide variety of layouts, not only in different regions of the world but also within a single country. Referring to key by its location is pretty risky, whereas referring to it by name seems to work for most people.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.