3 ms·

I feel like you're missing two very important things: 1) A touch interface is a VASTLY different experience from a mouse / trackball gestures interface. There'

I feel like you're missing two very important things: 1) A touch interface is a VASTLY different experience from a mouse / trackball gestures interface. There's a physicality there that simply isn't present when you're gesturing with a different device entirely and seeing the effects of that gesture on a disconnected screen. Touch to tap, and tap and hold have been gestures on track pads since the mid 90's. So using a touch pay with tap and hold to drag a folder around should be (by your reasoning) exactly the same as doing the same with a touch screen. And yet, controlling an iPad with a separate touch pad is a very different experience from controlling it directly from the screen. 2) Just how BAD previous touch screen devices were as far as control. Capacitive touch was a game changer here. I worked for Apple retail during the initial iPhone launch, and one of the things I had to teach ex-palm / handspring customers over and over again was to unlearn their habits formed by working around the limitations of resistive touch screens. Stop trying to tap with the tip of your finger nail, stop trying to tap just below/above/to the side of your target, put your finger down right over the key you want to press and trust the OS, etc. Of course this was jaw dropping, everything else to that point was usable, but finicky in ways that we would find incredibly annoying today.

adrian_b 3y ago
This may depend on individual preferences, which in my case may be biased by the frequent need of doing much more precise pointing actions than someone who just browses the Internet, like for drawing complex electronic schematics or other kinds of technical drawings. The "physicality" that you mention when using a touch screen is just something that gets in the way of getting the job done, because your fingers or whichever else object would be used to touch the screen unavoidably obscures a part of the displayed image making impossible a precise positioning. Moreover, if you use a big display you must also make ample movements on it. Both problems are eliminated when using a stylus on a small pad. While worse than a stylus, a mouse or a trackball are still better for fast and precise work than a touch screen or a touch pad. I certainly prefer the physicality of moving with lightning speed a graphic cursor over all screen, easily stopping it on any minute detail, like it is possible with the stylus of a graphic tablet, to the much slower and imprecise movements that are possible with the fingers on a touch screen or touch pad. A touch screen is unavoidable for very small devices like mobile phones, but whenever any alternative is possible it is better.
- tpmoney 3y ago
  >A touch screen is unavoidable for very small devices like mobile phones, but whenever any alternative is possible it is better. I have to disagree. I think as with any engineering challenge, it's about what tradeoffs work best for your specific application. If non-touch screens were better for the tablet application (that is a tablet in general, not any particular app on the phone), we would have stuck with physical keyboards and blackberry's roller ball, or the classic palm styluses or some other new pointer device. Yet here we are. Fruit Ninja was always possible with mouse or trackpads. And yet, it wasn't a thing until modern capacitive touch screens. Tellingly it has also only been ported to console applications where motion controls / VR is an option. Even something like a Wacom tablet. They've existed for years as external devices with none of the "obscuring your view" problems that having a touch screen has, and high degree point to point precision. And yet as soon as the Cintiqs and other touch screen versions of their drawing tablets appeared, most artists I knew switched or started saving to switch right away. And touch controls allow for the possibility of multiple simultaneous inputs, something that a track pad or stylus does not, so something like a software mixing board is clearly better experienced via a touch interface than a mouse and track pad. And that's not to say that you aren't right that there are applications where a touch interface is worse. For CAD/CAM where precise (and in many cases pixel perfect) movement is required? Something with a higher degree of precision than your average half inch meat stylus is going to be better. First Person Shooter games don't seem to have really made the transition to touch devices (other than with emulated joystick controllers), despite the fact that tapping on your target is going to be faster target acquisition than using a mouse. There's just something that doesn't translate into touch. A physical keyboard for typing input is leagues better than any touch screen keyboard I've tried. If you're at your desk, a track pad in front of you is worlds better than getting gorilla arm trying to work all your desktop mousing activities with your 30 inch touch screen. But I can't agree that one can make a universal statement that alternatives are always better if they are possible.

adrian_b 3y ago

This may depend on individual preferences, which in my case may be biased by the frequent need of doing much more precise pointing actions than someone who just browses the Internet, like for drawing complex electronic schematics or other kinds of technical drawings. The "physicality" that you mention when using a touch screen is just something that gets in the way of getting the job done, because your fingers or whichever else object would be used to touch the screen unavoidably obscures a part of the displayed image making impossible a precise positioning. Moreover, if you use a big display you must also make ample movements on it. Both problems are eliminated when using a stylus on a small pad. While worse than a stylus, a mouse or a trackball are still better for fast and precise work than a touch screen or a touch pad. I certainly prefer the physicality of moving with lightning speed a graphic cursor over all screen, easily stopping it on any minute detail, like it is possible with the stylus of a graphic tablet, to the much slower and imprecise movements that are possible with the fingers on a touch screen or touch pad. A touch screen is unavoidable for very small devices like mobile phones, but whenever any alternative is possible it is better.

tpmoney 3y ago
>A touch screen is unavoidable for very small devices like mobile phones, but whenever any alternative is possible it is better. I have to disagree. I think as with any engineering challenge, it's about what tradeoffs work best for your specific application. If non-touch screens were better for the tablet application (that is a tablet in general, not any particular app on the phone), we would have stuck with physical keyboards and blackberry's roller ball, or the classic palm styluses or some other new pointer device. Yet here we are. Fruit Ninja was always possible with mouse or trackpads. And yet, it wasn't a thing until modern capacitive touch screens. Tellingly it has also only been ported to console applications where motion controls / VR is an option. Even something like a Wacom tablet. They've existed for years as external devices with none of the "obscuring your view" problems that having a touch screen has, and high degree point to point precision. And yet as soon as the Cintiqs and other touch screen versions of their drawing tablets appeared, most artists I knew switched or started saving to switch right away. And touch controls allow for the possibility of multiple simultaneous inputs, something that a track pad or stylus does not, so something like a software mixing board is clearly better experienced via a touch interface than a mouse and track pad. And that's not to say that you aren't right that there are applications where a touch interface is worse. For CAD/CAM where precise (and in many cases pixel perfect) movement is required? Something with a higher degree of precision than your average half inch meat stylus is going to be better. First Person Shooter games don't seem to have really made the transition to touch devices (other than with emulated joystick controllers), despite the fact that tapping on your target is going to be faster target acquisition than using a mouse. There's just something that doesn't translate into touch. A physical keyboard for typing input is leagues better than any touch screen keyboard I've tried. If you're at your desk, a track pad in front of you is worlds better than getting gorilla arm trying to work all your desktop mousing activities with your 30 inch touch screen. But I can't agree that one can make a universal statement that alternatives are always better if they are possible.