It looks like the kiddos will be very touchy feely with their computers, as a report from Gartner says more than half of the computers purchased in 2015 for people under 15 will sport touchscreens.
Devices like the iPhone, iPad and Nexus One are making people comfortable with touch on mobile computing but Microsoft has also made some major pushes with touch on Windows 7 to prepare for a variety of tablets. The major driver of this change will be consumers and the education market, with enterprise taking its usual wait-and-see approach.
“Consensus among the Gartner client U.S. school districts is that over half, and possibly as many as 75 percent, will be specifying touch and/or pen input within the next five years,” said Leslie Fiering, research vice president at Gartner, in prepared statement. “Consider this as the precursor to a major upcoming generational shift in how users relate to their computing devices.”
There is something intrinsically magical about good touch computing – you somewhat lose that technological disconnect between you and your ideas. I’m still not sold that we’ve cracked the input method though. The iPad’s virtual keyboard is better than I expected – especially if you use the Apple case to prop it up – but it’s not a panacea. You’ll also flirting with gorilla-arm syndrome if you’re constantly tapping away on a touchscreen in front of you.
I think this is going to be a growing problem because everyone is creating a load of content these days, especially those text-happy, instant messaging-overloaded teenagers. Maybe Google can perfect its voice-to-text system and make that the standard for its Chrome OS tablets. I also think that the notion of partial pen computing isn’t too bad.
What do you think? Are we all just going to get used to virtual keyboards or is there a better way?
[Via Gartner]