Do You Wanna Touch
> <i>How wonderful it is to flip open the Surface and quickly type a 4 paragraph email response when I need to ... And switching between the two modes of interaction – sometimes typing, sometimes touching – is completely natural.</i><p>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.<p>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.<p>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?