If tablets are ever going to come into their own as productivity tools, we need some input device innovation. As it stands now, touchscreens and styli don't afford as much utility to the user as the mouse/ keyboard combo for the sort of precision most productive work requires.
The big limitation is the number of unique single-step interactions that can be performed by the user. With mouse + keyboard, you have ~100 keys, >=2 mouse buttons, and enough screen real estate to afford at least several hundred unique clickable areas. On a touchscreen, our fat fingers limit the number of unique tappable/swipable areas to, depending on screen real estate, maybe 50. There just isn't as much information that can be expressed in one interaction, and breaking the task into multiple interactions causes cogitive overhead and discomfort for the user.
I wish we all had really small hands so we fit an appropriately scaled keyboard in the footprint of a smartphone, or something. But that ain't gonna happen. So, I guess... Innovate or die! But here I have a fear that modern keyboards have so much lock-in that when better input devices arise, people will be afraid of switching to them.
The big limitation is the number of unique single-step interactions that can be performed by the user. With mouse + keyboard, you have ~100 keys, >=2 mouse buttons, and enough screen real estate to afford at least several hundred unique clickable areas. On a touchscreen, our fat fingers limit the number of unique tappable/swipable areas to, depending on screen real estate, maybe 50. There just isn't as much information that can be expressed in one interaction, and breaking the task into multiple interactions causes cogitive overhead and discomfort for the user.
I wish we all had really small hands so we fit an appropriately scaled keyboard in the footprint of a smartphone, or something. But that ain't gonna happen. So, I guess... Innovate or die! But here I have a fear that modern keyboards have so much lock-in that when better input devices arise, people will be afraid of switching to them.