With the release of windows 8, manufacturers have been pushing out a broad range of devices out of the waterworks, some of them are even surprisingly innovative. Examples are the Asus Taichi with its 2 sided screen and the Lenovo Yoga with a 360 degree tilt panel. This entices much of the consumer base for having a beautiful concept of a touch screen laptop. It might not be the first of its kind but it is a first for the operating system with the largest consumer base, Windows.
Asus has given a small taste of touch screen laptops/tablets with their transformer series on the android platform. Microsoft is the first big player to step into this space, leaving Apple and the OS X platform in the dust.
“However, is it really
necessary on notebooks?”
Not comparing tablets running Windows RT with attachable keyboards, I’m talking about a pure laptop/ultrabook with the difference of having a touch screen. Focusing on the windows 8 OS which is built specifically to be “touch friendly”, I have not found any real major benefit of having a touch screen.
The few positives about touch screens are over exaggerated by much of the consumer base. The touch base interface may be fun, exciting and fresh at first but as time passes the majority will revert back to the old trusty mouse and keyboard.
“Bread & Butter,
Mouse & Keyboard”
Much of my reason for feeling that the touch screen is a gimmick is that it poses next to no use in the desktop mode of windows 8 (AKA the vanilla windows interface, not metro). The icons are small and fiddly to press, closing windows require delicate and precise presses on that increasingly frustrating small close icon.
However, the problem may lie within how immature windows 8 is for touch devices. Much of the use of touch screen use resides only in the metro interface with the web store apps. It works well within windows RT which is a pure tablet OS but mixing it both together have grey areas to be ironed out.
[The future beyond touch screens]
The next possible evolutions to the user interface section of consumer devices are far and wide, reaching deep into the unknowns. The closest materialization to the “next big thing”, personally, I would have to guess to be precise motion sensing devices that work in tandem with screens. Imagine the Xbox Kinect, Playstation Move or the ASUS Xtion.
However, the devices mentioned are focused on large extensive movements of the body. What is required needs to be far more precise. There is one potential solution for the upcoming year 2013.
“Leap Motion”
It would not just benefit consumers using devices such as tablets and mobile phones, but for game developers as well looking to innovate and bring a whole new experience to people. The most overlooked factor maybe that we can finally stop smudging fingerprints on the screens we touch!
