But bendable screens... meh. I wanted a flat screen, only got a curved screen. And still never felt the urge to unbend it.
Not to mention: Why would you want your hands and arms blocking your view of the stuff you're trying to manipulate on-screen?
Entire companies have already come and gone because the "Minority Report" UI has no legitimate use case.
Guess you’re talking about Leap Motion? I reckon they might have been 7 years too early to market. I could see this kind of thing picking up traction when AR/VR really becomes mainstream, maybe not as the main input source but I could see it for less commonly used actions.
I already use touch on my XPS 13 and it's just another nice accessory, which I often prefer over a mouse (especially for mobile use). If I move from keyboard to mouse to click a button, I can also just touch it. Or lazily scroll a page. But it's a mistake to assume it should replace all other input methods instead of augmenting them; forcing that on a user sucks, yes.
Edit: Oh, and I just played "Root" on a 43" touch screen sitting on a table. Works well, except that I need to integrate it into the table.
but i guess it's nice for laptops and stuff
And I'm annoyed at the current trend of removing these buttons. It's not rare for the remote control batteries to be empty, or the remote control to be broken (with some buttons not responding to presses), or even the remote control to be lost somewhere in the house (to be found only days later). Having a fallback way to control the TV, at least power/channel/volume/input and preferentially also full access to the configuration menus (using the channel/volume/etc buttons as arrows and confirm/cancel), is essential. Ideally with capacitive buttons, which in my experience do not get broken as easily as normal physical buttons.
I wouldn't hang a screen like that on a wall, but put it in/on a table.
Just came back from playing the "Root" tutorial on a 43" touchscreen, btw. Quite nice, looking forward to see how it fares with when playing with friends or using it as a virtual tabletop for pen&paper RPGs. Still need to integrate it into a table, and I think it needs a tilt mechanic for better ergonomics when playing alone.
Microsoft tried that. It didn't go great
IMHO this is a chicken&egg problem: There is little software that use these abilities, because with no-one having these screens there is no-one to sell it to. And OTOH why would you get an expensive screen when there are only a few techdemos that makes use of that feature. For comparison: Sales of VR headsets in 2021 were 11M (vs. 19M PS5 or 240M iPhones). And we're still only seeing a moderate ecosystem of games, content and productivity stuff. Now imagine the situation if there was no pr0n and the Valve-fueled hype didn't happen: We'd be stuck with crappy DIY stuff or expensive special purpose solutions; and even if you could get your hands on a proper VR headset, in that scenario you're stuck with a few tech demos and wouldn't get a lot of utility out of it. I think that's the situation with touchscreens on the desktop, or even in the desk.