Are touch screens the way of the future?

I have previously written about the difficulty of touchscreens in larger computer screens. The main difficulty: real world scalability. Touchscreens do not scale well from 3.5 inch phone screens to 17 inch computer screens. I have previously seen a good demonstration: touch the top, then bottom of your computer screen for three minutes. I wrote about this earlier. Imagine moving your finger like that for three hours. The thing about touch screens is that they add cost to computers, in addition to the keyboard. And most of what I do when I am using the computer is writing. Most of the time, I am not using the track pad, because reading and writing email involves the keyboard, writing blog posts and papers involves using the keyboard, and writing code definitely involves using the keyboard. The places where a touchscreen would be useful are in multimedia applications such as iLife. Organizing photos is definitely a good application for a touch screen, as is using iMovie. However, note that fingers are a lot less precise than mice, trackpads, or styli. Multi-touch is also a good technology for gaming, as it is possible to select multiple thing, and touch multiple targets, etc.. However, each user's preference for multi-touch may depend on what they do with their computers. If they are heavy writers, they are probably not going to use their touchscreens very much, and they may become extra pricing. If they are heavy gamers, they may use touchscreens a lot.

Although having a touchscreen does not preclude the use of a keyboard, it does drive the price of a computer up. With Microsoft's initiative for Windows seven to employ more touchscreen and multi-touch capabilities, they may drive the price of a normal PC up. With Apple scraping the cream-of-the-crop expensive computer market, Microsoft may have more trouble with Windows Seven, as computers become less affordable and Macintoshes become more viable in that price range, Microsoft may see more switchers. And when consumers are looking to get PCs that do not require touchscreens, and computer manufacturers are looking to eschew the cost of a touchscreen and an expensive OS, Linux may become a more viable option to Windows on low-end PCs. With Apple moving in from the top, and Linux moving in from the bottom, Microsoft may begin to lose market share, or it may fumble it in the same way as it fumbled Vista: higher hardware requirements and a paradox of choice in its pricing scemes. And Microsoft may become less relevant as the tech industry moves on to less expensive things and bigger and better things, with Windows caught in the middle.