[Windows 8 General] e.mote:
>I saw nothing in the presentations, even with the heavy slant of pushing mobile devices and the NUCs, to suggest desktops are going away.

People like black and white--winner or loser, fly or die. But real-world is usually different shades of gray.

The varying hardware forms (desktop/laptop/tablet/phone) have the basic trade-off: larger sizes have more capabilities, but less portability. Depending on the use, each has its own niche, and none can be fully displaced by the others. But it can be reduced in role, like the desktop was and is.

"Desktop" in context of this thread doesn't refer to hardware form, but the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) UI paradigm. As with hardware, touch UI is gaining popularity because it obviates the discrete keyboard, thus allowing smaller devices (phones & tablets). But because of that very lack of a keyboard/mouse--or conceptually, a high-speed and precise input method--touch too has drawbacks, and won't completely replace WIMP.

More succinctly, the elephant in the room is the QWERTY/AZERTY keyboard. We've been able to shrink or work-around virtually every other component of computing, except for this. Touch dispenses with a discrete keyboard, but at the expense of reduced speed as well as a major loss of the (already limited) screen space when using an OKB. It is merely a different way, not necessarily a "better" way.

Touch input came into vogue because of iPhone/iPad's success as pioneering devices, and everyone else basically jumped onto the bandwagon. MS, in its usual copy-cat style, has pretty much abandoned the WIMP model in order to recast Windows as a (literally) 3rd-rate touch platform.

I think a more versatile solution would be to improve on WIMP to encompass touch, but still retain the efficiency of a discrete input device. As an immediate example, Windows' existing "accessibility" magnifier tool can be adapted to allow precise touch input of small elements in the WIMP UI. But the heavy lifting would need to be the innovation of a smaller, more portable keyboard layout, that won't impact the portability of tablet/phones.

There are many attempts at workaround, from the various OKB solutions, to touchless solutions like the Kinect and Leap Motion, to voice input. But all lack the tactility that aids in high-speed entry of a physical keyboard. MS' keyboard cover is a tweener that doesn't really solve the size problem.

A better way is to improve upon the physical keyboard, by dumping the QWERTY layout, and by increasing key "density" without reducing typing speed. I've done some conceptual work on this, and the keyboard can be reduced to the size of a typical keypad with about 30+ keys, sufficient for the most common data work. Hopefully the concept will turn into reality at some point.

But as we know with the various improvements on QWERTY, the elephant in the room is the high keyboarding learning curve, which is why QWERTY lasted for so long. The innovation of a new keyboard paradigm will need to include a tutorial method that can allow people to attain basic mastery in a short amount of time, say, 15 mins. Because people have greatly lessened attention span nowaday, this (ease of learning) will be more critical than the efficiency of the new layout.