All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors
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Kids will be down with touchscreen PCs
WE MIGHT be getting buried in tablet PCs and mobile devices with touchscreens already, but the IT marketplace soothsaying firm Gartner has proclaimed that this is just the beginning.
The company says that children will pick up on the technology ahead of the business world, and that more than 50 per cent of PCs purchased for children under the age of 15 will have touchscreens.
This is because kids will be brought up on the technology thanks to the increase in touchscreen devices on the market, and they will want the same experience on their PCs and other devices for school and play.
If that sounds like a circular argument, that kids will get touchscreen devices because they'll be used to them, it is. But Gartner never lets a little thing like begging the question get in the way of its forecasts.
But businesses will be quite a bit slower at using touch-enabled devices, according to Gartner, thanks to our reliance on an old-style of typing on something that we call a keyboard and our use of silly thing called a mouse.
There's a whole load of applications in the enterprise that won't have touch technology enabled, and it's unlikely that bosses will be persuaded of a business case where touch is worthwhile in the foreseeable future.
But as the kids get older and become the leaders of tomorrow, who knows what the future will bring? It's hard to imagine a business PC without a keyboard or mouse, but nothing is certain.
Change is fast, very fast. It was only a few years ago that we didn't have Facebook, and 20 years ago very few people expected to see everyone having mobile phones. But look at us today. µ
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Thanks for the info, though. Having a verifiable 40+ million key strokes, I think about this now and then. One solution I'd like to see is a key pad for left hand having just arrow and w/p keys -- those exist but only in number pad form, which I don't like, requires too much mental mapping. Theory is that more left hand motion would ease my own nuisance. I've tried the mouse over there (thinking possibly a second), don't like it, too deep a habit.
I'm afraid there's no good substitute for typing on an actual keyboard, that's why it's lasted more than a hundred years as THE input method.
I have reviewed a number of touchscreen input devices for desktop PCs (i.e. monitors) including the very responsive Iiyama ProLite T2250MTS. Even browsing around the desktop and navigating the internet is a chore if you have to reach over your desk and grub-up your monitor. It is far more efficient and natural to use a keyboard and mouse for most things - that's why I found that I was reaching for the mouse quite often even though I had a touchscreen infront of me.
I think that touchscreens can be a nice complement to our existing computer input devices, but they should by no means replace them. The thought of the business leaders and academics of tomorrow being unable to type using a keyboard makes me shudder. Short of mindreading I really don't think anything will replace a device whose practical purpose is soley (or once was) typing; the QWERTY keyboard.
And try FPS gaming without a mouse. Poor experience.
I'm testifying. I can't type, but with a carefully arranged PC setup, I can use the Fitaly text layout on a touchscreen - with soft touch stylus - all or most of the day and night.
Work setup, screen is about 20 cm from my face, Fitaly is hovered (trickily) on a right-side-of-screen fat Windows taskbar just at elbow-on-desk hand height. And I have a folded towel for a mat under each arm.
At home, a slate tablet (Samsung Q1) most of the time - but it is liable to cause neck strain if you're looking down at a screen all the time.
The most comfortable and accurate deployment I've had was one of the original Tablet PCs with a magic pen that moves the cursor around WITHOUT touching the screen, and having rather worn t!out the switch in the tip, I found that I could point to letters but use a separate trackball peripheral for the clicking - or a mouse, but trackballs have a more varied and convenient set of buttons.
Currently, I hear, one of the better rated desktop touchscreen designs uses electric eyes around the screen rim to detect where you're pointing without contact being made; I'd like to try that. And it'd be worth paying out for a speak-your-keystrokes program, too; it's not that I can't see when I've gone wrong, usually, but audible confirmation of keys would still pay off. I once tried something called Sound Pilot that was pretty good. I think I recorded my own keys, but that may have been a separate effort...
Future will be Worse than Past. Try "Mad Max" or "Running Man". If you enjoy working 24/7, you'll be happy in the mines, until you drop and are tossed alive into the Soylent Green hopper.
Anyhoo, to the topic: Can't imagine that anyone finds a touchscreen usable if have problems from a keyboard. Sure, it's different which helps for a while,
but jamming fingers onto unyielding glass is only going to worsen problems.
Same principle holds for all touchscreen use, soon becomes painful.
But worse, as mentioned above, this trend will effectively dumb-down communication by a large degree, besides reduce the range of options. You'll have a few menu choices, and that's it. Overall, it fits well with the limitedw words of Newspeak; you'll be able to form any possible sentence with menu choices, but can't express anything outside of the allowed.
Virtual keyboards = absolutely pointless. Keyboards are all about tactile feedback. See those nice little home-row nubs on your F and J? Yeah, they're to center your fingers so you don't need to even look at your keyboard to begin typing. There would be absolutely no point in a "virtual keyboard" if you have to look at your fingers to type.
Touchscreen monitors = extremely limited use. Yes, they're made for kiosks because kiosks feature information limited interfaces. Do you think you'll be doing much with your fingers in the way? Even on those IPhones, half of the interaction is moving your thumb/fingers away so you can see what is beneath. Touchscreens are also inaccurate, and many people won't even want to lift their arms that much to poke at the screens.
What you'll see "new" out of this "touchscreen revolution" are interfaces like Microsoft's Surface, where you can organize things with your hands or such like you're at a "real" desktop. They'll be flat surfaces so you don't need to hold your arms up and nice for things like drawing or organization.
However, don't expect them to ever replace the keyboard for real work. Maybe Gartner will idiotically proclaim that audio and video will replace all reading. That'll be the end of civilization...
Sure I want to sit so close to my screen as to be able to manipulate it. Wrong. I will remain in a more relaxed manner using the mouse, keyboard and voice.
So I have a touchscreen provided at work. If that's what you need to have to participate, you'll get it.
This is the twenty-first century. Windows Vista includes speech recognition in all editions. And the hardware is up to the speed requirement. As for your smart-phone, well, it's a phone; it should be able to call up a device elsewhere that can understand what you're saying, if it can't be done onboard. For your information, I CAN'T type any more, not for longer than a minute; years of the work have damaged my hands and forearms permanently. In fact I mainly use a key substitute called Fitaly but the point stands.
you don't need one if you just want to be driven where someone else want to take you.
I agree with Gene Mosher, with the reference to POS (Point of Sales).
I disagree with the article, to an extent, not about kids, but about adults not catching on as quick.
If you've ever worked at a restaurant or retail store, you've likely used touchscreens extensively. So, if old ladies working at McDonald's and bars and casinos, and department stores, across the world can navigate a touchscreen interface with minimal training, then they're more likely to pick up devices with touchscreens and big icons than fiddle around with mice and file menus. Sure, everyone that's old enough to have used a typewriter might feel comfortable with a keyboard, but their not all morons, they can type on a screen with a virtual keyboard, and something tells me if they're too electronically handicapped to know how to use their remote control and like big icons on their screen, they're probably not pumping out 130 words a minute on a keyboard anyway and will probably never complain that they're not able to get nanosecond twitch results while attempting headshots in a video game and will feel quite comfortable poking at large virtual keyboards with their fingers.
You don't need a keyboard to 10-finger type. Just train on a keyboard until someone invents a device that can read the movement of your fingers in a satisfactory fashion.
Jab your left pinky out that's an A, jab it a little differenty that's a Q, go in the opposite direction, that's a Z. The movements for different people would be slightly different, but that's why we have user profiles. Of course, if you have a movement disorder(like I do) you might want to add some sort of obvious motion to turn the typing feature on and off.
Interface - What is it, can it be bettered? Intuitive, easy, similar, are key points that for a good interface.
Multi-touch screens are nice and useful for some things.
Voice
I think voice is very underrated. I think if you combined voice with visual then it's a great interface. An updated mouse that can also be a wii-mote with a pressure sensor would be useful.
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Mobile Phone To Control And Interace With Everything
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I would like my mobile phone as my generic interface for all gadgets that I use. And I believe that's the future.
Apps store is in it's infancy, as the software and ideas increase we are probably going to see a revolution in interface tech.
Future:
Mobile phone apps that interface with our homes, cars, music, tv, work. The mobile phone will mean we can work 24/7, shop 24/7, be entertained 24/7.
If we are available 24/7 to earn, to pay tax and to spend then that's what commerce and government will want, so that's where we are headed!
Mobile Phone Apps:
Banking
Working
Shopping
Family Contact
Education
Administration
Car Control n Parking
If we make the phone the Clever Server and everything else a Dumb Terminal then we can also reduce the costs of other devices and use the Mobile Phone as our horsepower for everything else.
Home Router - That could be storage, smart-router type of device that interacts with fridge, oven, cooker, shop, delivery slot -to- cupboards, etc.
In the meantime we will pretty much carry on as normal and most of the future will be similar to what we have now, which is they way it's turned out. Because once you get to 40 you don't want change, you want the same.
I think a few of the people commenting have completely missed the mark. We already know touchscreen kiosks work well for their application. That is a no brainer. What this article is talking about is using a touchscreen input to completely replace the keyboard/mouse for general computing. I do feel that touchscreens are definitely the way to go, but we will continue to use the keyboard and mouse as well. There is still way too much that touchscreens will never quite work as well as with a traditional keyboard/mouse.
Having worked several hospitality jobs with touch screens, they are wonderful. Until someone wants something done custom, then you have to bring up the dreadful touchscreen keyboard, which is useless and attempt to describe the nature of the order. Often it's much easier to write directly on the bill with a pen.
The point is made that software written for a keyboard & mouse interface doesn't work well on a touchscreen, and vice versa. Why can't we have both?
If we are going to settle on a single interface, it will probably be this:
http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no,14299/
"Try ordering your breakfast with a word processor. It's absurd."
It is quite stupid comparison. You have to compare touch screen with other input methods like: mouse, keyboard, mind reading device... Text processor is an application; the software you use for ordering breakfast is also an application. But these 2 applications are made for different purposes.
And yes! you can order your breakfast with keyboard and/or mouse. You can even write: "I want the coffee super strong without sugar; served by hot blonde" It is harder to do that with touch screen.
As someone who designs and sells touchscreen point of sale and hospitality interfaces for the last 25 years I am absolutely certain that touchscreen technology will continue to replace keyboard/mouse input technology at an ever-increasing pace.
Touchscreen is the only input method that is suitable in many situations, including point of sale and hospitality. Most people don't need to be able to manipulate pixels with mice and we're long past the time when anyone would even consider using a keyboard to enter the same text over and over again in a hospitality or point of sale context.
Try ordering your breakfast with a word processor. It's absurd.
Touchscreens will continue to take over the various vertical markets as they have taken over many already. It's just a question of when.
that sounds suspiciously simular to the 1970s paperless world prediction.
As someone who programs touchscreen operator interfaces for a living, I am fairly confident that touchscreen technology won't replace keyboard/mouse anytime soon.
It works great for pointing and clicking big buttons on interfaces designed specifically for touchscreen use. But touchscreens are too imprecise for real work. Try editing a Word or Excel document by jabbing at the text with your finger. It's slow and haphazard unless you zoom way in.
The only viable solution for the precision problems is to use a stylus. If you're tethered to a stylus, what's the point? You've replaced one pointing object in you hand with another.