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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 doesn't need assistance from physiology. ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
So what large vertical desktop displays even have touch screens? Sounds like they are talking about hardware that shows absolutely no sign of happening.
Since you're on Slashdot, like me, you have no life and you probably eat lunch sitting at your desk with crap on your hands. I have no need to smear all that over my monitor. With tablets and phones, it's ok because you can grab a corner of your shirt and clean it off. I'm not going to flash my monitor to wipe off my burger grease.
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Why must we consider our input devices to be mutually exclusive? We didn't ditch the keyboard with the introduction of the mouse...
On the desktop I can see a touch screen complimenting my current setup - it won't replace my keyboard and mouse any time soon but I would certainly get some use along side them.
Never happened. True story.
I already get irate if someone feels the need to molest my screen with his greasy, grubby paws. Now these imbeciles should have an excuse for it? No way.
Seriously, that's more a reason to avoid touch screens at all cost more than gorilla arm syndrome could.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Except that Windows 8 has largely broken the existing interface.
I just bought a Windows 8 laptop without a touchscreen. Regardless of what the mindless hoards think, I realize that a touchscreen doesn't add to the usability of the computer for the tasks I wish to do. (FYI, I spent almost a decade designing and developing Point-Of-Sale software for touchscreen computers, so I have plenty of experience with them.)
It took only a few hours to realize that Windows 8 couldn't make up its mind about whether my gestures were intended to be a minor action (moving the pointer over an inch to press a button) or a new, major action (switching to the previous application). Before the end of the day, I wiped Win8 off of the machine and installed Win7. I won't "upgrade" unless and until Microsoft makes it reasonable to turn off the Metro interface.
For the time being, I'm more or less stuck running some version of Windows. If Microsoft continues to force its users to use "The Interface Formerly Known As Metro", I will either stick with Win7. If that becomes impractical, I'll switch to Linux.
While windows 8 is a mistake from user interface, it is only because it takes away choice. a simple service pack could easily fix those issues.
The correct approach would've been to make the Metro as an option; not a compulsory interface. A simple Service Pack will not fix the issues which MS has created.
MS created Bob, was it cured / rectified with a Service Pack?
MS imposed the 'ribbon' interface on Office users; many cringed and complained; but had to bite the bullet and be less productive.
If users are FORCED to use the Metro shit, and Developers build apps that are ONLY Metro enabled, then how can a Service Pack cure that ailment? In many situations, such as typing a post on Slashdot, the on-screen touch keyboard is no substitute for the real $1 thing that is attached to the PC. So the problem is too big and profound to be cured by a Service Pack. And seeing as Ballmer is stubborn in imposing this silliness and cutting off traditional interfaces; this will be the end of Windows totally in many situations.
Nobody is interested in making the hardware for Linux devices, but Google's Chrome-books are already making a big impact. The iPad and Android tablets have taken over the higher and lower ends of the touch based tablets market. MS has been driven out of the touch paradigm, and making it compulsory on the desktop will kill the desktop rather than create motivation for developers to build for the new interface that nobody wants on a desktop.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
No you can't.
Ribbon takes a layout which can fit a wide range of tools, and shrinks the total usable space, in the interest of - for some mysterious reason - drawing attention to the most common set of features which everyone uses, despite the fact that everyone already used them.
It does this at the cost of being able to keep multiple features on screen at once - with Ribbon I can't have styling and fonts, drawing, and reviewing all on screen at the same time whereas in Office 2003 I could and it worked perfectly well.
Instead with Ribbon I have to click between multiple tabs to reach the same features, all for the benefit of making - again - features I already knew existed and could easily access, bigger and more prominent.
This is a user-interface revamp so big you can make money selling products that give the old functionality back.
How does data showing the rates of use for various features winds up with the conclusion that you should less commonly used features even harder to access I will never know. Why not just delete them from your damn product if you think they're that unimportant? What they managed to do instead was sit down and say "I think our business users are not the core demographic which does productive work".
It's called using a 'mouse' and 'keyboard'. I touch both of them and the way I touch and move them controls what is on the screen. I need to use the screen on my tablet and phone because I'm not at my desk. What works well on the desktop doesn't work on the phone, it needed different input techniques. That doesn't mean those techniques work well on the desktop.
.. would I like a touch screen on my desktop? A little, most mouse-type devices are limited in movement to do things like rotate, although with the appropriate software it's possible, just not as intuitive. Most of screen manipulation is simply clicking, double/long clicking, or moving and mice cal already do that. They can also be used to zoom and swipe with the appropriate software. You can't right click a touch screen, although long clicking kinda sorta is the same thing I guess. Definitely can't middle click. It would be handy for media manipulation at times. But how is that going to work on my 72" HDTV??? I need the capability for both to use when I need to.
Now
And explain to me why you decided that bigger icons on my desktop were a good idea, especially since most of the time I have these things you call 'windows' up and can't really see any of them when they are active so what's the purpose?? I have dual monitors, and most of the time I have windows open on both and most of my desktop is hidden. I'm doing this thing called 'work'. The little pop-up notifications that pop-up then fade away work just fine and are much more useful.
Windows 8 is not on my list of upgrades. If you want me to upgrade, give me something that is a reason to upgrade, like runs faster. I don't care about boot or standby times, my PC is on 24x7 and I rarely reboot. In fact, the only time I reboot is when you need to install updates because you haven't figured out how to do that without rebooting, like UNIX has done for decades you idiots.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
If large vertical touchscreens are really usable for sustained periods of time, and if they really add something of substantial value to mouse point-and-click GUI's, I find it very, very hard to believe they wouldn't have already gained traction.
all you need to know is that large touch overlays can easily be more expensive than the display itself, at least as an add-on product. even if they have substantial utility, people won't buy it if it costs too much. Indeed, they do have substantial utility, but the cost benefit ratio is shit compared to a three dollar mouse.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Mount the screen at an angle. Recess it. Problem solved. Dell S2340T 23" Multi-Touch Monitor
"Why do we consider the monitor vertical to be the only way to position a monitor?"
Because while sitting at a desk it is extremely not ergonomic to be staring down to your keyboard or anything flat on your desk. That is why your monitors (should be) eye level, vertical and facing you.
Also that is why laptops are commonly complemented with external screens (also screen real estate), stands (so they cool better and they get into your eye-level zone) and external devices ( because a lot of laptops come with a crappy keyboard and a tiny touch pad - well, not MacBooks, but still I am typing on one with an external keyboard, 1080p screen and a touchpad )..
Tablets are great when you are on your sofa, lying down on the grass in the garden or in the hammock. Hey, even the toilet or the bus. As soon as you have to type long mail or document or write code: you are screwed with a virtual keyboard.
How does data showing the rates of use for various features winds up with the conclusion that you should less commonly used features even harder to access I will never know.
I agree - to show how useless the statistics are, consider the huge paste button, and the smaller cut and copy ones. Why is Paste so much bigger? Its because the statistics show that paste is used twice as often as copy, and twice as often as cut. Therefore its twice as important.....
I also hate that the Print button is hidden away off the ribbon, its a poorly designed interface. However, consider the bright spot in all this - Microsoft can change it, and then sell you another new version of Office! Another win for Microsoft...
It's not accurate. It's that Microsoft blindly follows metrics and doesn't care that it makes assumptions about them. I had a conversation with the UX designer of Windows 7 and he explained some of the decisions that went into Windows 8...
Full Screen as an example. The metrics told them that users spent 95% of their time "in full screen". By this I think he meant maximized. This is why metro apps are full screen. This seemingly minor distinction between maximized and full screen apparently means nothing to Microsoft, but has a lot of implications for the user.
Maximized you have access to a fair amount of information and control:
- Clock
- Start menu
- System tray icons (volume control, network status, battery state, IM messages, etc)
- Start bar (program state info [think Skype or file transfer progress], program switching control without the need to touch the keyboard, etc)
- Minimize/Exit control
- Desktop peek/minimize all
Full screen gives you the benefit of...
- maximized space for apps?
And what about the remaining 5% of the time?
I could go on but it's really pointless. Metro isn't about touch, it isn't about making more money on the next version of Windows. It's about apps. Microsoft wants a successful app store so that they get a piece of every software sale on their platform. They make apps "easier" to use (or access) than desktop "programs" and try to force people to convert. The more difficult they make it for open source software, the easier they make it to buy apps, the more money they will make without having to put in expensive hours developing a product.
You make it sound like Windows 8 is a stroke of marketing genius instead of a case of user interface design stupidity. I’ll put my money on stupidity.
There's actually quite a market for tablets, in case you haven't noticed.
That's a different market. Tablets are for content consumers. Mice and keyboards are for content producers.
Most of the people I see with tablets use them to read or view content, with only occasional interaction. When they start doing significant input, they invariably adapt some sort of keyboard/mouse combination to the tablet. With varying degrees of success.
The people doing significant content creation don't put up with mini keyboards and cheap track pads happily. There's still quite a market for the old IBM clicky keyboards among this group for a reason.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Remember Java Applets? They were smaller programs (typically, because bandwidth wasn't / isn't as plentiful as drive space), I called mine 'Java Apps' for short vs Java Programs or 'Enterprise Java Solutions', for... short... in Java terms. One could argue that "Apps" could be a shortened form of "Web Apps", a term I used long before Apple's "App Store" was created. "Web Apps" is shortened form (in my case) of "Java Web Site Applets" -- Applet itself inferring a smaller application, in the same sense that cigarette does in relation to cigar. Thus depending on who you're conversing with (in this case, me) "apps" and "programs" would mean different things -- The latter are typically smaller / less resource intensive than full applications, in my vernacular.
Language changes over time. I think it would be understandable if the commonly understood term for "app" ends up meaning a typically lighter-weight version of a program due to apps typically running in environments with less resources -- gee, just like the damned Applet, or "app" for short, eh? -- It's too bad Sun dropped the ball and didn't make Java Applets use a lean mean VM to save us from the cluster fsck that is HTML(5) + JS or Flash web apps.
I understand your frustration. We all know what you mean. It's just like when folks say "Our security got hacked by a hacker", but they mean their security was cracked by a cracker, who may or may not be a hacker... Life's too short to be "getting really annoyed" at anything. Besides all of that is, just like, your opinion, man.
The "Broken Window Fallacy" is about the overall economy, having windows to repair is good for the window repairer.