txt 17 notes
Apr 14th / Wednesday / '10

mice and the future

toldorknown:

By the time she hits high school, we’ll be making jokes about mice the same way we joke about punchcards today.

i hear this sentiment more and more these days, most often by people whose work does not absolutely require the use of a mouse. you know, you can’t select an exact pixel location with your finger unless you want to dedicate about 20+ seconds to it.

even with a stylus and a wacom tablet, i can’t mock something up this way unless i want to be as unproductive as possible. and as far as touch screens go, combining an ipad and wacom tablet will certainly not solve any of these issues.

i can’t create a complex print document with strict size/formatting specifications with my finger, unless i was a masochist. same for selecting many instances of text insertion in an HTML document. and even using a ‘pointer’ slightly offset from your finger is completely awkward.

my first official “internet technology prediction”: the mouse is not going to disappear anytime soon.

what do you guys think?

  1. johnholdun answered: Any pixel-precise work I do is roughed out with the mouse and then nudged with arrow keys; a nice touch system would be an improvement to me.
  2. dendroica answered: I think mice are becoming less common but will still be useful for some users for quite a while. Not everyone has a laptop or touch OS.
  3. erikg answered: No, but a lot of people are getting laptops to replace desktops, so it might just get relegated to computer specific jobs in the future.
  4. amwelles answered: I love using a mouse, especially when it does the way faster scrolling thing. Fuck trackpads/touchpads (for some things).
  5. toldorknown reblogged this from nikography and added:
    I think in the future you’ll find yourself using assorted gesture combinations to achieve just the pixel point accuracy...
  6. fetherston answered: Touch became the norm because the mobile device form factor was reconsidered (iPhone). Reconsider the desktop, different inputs may result.
  7. vidar answered: these people clearly never heard of light pens. or don’t remember them
  8. problemsolver answered: You’re right short term. But it would crazy to think that the human computer interface didn’t have room to evolve to address your points.
  9. troublicious answered: I agree!
  10. insertname answered: if the software handled it properly then I think it could work
  11. webbo answered: yeah. Most technologies don’t get replaced. TV didn’t replace radio, VCR didn’t kill movies, CDs are still around, tablets co-exist with mice
  12. marco answered: I agree with you. Touch will never make sense on a large, desk-computer display. But desk computers can get less common.
  13. nikography posted this