The mouse faces extinction as computer interaction evolves*.
The headline to this post is that of venerable Washington Post. The article also makes no small point that a 10 and 6-year-old does not like the mouse. Add in for good measure the opinion of John Underkoffler, the high-tech advisor to the movie Minority Report who believes the mouse is dead in as soon as a few years. And, this summer an Apple store employee told be me to purchase a trackpad along with my new computer purchase because near-future generations of OS X won’t support the keyboard.
To be honest, I can’t speak to the PC, but I’ve stopped doubting Apple’s innovations beginning with the iMac in 1993, innovations which forced us to abandon all previous MacIntosh peripherals. We were now in the USB / CD era and complaining at first. The demise of the mouse, keyboard, however causes me to pause. My prediction is that when the 10 and 6-year-old fingers work a little better they will discover that they can’t type as fast on a tablet as they can on a keyboard. I would like to see if anyone can type on a tablet with their eyes closed. Let’s propose that whatever your computer needs, for gaming, drawing, Photoshopping, surfing, reading and writing we’ll have a keyboard, a trackpad, a voice and motion sensing device, and maybe even a mouse at our disposal. The (*) in the headline is mine and I did it with my eyes closed.
wireless-magic mouse
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