Do You Wanna Touch

Inexorable reductionism: We will eventually all be using computers implanted in our bodies that integrate with our visual cortex and sensory nervous system. ETA: Within the next 20 years.

Absolutely no reference to Ender’s Game in any of these comments? Unbelievable. Well, anyhow, Card called that shit. I’m now hooked to your blog, btw. Great reviews.

Do you find the missing Context/Right-Click key on the keyboard cover problematic? I use it a lot on my lap/desptop but maybe this is a different enough experience that it isn’t an issue? I have only tried it in store so far.

I love the written word, and I love the IBM Model M keyboard. I haven’t yet tried a tablet, but I have an Android $ell phone and I -hate- it.

My opinion based on few months experience using Windows 8 as an accountant- in the context working with office documents using MS Office 2013, mostly data crunching in excel :

Touch UI looks cool and simpler, but when you start to work with it, all those glitches look redundant. Touch inputs happened for few minutes only (to open program, data, and preparation) but after that you spent hours working with keyboard and mouse.

For eq. how can you make all MS Excel functions become touch based? How to replace F2 to edit a formula? How to choose the table format? Finger touch is too crude to select those tiny icons in Ribbon interface. Ribbon already eats a lot of vertical working space in low res 14" screen (1366X768 - this resolution i believe already common for most enterprise-wide deployment). This is worsened by fact that all screen aspect become vertically narrower these days (moving from 4:3 to 16:10, and now 16:9).

Of course you can always turn off this Ribbon-interface, but it will negates all its ease-usability and purpose (I am quite comfortable with them now, it just need some learning curve). I cannot help thinking MS will change the UI by enlarging those already-cluttered icons, which eventually will eat even more space. This situation is really a mess and unpractical. I think they have to redesign the ribbon and core UI altogether. Thats A LOT of things to do.

For office documents manipulation, especially for MS Excel and Word, using mouse and keyboard are still the king. As long as Microsoft cannot make their Office UI become adaptive to touch based input in such a way that enable us to work faster and more natural compare to mouse-keyboard input, they can forget about notebook and desktop with touch functionality.

The company which could see things right is, ironically, Apple. They first introduce high res screen in notebook (Macbook Pro Retina) and they still holds on 16:10 screen aspect ratio. It make ribbon interface look beautiful and working with large tables become such a joy experience. And they stick with the philosophy that touch interface in notebook and desktop is still not in its prime-time, at least for now. The downside is higher enterprise-wide deployment cost compare to MS in term of hardware and software.

If it doesn’t have a keyboard, I feel that my thoughts are being forced out through a straw.

This opinion assumes that the keyboard is the only relevant way to input text on a device. I think that the keyboard have reached evolutionary dead-end too. The only reason they are still present is that they are so common and widespread and they are very easy to learn.

But imagine some other ways to input text that we probably will see in near future:

  • voice input which works in a noisy environment like in public transport
  • hand and face gestures (like in deaf language for example) – using Kinect like device
  • some kind of shorthand or steno keyboard on the back of the tablet (still using keyboard but it small and is out of sight)

If there is a company which succeed to implement some of the above in an easy to learn way the keyboard will go in history.

No I do not want to touch. I have very sensitive skin. I can handling pushing buttons but rubbing things gives me significant pain within about 15 seconds. I can type and move a mouse although that can become painful. Rubbing is simply off limits. I have a stylus and that works sort of but it is not the same as touching. I wish this whole rubbing/touching technology thing would just go away. I don’t want to be in pain.