I Can Not Help But Be Touched

Rip is skeptical that multi-touch in PCs is going anywhere.  (See Multi-Touch: Not the Future and Touch-A Touch-A Touch Me for the specifics.)

Personally, I’m more bullish, though I’ll admit my thoughts on the matter are no doubt influenced by my membership in the relatively small set of people that have embraced the tablet PC.  My Lenovo X61T works by touch as well as by stylus, and touch works well in the tablet format, because you’re holding the computer in both hands anyway—touching the screen is as natural as writing on paper.  I don’t use it all the time—the stylus works better for detail work.  But I definitely use it, and I find it comes pretty naturally.

So why do I think touch has a place outside of the tablet world? 

Ultimately, I think it’s going to depend on the person and the application.  Personally, when I’m at my desk, I use large LCD displays, and place them close and below my sightline.  My monitor is no farther from me right now than is my keyboard, and it’s closer than the mouse is.  Touch would definitely be an option with my layout.  If your display is five feet away from you across the desk, on the other hand, you’re unlikely to use touch at all.  As far as applications go, there are some usage scenarios for which touch could be great.  Scrolling around in Picasa.  Sitting next to someone reviewing a PowerPoint document (the addition of a stylus to this scenario makes it work even better.  Using LiquidTV, Nero’s TiVo interface software for the PC.  Some games—Bejeweled 2 is fantastic using touch on a tablet.  Web browsing, a la Safari on the iPhone..  Many scenarios that requires occasional rather than continuous mouse input can work as well or better via touch, depending on who you are and how your workspace is configured.

Windows 7 will be touch enabled, and Microsoft is making a big push into the touch space with both W7 and the Surface technology.  Apple is also pushing this interface paradigm, thought they are taking a hybrid approach, supporting multi-touch gestures through the touch pad on their laptops.  Touch displays are not incrementally expensive , and they are going to get cheaper.  Displays are also getting larger and cheaper—you can buy a nice 25 inch display for around $400 today—which allows on-screen controls to be proportionally larger, making touch interaction with them easier.  Ultimately, the marginal cost will be so low that I expect we will see touch incorporated into all but the cheapest notebooks and displays whether you think you need it or not.  Because touch can emulate mouse movement, it doesn’t require explicit developer support, and as the hardware becomes more common, we’ll see dedicated touch support incorporate when it’s appropriate.  I don’t think touch will ever replace the keyboard or mouse, but I expect we’ll ultimately see all of these interface paradigms co-existing along with voice input (which will also continue to improve and become more ubiquitous).  Certainly I hope that’s what will happen anyway.  There is utility to touch that I think people will benefit from, once it gains traction, right up until the day the computers rebel and enslave us all.