In an article at Physorg.com, Steve Prentice, vice president and fellow at Gartner predicts that the computer mouse will be obsolete by 2014. Gartner believes that alternate input devices will replace the ubiquitous mouse within the next five years.
Rather that moving a mouse to control the cursor around on the screen Gartner says users will gesture, tilt, shake and point at their PC’s to input data. Gartner points to new technologies such as smart phones like Apple’s iPhone, where a user can scroll through pages by flicking a finger across the screen, or tilt and turn the device to control a game.Another example would be the Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart personal computer which has a touch-screen monitor.. And the upcoming Microsoft Windows 7 will also support multi-touch. The Microsoft Surface computer has a 30-inch screen on which users can tap, drag, spin and zoom in and out with their fingers or an object such as a paint brush. Other alternate input devices as the wii-motes and voice recognition software are also popular.
I disagree with Gartner’s belief that the mouse will be eliminated. I have found the voice recognition software on my Blackberry to be difficult to operate in noisy environments where a mouse has no problems. I can’t imagine trying to edit a 100 page document with a touch panel on the screen. Touch panels are going to require new screens and video drivers and we all know how well MS handled the transition to new video drivers in Vista. Any serious text editing or an ambitious spreadsheet with a voice recognition system could result in a steady stream of commands, FONT TIMES ROMAN – BOLD – TAB – CAP – SPACE – PERIOD times 10 colleagues creating a chorus of commands will make it very hard to concentrate, severely impacting any productivity gains which may result from taking the mouse off my desk.
Related articles
- Are mice about to become extinct? (weinterrupt.com)
- IOS Features Voice Recognition, Hearing Aid Software (blogs.forbes.com)
