Computer Mouse Heading For Extinction

slatterz writes "The computer mouse is set to die out in the next five years and will be usurped by touch screens and facial recognition, analysts believe. Steven Prentice, vice president and Gartner Fellow, told the BBC that devices such as Nintendo's MotionPlus for the Wii and Apple's iPhone point the way to the future, offering greater accuracy in motion detection."

The end of one-handed surfing?

But ... but ... I have a relationship with my mouse! It's one of the two things I have my hand on all day long. Oh, behave! I meant my keyboard.

Somewhat more seriously, do you really want your screen to have ... stuff all over it? Personally, I don't let anyone touch my screen. Or imagine an office with everyone yelling at their computer, "No, God damn it! The other left!"

Another GUI intervention lies just ahead

Next up: the combination of both those future bound GUI technologies, The WiiPhone (TM). It doesn't have any screen at all, you just throw it at whoever you want to talk to! Now if all things were that simple...

Re:The end of one-handed surfing?

While I completely agree that I don't want anyone touching my screen (yuk!), there ARE better methods of inputting x/y coordinate data than a computer mouse. A tablet is certainly effective, but a little bulky for most desks. The trackball is also effective, but equally disgusting to me unless it's cleaned regularly. The track-stick is favored by many, but I never found it truly useful - probably because I can't seem to get the hang of it.

Another point to make is that the Wii Remote is (with the exception of the accelerometers) functionally identical to a computer mouse with the optical eye reading many images per second to detect motion. The method by which the receiving end translates the data into x/y coordinate data is certainly different, though.

Re:The end of one-handed surfing?

I'm all for it.

I love to skateboard, but by-and-large it's a lopsided method of exercise unless you constantly switch stance. I'd love to interact with my raster using two hands but the mouse has the advantage of configurability -- that is, you can change the cursor's speed and velocity to get more from less wtih the added bonus that it's a lot less intrusive onscreen than fingers are.

[sarcasm] Let's blame this on the gamers for holding back progress. First they prevent Linux from widespread desktop adoption and now this![/sarcasm]

Gorilla Arm Syndrome

Alternative navigation methods have come up from time to time, but apart from the trackball and cursor keys, pretty much all of them have the same drawback: They lead to what's known as the "Gorilla Arm Syndrome". We humans aren't designed to keep our hands extended and not resting on something for any length of time, and after a while, our arms will feel like they've weighted down with lead. Then, when you quit, you feel you have arms the size of a gorilla. And then the pain sets in.

This is the main reason why touch screens never took off any of the three times they were marketed as the new and wonderful thing. My guess is that this is a fourth attempt, which will meet with no more success.

Even graphic tablets can cause G.A.S., unless they allow you to rest your wrist and arm while using it. If they're much bigger than a mouse pad, many people will have problems.

In theory, I'll agree.

But in practice, it will take a lot more than 5 years. 25 years, maybe.

Re:In theory, I'll agree.

Even if the mouse dies tomorrow, it's not going to disappear overnight. Steve Jobs isn't going to bust down your door, seize your mice, or nail an iPhone over your trackpads. Parallel ports, PS/2 ports, and floppy disks were all declared "dead" a long time ago, but their corpses aren't being buried too quickly. And while we're at it, what about all those zombie processes on your system?

Re:In theory, I'll agree.

Dont forget: joysticks.

There is no way in hell the mouse is going to disappear, especially not to touchscreens, for the same reason joysticks are still around: games. Try playing a game with a touchscreen and not a mouse, not as much fun. There are some things touchscreens can replace, but FPS games are not one of them, and that is a BIG game segment.

Re:In theory, I'll agree.

If I had mod points, they'd be yours. As an avid gamer, I'm certainly not going to use a touchscreen only interface. Such things are great for limited applications (multimedia PCs, phones, etc.), but they'll never work for gaming (except maybe RTS).

Re:In theory, I'll agree.

I wouldn't use a touchscreen for an FPS either...and I don't think that's what the article was getting at. I'd imagine the Wii-style "gun" movement is what would replace mice for those kinds of games, and as good as I have become at "shooting" with a mouse I still look forward to having the motion interface become the standard.

Mice are not going anywhere.

The problem is, none of those technologies are superior to mice.

Look at your desktop. Look at where your monitor is. Look at where your mouse is.

Now, what is easier - reaching up to your monitor every time you want to move the cursor, or reaching over to the mouse?

Mice are more precise than fingers. Mice are less strain than pointing devices.

These analysts are idiots. Technology doesn't get replaced with new technology that doesn't work as well as the existing technology. And mice are better at what mice are used for than any other input device available in the desktop/laptop environment.

Re:Mice are not going anywhere.

I haven't had mod points since... ...2003, but if I had some now they would be yours.

Re:In theory, I'll agree.

And don't forget the hell all those fingerprints will create on your screen. No way I'm going to finger my screen.

So the mouse will probably remain for the foreseeable future.

Re:In theory, I'll agree.

The Wii remote has *lots* of problems for general use. First off is the big one. Your arm gets tired after about an hour or so of use as a pointer. I can use the mouse for around 4 hours at a time without being tired. And secondly it isn't accurate. I can get a mouse to hit just about anything on a screen but it takes a lot more time to hit a link in Opera.

5 years?

hahahhahahahaha I call bullshit on that. Taking all bets.

Because the mouse is old will never replace the fact it is an incredibly intuitive and powerful HID. You can use it all day without getting sore (mostly) and best of all, it wont accidentally trash half your files if you sneeze and move your hand at the same time.

Voice recognition! This time for sure!

Don't forget that every so often some "analyst" will predict that "voice recognition" will replace whatever input method you currently use.

Still hasn't happened.

Re:5 years?

Yep I agree. I can't imagine sitting here all day with my arms extended pushing on the screen. It may work for ATM's but I can't see anyone who works on a computer all day accepting a touch screen any time soon, or ever.

The last thing I'd want

The last thing I'd want is fingerprints smudged all over my monitor. I'll still with my mouse, thanks.

Ohhhh, crystal balling bullshit, gotta love it!

The advent of the mouse killed the keyboard, too, after all. And the internet made TV obsolete, which killed newspapers a few decades ago.

Slowly I get really fed up with such predictors. I have a touchscreen. Actually, I'm using it right now as a display for writing this. Do I use it? Usually, no. I use it at certain special occasions, but it certainly does not replace my mouse. Why? Because it's inconvenient! I have to lift my arm, lean to my screen, aim with my finger and ... miss usually my mark.

And now, try to right-click. Or do a sensible click-drag operation.

Seriously, does anyone still listen to those modern soothsayers?

Typical Gartner Crap

So, to increase accuracy, I'm supposed to slap at the screen with my pizza-slopped fingers? Facial recognition? Maybe banging my head on my desk will act as a signal to restart Windows yet again.

Somebody who has some obscure input device, which will "kill the mouse", probably paid Gartner to conduct yet another bogus study that seeks to convince people what technology to use as opposed to demonstrate what they are actually using.

Another prediction of doom

will be usurped by touch screens and facial recognition

I guess the guy never used touch screens, that's why he is so sure. And nobody "used" facial recognition so far, that makes it even a better idea...

The most basic issue here is the interface. People don't write with facial contortions. We write with our hands. Why? Because our hands are the most precise tools that we have, and they are well built for the task.

However our hands (and arms) are not good for holding them, for hours, in front of a vertical surface of a screen. Many screens are positioned so that the "touch" interface is therefore impossible. Besides, there isn't enough precision in our fingers even if we wear claw-like stylus. Mouse can be, and often is configured to translate larger movement of the sensor into a very precise, sub-millimeter movement of the cursor. This is necessary in most applications, selecting from a menu being an example. Touch screens do not allow this "magnification" of the movement, as well as any non-linear response (that is also common.)

The input devices will likely change over time, but unless our bodies change also the mouse or a touchpad interface will remain useful for a long time, just like a keyboard. I personally believe that we will have direct brain control over the mouse and keyboard functions earlier than we will be able to replace the mouse with a better mouse - it's a simpler task. It's also probably possible to design a crude AI that is just enough to decode speech; but the speech interface is not very efficient either - try to talk for an hour and see what happens to your throat.

All these predictions are just noise made by people who want to attract undeserved attention. There is nothing wrong with a mouse as it is now, and there should be no rush to replace it with something that is not tested and by all reasoning can't even work. The mouse works, we test it for decades by now.

Wrong wrong wrong.

This is, as always, wrong. Analysts never get this stuff right. The iPhone has shown the ability of a touchscreen with multi-touch to have a great interface. Notice that the iPhone was never a device with a mouse. Phone don't have mice (except for trackballs on some blackberries).

I'd love some of that multi-touch goodness in OS X. Let my trackpad start doing it. But let's get real here. We need mice.

All our interfaces are designed around them and keyboards. They are cheap (under $5 for a simple optical). They are precise. They are familiar. They need very little physical movement (just tiny wrist movements). A tablet gives you the precision a mouse does. I'd say they are far more likely to take over than generic touchscreen. Perhaps combos like Wacom Centiqs.

I'm w aiting for the FPS that figures out a way to use touchscreens for precision aiming.

The Wii has shown us some great things, but that's for games. How many people do you think want to waggle their way through creating powerpoint presentations?

I've got a Wii. What do some the best control schemes often use it for? That's right... a mouse! LostWinds (just finished, great game) uses it as a pointing device. Metroid Prime 3 uses it for aiming much like a mouse. Zack & Wiki (when not performing motions) uses it like a mouse. Every menu in every game uses it like a mouse. The console's own menu uses it like a mouse. And when Pikmin 3 comes out I'm willing to bet a fair bit of money that it will use the control mostly as... a mouse.

The mouse is just about the perfect 2D interface. There is probably a reason we've been using them for over 25 years (it's been about that long since the Macintosh came out, and I'm well aware they were available before that). When we get a real 3D interface (like some kind of hologram projecting surface/table) then we may need a new input device some of the time, but for now, the mouse will be around for a very long while.

Gartner Fellow Fool

Facial recognition doesn't even work at all, even on specialized HW, SW, and selected test subjects. In 5 years, maybe it might work occasionally. Not replace the mouse. Nor will any of those other brand new special skills input devices. Hell, the majority of PCs even now are probably about 5 years old, and we're about to plunge into a "recession" that won't even have the vast debt to prop it up that the past decade had.

Gartner has always been nothing but a PR mill to market "mindshare" of directions in computer industry trends. I've never read a Gartner report or employee (or "Fellow", which must really take bribing) that was anything other than "Big Computer Corp X wishes this report would come true".

Think about the gaming magazine "reporting" you read, and how it's all PR. Big computer corps, like Apple, Microsoft, Dell - and probably Sony, Nintendo etc, all trying to become "computer" corps or their synthesis - have even more money to buy reporting. And Gartner isn't even saying it's "journalism". It's like those 1990s Internet Bubble stockbrokers' in-house "analysts", whose reports always said that whatever stocks the brokerage was vested in would go nowhere but up. In fact, those fake analysts are still doing the same thing, and the market is still a wasteland because of it. Gartner has even less accountability, and even less of a track record of guessing right, rather than wishing hard.

I bet Gartner predicted in 1999 that by 2008 we'd all have Aeron chairs and foosball tables.

Yeah, 'cause accuracy is never required

how many people click the "bold" toolbar button when typing something? Keyboard shortcuts beat the mouse in speed, efficiency, and accuracy. They simply require experts (as in an expert system) to use. You've got to know that they exist. BUt could you imagine typing 60 words per minute, and then taking ten seconds to make a few words bold?

Touch screen accuracy is terrible. And it's got nothing to do with the technology. My finger is larger than one pixel. Oh, and my arm blocks my view of the rest of the screen.

You know, this is the same garbage that minority report showcased. Of course it's really cool to do video editting with your arms. Ever gone to the gym and taken boxing as a fitness effort? The most difficult part of boxing is not getting punched in the face -- that's pretty easy. The most difficult part about boxing is holding your hands up for an hour.

I manufacture kiosks and develope kiosk solutions. The only reason that kiosks are touch-screen is because 90% of the public using them don't know how to use a mouse with any sort of speed -- and we're selling tickets on these kiosks to thousands of people each day. Speed matters. And when it comes to accuracy, each on-screen button is is a minimum of one two inches wide by a minimum of one inch tall, with a minimum of one centimetre of space around the button.

All of these great input interface devices are incredibly snazzy, and excellent for particular things. But they are never better than the simpler interfaces for simpler things. A button is a perfect input device -- it's discrete. You know what to do with it, it doesn't require you to look at it, you know when you've pushed it. That's why keyboards benefit from feedback, travel, and texture. That's why there's a little bump on the "5" keypad key, the "5" on my mobile phone pad too, and the "2" and "4" on my car stereo -- I don't have to look at any of them. I can drive, and dial the phone without taking my eyes off of the road.

You can't do any of that with a mouse. It's completely useless without looking at the screen. Could you imagine typing on a touch-screen-type keyboard? No travel, no feedback, no texture, no way to know if you've hit the key at all, let alone the correct one.

In our kiosk manufacturing, touch-screens have another benefit. You can say things like "press here" or "touch here" and people do. It's amazing how many directions are required to teach the public to use something that you think is easily used -- like swiping a credit card. Photographs, animations, the works, and still people swipe their card into the seam of the lcd bezel -- or try to cram it into the animation on the screen. And now some people expect us to use multi-touch screens -- good luck teaching the general public to perform gestures to buy their show tickets.

Oh, by the way, finger prints -- I hope you aren't using your screen for anything important.

Telepathy is the same game. Neural interfaces sound like they're so easy to use. Think about clicking the button, and you'll click the button. "hey, I think all the time, thinking is easy". Sure, you think all the time. But how many times do you think about only one thing? That takes incredibly focus. I don't want to have to meditate for every click, thanks.

Currently, my body has a huge filter. No matter how much I think, my finger only moves when I move my finger. So I can think about pressing button, I can remember pressing it last time, I can think about not pressing the button, and can think that the button is an ugly colour, and stil I haven't pressed it.

The trouble with a bad neural interface is that you need to meditate for every action. The problem with a good neural interface is that it has no idea as to the degree of your intention -- positive nor negative.

So, much like the mouse, a neural interface is great as an analogue input device, and horrible as a discrete one. Think about a simple 2D graphics app -- photo shop, for example. "draw a line" is easy wi

Re:analysts...or just bored idiots?

Actually it's Gartner so your best bet is to buy stock in Logitech as it's more likely that there will be a great surge in demand for mice in the next 5 years =)