Do You Wanna Touch
codinghorror.com
codinghorror.com
OK, let's assume that the Surface's keyboard completely solves the problem of not being able to write properly. That still leaves us with the problem of not being able to point properly.
I can't even imagine how the touchscreen could ever rival the precision of the mouse as a pointing device. The average adult human finger is simply too thick to select 5 characters from the middle of a word displayed in 10 points, or to drag a Photoshop layer 1 pixel to the right. Even a conventional trackpad on a cheap laptop has better precision than your finger does, though good luck finding actual graphic designers who prefer trackpads to actual mice. Styluses (styli?) aren't much better, unless your stylus is sharp enough to damage the screen. The fact that touchscreens don't allow you to fine-tune your aim before you click makes it even more difficult to achieve precision.
How do we address this issue? How do we make touchscreen devices useful for those who need spatial precision? What would be the most natural way to add precise pointing abilities to a tablet computer without compromising the advantages of the touchscreen? Carrying around a cordless mouse doesn't seem to be a particularly elegant solution. What do you think? Is touchscreen+keyboard the future of personal computing, or is there always going to be a place for mice as specialty items for graphic designers and some other professionals?
Yep, that's the question I was trying to raise. Having a mouse in addition to a touchscreen not only looks redundant to those who don't need precision clicking, it also causes a potential conflict between different UI paradigms.
When touch is the primary input, every UI element needs to become big enough to touch with fat fingers, so you usually end up with UIs that look like they were designed for kindergarteners. You simplify and hide features until you upset every "power user". When the mouse is the primary input, on the other hand, the added precision allows you to cram more clickable elements into small spaces, possibly freeing up more screen real estate for other things.
When Windows 95 came out we all had fun trying all the crazy pointer themes it supported (hands, etc.), but I suspect we've all now settled on the fine-tip pointer arrow and I-beam.
Your hands don't even need to move from homerow to point around, precision is (supposedly) awesome, potential for interaction is in much greater space than any other input method, and your keyboard can be completely dummy (and let Leap capture where your fingers are, even adding pressure sensitivity check there), replace touch screen in the same way etc.
I just wait for a day where they'll just replace touchpad with it (it's even in similar hardware format) and OS' to provide a boundless desktop experience.
[2] I still love the guys
As to styluses, it seems to be a fairly solved problem. Most designers I know use a Wacom tablet of some description. And those with a big enough budget use a Wacom cintiq (which is basically a huge touch screen).
As for things like selecting text and other in between tasks, I agree that current solutions aren't great. However I suspect people are working on it. My initial guess after having thought about the problem for 3 seconds is that some sort of clever context aware zooming and input scaling might be a good place to start.
No, but the article gave me the impression that touchscreen + keyboard = the future of computing. I'm just trying to point out that the future of computing might involve one or two additional devices.
Of course the mouse isn't going to disappear. Many people buy mice with laptops nowadays, even though every laptop comes with a trackpad. The question is, will this trend continue with Surface-like devices, or is mouse sales going to plummet?
Of course this doesn't address things trackpads can do that mice can't, like multitouch gestures. But for pointing quickly and accurately, I always have a mouse paired to my laptop.
And Apple also makes mice that do gestures and multi-touch on the touch responsive top surface.
Gosh, I sound like a fanboy here but I really despise the fruit-based company for their evil corporate practices. You just can't beat their hardware, though.
I agree; the Macbook trackpad is literally the only reason why I don't have a Thinkpad.
Also:
> Even a conventional touchpad on a cheap laptop has better precision than your finger does.
A conventional touchpad...that you use with your finger...? Am I missing something here? How is a touchpad more accurate than touching a screen?
The entire desire for 'pixel-perfect' clicking on a static UI is a symptom of trying to shoe-horn touch into interfaces not explicitly designed for it. Has that ever worked?
No, he doesn't.
> You can be much more precise with a stylus than with a mouse.
Not with a touchscreen stylus, you can't. Touchscreens actually have a considerably lower hardware resolution than the screen itself.
> That's why Wacom tablets are so popular.
Completely different technology.
> Am I missing something here? How is a touchpad more accurate than touching a screen?
By having it input movement (at a configurable granularity) rather than position. That makes it a completely different input method.
Fixed width font would help me greatly around those.
I do hear many comments claiming that touchscreens can supersede mice, and even keyboards, but I don't think this is right at all. The form factor of a mouse can be made to very closely align ergonomically with the time proven accuracy of the artisans dexterous hand. Angular displacement at the wrist traverses a relatively larger sweeping arc than with a track pad, effectively increasing resolution at something like the square of the distance. Wacom styluses are also precision devices, and yet I would still suggest that they aren't as conformant with watch maker like skills as the ordinary extended hand.
Compared with high resolution devices, big finger tips and small area track pads are clumsy and add difficulty. I wouldn't want to design fine watch mechanisms with either.
It's essentially an issue of resolution over area. I can reduce the resolution of a trackpad to attain some accuracy, but in doing so reduce the effective area.
In respect of how to have both accuracy and the simplicity of touch, I'm inclined to think that making a gesture and moving the hand backwards through the z plane to regain resolution space would be one approach. We already have protected virtual keyboards. I would be happy with moving into a projected motion detection area to regain accuracy. Until then, I have no option but to use a high resolution location device, like a mouse.
1. touch layer with finger
2. hold
3. the UI zooms in at the point of touch. pixels are now 1cm wide.
4. move to desired pixel (or row/column)
Looks doable, right?
The way people have already done so in touch software to date?
You program 'un-pinch to zoom' to zoom the desired elements allowing increasing levels of accuracy as needed. And in the cases that you need 'pixel perfect' accuracy [1] you simply include "bump" UI controls or expose explicit pixel coordinates that can themselves be altered to affect the desired movement of the layer or selection or what-have-you (something even keyboard/mouse UI usually offers).
Precision is a largely solved issue in touch software. The real problem that will keep mice around in a largely-touch-driven world, is the simple ergonomics of spending eight hours at a desk. (i.e. Gorilla-arm.) [2]
[1] 'Pixel perfect' is a concept that makes increasingly less sense as displays reach and exceed 300dpi. Pretty soon we'll all be dealing with vectors and things will be better for it. 'Pixel perfect' accuracy is of mere transitory usefulness until then.
[2] Barring the development of a drafting-table-style variant of the original surface and either some sort of flawless arm/palm/accidental-touch rejection or a switch from 'any' touch to 'explicit-object' touch.
e.g. the desk ignores all contacts except from a pre-ordained 'pen', 'thimble' or 'glove'.
That might be easier than even trying to develop pressure sensors and heuristics.
Imagine a time line with a periodic wave, interrupted only by a one or two cycle click. Zooming in to normalise the ratio of object to finger leads to very easily losing context. That is, relative positioning left or right is lost. So it becomes frustrating zooming in and out in order to get your bearings again. Even attempting this on a trackpad is quite difficult, when compared to high resolution mice.
There are many cases where it's much better to have a large display area, combined with a high resolution mapping to that area. I could edit waves on a postage stamp sized display with my finger if I put my mind to it. I don't think I would be as productive as on a tablet sized display though. In other cases I need to increase yet above that ratio. I'm afraid stubby fingers on compensating scaled objects is not adequate always.
But I'm guessing you don't edit waves with a keyboard/mouse on a 3, 4 or 9.7" screen either. So maybe "touch" isn't the obstacle you're really battling in the situation described.
Also, haven't people long had solutions where a 'work area' is zoomed for precision selection/editing while one-or-more 'larger context' views are maintained (or operates on its own zoom level) in another chunk of the screen?
Do wave-editing tools not behave like that?
At the same time, operating on selected segments is more efficiently done with finely controlled hairline cursors, where an obscuring object like a finger doesn't contend, generally. After this of course, zooming and other means of fine control and selection come into play.
In scenarios like this it is very much a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees if making a representation too large.
There are solutions to the problem of precise location, which I think include touch and gestures, though not necessarily solely through touch. In practice I use the right hand for precise hairline location and the left to zoom in with gestures, zoom out again for context and then iterate.
I'm not arguing for mice over touch. I'm looking at precision. I always find it quicker to type on my Bluetooth keyboard than on my iPhones screen keyboard. The reason for that for me has just to do with the ratio between active elements. Keyboard keys are larger than my fingers, on screen keys are smaller.
I actually think that in some cases gestures in the z plane, as well as x and y would be a way of adding capability.
These opinions are based on having to give up the USB mouse in the field, using JTAG's and external drives in a two port only MBP. Using the trackpad leads to much longer work times, simply because it's a less precise device.
It was never my intention to argue that touch is always the preferable interface for all workloads (something I tried to convey by pointing out how mice will remain relevant for quite some time, due entirely to day-long workloads).
As applies to your concerns, I was just trying to suggest that workable solutions exist, even if they'll always be less-than-ideal for larger quantities of work.
As to your specific concern, I still think a workable solution may be out there, even if it remains undoubtedly less efficient than a mouse and a larger screen.
e.g. Wouldn't the sorts of drag and off-axis drag controls that are used for seek in many podcast/audio-player apps [1] address precision-selection in cases where too-much-zoom presents problems, and also obviate the concern about fingers obscuring the wave itself?
[1] click to 'grab' the selection-marker/nubby on the wave/timeline, drag across the x axis to seek and then down on the y axis to control the speed of seek -- typically doing more and more fine-grained seek for a given x-axis drag length, as the finger gets further from the wave/timeline
I often think that the need for precision pointing in everyday basic tasks is a problem that will be overcome by the constraints of tablet design. The rest of the precision pointing can stay in their specific domains.
I would very much like a traditional drawing table that is a high res touch screen, with a mouse and keyboard, and a super accurate variety of stylus-like tools, with unlimited modeless multitouch. Without menus or gestures, I could use my eyes or just my sense of place and touch to find the tool I want from my own organizational method. Like the good old days. But even with that, I still would like a virtual cursor with a mouse-like pointer - it's just too useful.
The touch cover also has an embedded touchpad which you can use if you want to. I don't, generally, but it's there if you want it.
Well, now we have computers which can be controlled reliably with fingers: tablets and phones. But don't expect to do text selection in a proper way with fingers. Of course, solutions exist in software but there are all inferior to using a good old mouse with 2 buttons.
And even if "touch" was as good as a mouse, it's just not physically speaking very effective. There's a lot of energy wasted to move your whole arm in several directions while a mouse only keep your wrist in movement. It is way more relaxing to use a mouse for long operations than touching your screen even if it seems more intuitive.
Tablets, phones, they work well because we use them casually, for short intervals. If you were to use them for a whole day to do work on them, you would switch back to a laptop/desktop with a mouse in no time.
There's no replacement coming for the mouse for those who work long hours with their computers, despite what the hipsters say.
The money line of Atwood's post about the future, though, is this one: And I'm beginning to wonder about my desktop a little, because lately I'm starting to I think I wanna touch that, too.
I don't know that individual touch computing on a desktop will ever be a good idea, but I've been thinking a lot lately that a 42in Android tablet would make a ton of sense. Think of everything you use a whiteboard for to the Nth degree. Gathering around a large touchscreen to communicate ideas, allowing others to manipulate parts of the screen with wireless keyboards, and providing office-wide or household announcements and reminders just makes a ton of sense to me.
Personal computing has already gone touch, it's time for group computing to go touch too.
10/GUI is a proposed new user interface paradigm. Created
in 2009 by R. Clayton Miller, it combines multi-touch
input with a new windowing manager.
It splits the touch surface away from the screen, so that
user fatigue is reduced and the users' hands don't
obstruct the display.[1] Instead of placing windows all
over the screen, the windowing manager, Con10uum, uses a
linear paradigm, with multi-touch used to navigate between
and arrange the windows.[2] An area at the right side of
the touch screen brings up a global context menu, and a
similar strip at the left side brings up application-
specific menus.
Touching my desktop screens would involve moving my hands to around eye level. I hold my phone/tablet a lot lower.
My real problem in the new world order is that tablets seem to have topped out at 10 inches. While that may be comfortable for many, my hand span is the same width as the screen and I'd prefer something a lot larger.
* Extremely low resolution
* Old Android version and Toshiba have no history of staying fresh with Android
* Tegra 3 based, and will be released just as Tegra 4 devices come out
I do like that is has an SD card slot, micro USB/HDMI etc. Sadly all they have done is take a mediocre tablet and scaled it up, and then delayed releasing it.
That combined with touch and keyboard is the future. These devices will soon accept any part of our body as an input vector. They'll be able to identify multiple users and act accordingly. Look at what google is showcasing what can be done with a person's eye ball alone, if that works the way they've been promoting, we're in for something.
I cant praise the surface for having a touch screen and a keyboard, its been done before. Done by Microsoft, Acer, Apple, Sony, etc.
One comment I would make is regarding this, "I knew that the Nexus 7 was really working for me when I gave mine to my father as a spontaneous gift while he was visiting, then missed it sorely when waiting for the replacement to arrive.". I know that Jeff is above my pay bracket, but even still, this makes me wonder what sort of money stream this is, if he can simply hand away Nexus 7's. I earn a respectful living but that sort of money is still substantial enough that I can't afford to simply give one away.
I imagine he's doing quite well though.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/investing-in-a-qual...
come on, it's not hard to understand that other people may have less than you.
A friend of mine is an independent auto mechanic who has been in the business since he was 15 (about 20 years). He now owns a small shop, and probably nets a good "salary" similar to many IT professionals ($90-150k). Not rich, not poor.
Guess what? He doesn't use a Craftsman mechanics toolkit from Sears. He has an long-term investment in high quality tools from vendors like Snap-On to the tune of $50-60k. Cheap tools would cost 1/3-1/2 that, but guess what -- a broken wrench means that he isn't working, and his time is worth $90/hour, and the high-end vendor comes to him, so he doesn't waste time in stores.
As a programmer or IT type person, your brain is your primary tool, but it depends upon the working order of all of the supporting tools in your body to perform optimally. When your job involves sitting on your ass for most of the day, a proper chair is just like a $75 high quality wrench for a mechanic -- a good investment.
But I feel it's not appropriate to speak of how someone else should be spending their money. I regret the initial comment.
I got my old memory foam mattress from Woot. It made me sleep so soundly that after a couple years, I started waking up with back pain. Slept all night, but woke up in pain. Gave it to my Mom (best sleep she's ever had, too) and bought a hybrid from Ikea. Still way better than any other boxspring mattress I've owned, and ridiculously cheap.
So yes, they are worth investing in... But that doesn't mean you have to pay a lot.
Sadly, I cannot find an Ikea chair/couch that's comfortable. Still working on that purchase.
On the other hand, I've found that there's nothing better for my back (or my sleep in general) than a properly-inflated air bed (and I had severe back problems for years). (It started as an interim solution when I beat my furniture to a working location by nearly a week.) That works out to about $30 per annum around these parts, and although there are "real" versions with long-term guarantees and fancy fabric coverings (a standard mattress pad gives the same feel) the price differential isn't an incentive to give up the "replace annually" variety.
1 high end laptop - $1500
1 netbook - $500
2 phones - $500 X 2
2 tablets - $500 + $250
1 ereader - $100
1 cool TV device - $250
accessories $500
Total: $390 per month
He has money. He likes computers.
[1] I got over this awful habit and no longer do it, thankfully.
I think you could definitely give a Nexus as a gift to your father if you wanted to.
It depends on whether you think it would be a gift he'd appreciate and use, I guess. I've given a laptop as a gift to my grandmother, and a Kindle as a gift to my uncle (we're very close), on a salary of U$ 10.000 yearly.
In both cases the devices were used extensively, and it was something they wouldn't have bought or couldn't have afforded themselves, and it made me very happy to see them use the devices (especially my grandmother, everybody was betting she wouldn't learn how to use it).
Maybe for you this is not true and maybe you spend consciously, but people usually don't do real personal money management; if they pretend they do, they usually kid themselves by leaving things out conveniently. I don't do it because I find it an utter waste of time, but I tried it for a year and I was amazed and frightened how much I spend on completely nothing and for no apparent reason than instant gratification. Which can be important, but too much of it is like an addiction.
What I do as gifts is go on Ebay (or something like Ebay locally) and buy broken devices. People who's Nexus 7 doesn't work anymore, who's iPad 2 croaked, netbooks / laptops died, TVs 'just not turning on'. We live in the throw-away age, so often even WITH warranty people cannot be bothered to have things fixed. Especially when they cost < $300 it's not worth 'going to the other side of town' for. And usually (almost always) it's simple to fix. So you buy something broken for $10, figure out what is wrong (in my experience it's almost always related to the power supply/battery) and fix it. Then give it as a gift. Effect is the same, it's a nice hobby (well I like it) and I can make more people happy than buying new things.
Gives a great incentive to see where savings can be made
For instance; I get $100 from the ATM, I pay part of a business diner with that for $90, then I have $10 left. The $100 is registered on my CC so $100 goes into my business account, while $10 I spent on some magazine at the train station while I was bored. The $100 for the business would be; 'wow we got the client, well spent!' while the $10 went into the black hole as I won't ever touch that mag after getting off the train.
I am asking genuinely, because I haven't touch or seen one yet. So far the reviews aren't stellar, there seems to be the same shortcoming as before (always moving between the keyboard and the screen to type and click on things), and the software doesn't seem to push the limits of what you can do on a tablet.
My question would be, my parents hated using an iPad with a keyboard, would they be better off with a surface?
Also, when I travel, I have to take both a laptop and a tablet. As tablets become a little richer in functionality, I could see less of the need to take both with me.
Most people I know haven't given up having a saw and a screwdriver and a pair of pliers just because they can buy a multitool that "does" all of that.
I also feel that a tablet has far more in common with an ebook reader or a smartphone than with a computer. I've yet to see a tablet do a task that a smartphone can't do, and I have to wonder if the "phablet" (god do I hate that term) won't be the convergence you're looking for rather than a convergence with a laptop.
I have yet to talk to a laptop user who wants to trade it in on something that isn't a general purpose computer.
It is not one thing, it's multiple:
1. Software. In iOS/Android keyboard support is limited, most of applications are not designed with it in the mind and some don't work at all because of faked input controls instead of native. Windows superior in keyboard support over iOS/Android and in touch support over own previous versions. Also almost full Office suite on RT is not such joke as any editor on iOS/Android.
2. Integration. Power is supplied over connector, I2C has lower delay than bluetooth and full n-key rollover support, there is automatic lock of screen orientation based on accelerometers in both keyboard and tablet and so on. It's impossible to leave it at home by accident.
3. Quality. Surface's keyboards are thin and better in quality than most of competitors. They have almost standard layout and key size.
>My question would be, my parents hated using an iPad with a keyboard, would they be better off with a surface?
Nobody knows. It's depends of reasons of their hate. Surface's keyboard is still compromise even if better than iPad.
an iPad with a physical keyboard tacked-on actually degrades ease of use as the addition changes the form of the device while not providing an alternative means of interacting with it suitable to that form. as a result, beyond the single action of typing, all navigation becomes less efficient as you have to reach-out and touch the screen in a less-natural way than accustomed to. i've found that even the typing experience here doesn’t feel that much better as you still get interrupted when having to make what would be otherwise minor adjustments (moving cursor, selecting text, formatting, ...) by having to reach-out to the screen.
on a Surface though, the cover provides a complete and efficient alternative means of input. this has less to do with the particular implementation of the cover/kickstand (which is great by the way) but rather, that it runs essentially the same OS as the majority of (non-touch-enabled) desktops and laptops to be sold in the coming years. regardless of particular views on Windows 8 and whether it is less efficient than previous versions, it still is a fully functional traditional OS, and interacting with it as such works very well.
using a Surface for a few days now, i really do think the form factor lives-up to the claim of no-compromises. you can navigate entirely via touch or entirely through the traditional mouse/keyboard combo and not even know that the other existed. and (the most likely option) somewhere in-between works exceptionally well. while i traditionally use the cover while in the desktop or typing-out a long message (like now), i find the input method option it affords is also great to have for when i just happen to be sitting at a desk or want to use the device standing-up on my lap. in that sense the particular implementation on the Surface’s cover/kickstand really shine as it makes switching between form factors effortless.
Even as a life-long Mac guy, I bought a TabletPC in 2005 because I wanted a pressure-sensitive drawing tablet that was embedded into the display. The most striking thing for me was how nice it was to be able to sit on the couch and read a webpage in portrait mode, but having to unfold the keyboard to be able to go to a new URL (or hunt/peck on the onscreen keyboard) was a disaster. When Nokia announced its pocket-sized tablet in 2006, I was very tempted to buy one until I realized it wasn't pressure sensitive.
Drawing on a digital device with an infinite color space is awesome, but being able to tangibly interact with information is a phenomenal achievement. Hell, I even built a homebrew version of the Microsoft Surface (table) to explore the possibilities.
In spite of my enthusiasm over the last decade, the tablets I've seen all feel like they slow me down. Not only are they computationally underpowered, but they're just slower to interact with. Moreover, I worry about the ergonomics of it all. My fingers tend to feel a bit chaffed if I spend too much time with a tablet. I wonder if others have this issue.
I love the idea of the tablet. I want to love the execution, but nothing I've seen has made me want to integrate an iPad/Surface RT into my life. My MacBook just works better for me.
I wouldn't mind my current notebook [1] having a touch display (additionally), but i still wouldn't use it that often i guess (and i wouldn't pay extra for it).
I really have to try the Keyboard of the Surface though, but knowing me - very picky about keyboards - i don't think i could work with it.
[1]: Thinkpad T 520
So, regular screen + keyboard + mouse for me.
That would probably not crimp my style because when I am too tired to get off the couch and move to a table or desk, I am also probably too tired to do a satisfactory job at writing anything longer than a tweet.
http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
Why do people keep saying this? Microsoft has been making the Xbox and tons of other hardware for years. They know how to make things.
I think I'm starting to "get it", in that Windows 8 (perhaps moreso than Surface) may have a big effect on how we use computers.
After using a Surface for a day or two, I've caught myself a few times trying to tap on my other LCD screens. For some reason, this didn't happen even after using Android tablets, even with docking keyboards.
She can however, speak somewhat understandable English. As we move toward devices that fit into how human beings naturally interact, I think a necessary evolution is going to be voice recognition, but not as we think of it. I don't think it'll be as clunky as it is now, but much more like giving commands and discussion to another human being.
I could be wrong. More kids text message now than ever use their cell phones, so perhaps a keyboard is necessary as the article says.
The novelty of the touchscreen wore off after the first month.
Touch is maybe cool and natural and whatnot, but stylus is useful. I can actually account for how much money stylus option had brought to my wallet.
http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/touch-cov...
There is also a TypeCover, slightly thicker and has physical keys:
http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-GB/accessories/type-cove...
Thanks for the clarification!
My neighbor got an Asus Transformer (the T300 model or what ever it was called). It's definitely slick and I could type quite well on it. Can't wait to see how the Win 8 RT app ecosystem plays out, because I like a lot of things MSFT is doing with their multi-tasking and side-by-side apps. Having good multi-tasking hot-keys on the keyboard is a big boost in productivity. Get me a good RDP client on it and I could find it very useful for a lot of work scenarios.
It's a little bit like comparing the first truly practical cars (Model T vintage) to the very first cars and saying that they haven't done anything revolutionary.
Surface (with its kickstand) + thin keyboard cover is an advance on that. You've got something that folds open and closed like a laptop, but is about the same thickness as iPad+smart cover.
- not everybody can buy like Jeff all the new devices and get rid of the ones that don't stick, that's rather a special way to choose devices.
- I like Jeff's reasoning with the upsides and downsides of a lack of keyboard: the keyboard sort of gets in the way to do spontaneous things but for now the non-physical keyboards are not good for writing and editing long chunks of text. So it makes me wonder: wouldn't a tablet with a stylus and some good hand writing recognition software beat? After all, you can see a touchscreen as a better mouse - an evolution of the mouse, if you want. And if you want to write some text, like an email, doing it with your hand writing doesn't look too bad. Maybe it will really beat the keyboard for writing in Chinese or Japanese (disclaimer: I can't write yet in those languages). Of course if you want to use those devices to write code, it will be damn hard to implement the equivalent of the keyboard shortcuts for an hand-writing system.
It seems very unlikely, at least with Japanese. In my experience, a typical Japanese native speaker (who is accustomed to the computer) can enter text with a keyboard an order of magnitude faster than they can write it. The difference becomes a bit less stark with tiny keyboards on phones or whatever, but even there, most people these days are a bit shaky when it comes to writing complicated kanji anyway... ><
Writing has other benefits of course, e.g. that you can easily enter a character which that you don't know the pronunciation of (which is why it's commonly supported for dictionaries), so it's a useful feature to have even if it's not the primary input method.
In Japan, the keitai-novel - novels written by young authors often entirely using featurephone numpads - has gotten past its initial craze and appears here to stay as an established genre. Even for other genres, there has been a recent example of a self-published science fiction novella scoring high in the just-started Japanese Kindle/Kobo sales rankings, having its majority written on an iPhone.
I imagine the general populace will gradually get accustomed to using a non-physical-keyboard device for extensive text input, especially as more kids emerge experiencing the touchscreen as their first and only input device. (And the aforementioned author wasn't even that young - IIRC he's around 40!)
I love my phone - and I could see me wanting a tablet as well as my laptop, but I definitely want the laptop, so the tablet becomes an "If I have the spare money" item.
http://eee.asus.com/en/transformer-infinity/features
I've never used one but a lot of people on HN seem to swear by them.
Probably not the best model for mobile interaction, but there's plenty of seats free at the man-machine interface table.