Touchscreens haven't been so much the rage since the first introduction of the Nintendo DS Lite nearly half a decade ago. From Motorola's Droid to Apple's iPad, touchscreen devices are selling like hotcakes and they don't seem like they'll stop selling anytime soon. The question is, will the touchscreen keyboard finally be able to replace the physical keyboard?
THE BENEFITS OF A PHYSICAL KEYBOARD:
- Ergonomics: Years and years of research have helped develop highly ergonomic keyboards that provide consumers with proper angles for typing. Touchscreens require poking and awkward typing positions.
- Feedback: There is nothing better than knowing your key has been struck. It's that mechnical feedback against our fingers that we've come accustomed to over the years that makes the standard keyboard such a quick and easy tool to pick up and use. It also explains why touchscreen keyboards can be so frustrating sometimes.
THE BENEFITS OF A TOUCHSCREEN KEYBOARD:
- Portability: With touchscreen keyboards built into the screen itself, what you get is a smaller package and less hardware to worry about.
- Aesthetics: Personally, we never found keyboards to be the most aesthetically pleasing devices since its incarnation back on mechanical typewriters. Along with portability, having no physical keyboard whatsoever creates a sleek package that encourages further experimentation of gesture support and more natural forms of interaction away from the QWERTY way of thinking.
We personally find it hard to believe virtual keyboards will oust their physical counterparts any time soon. It's a matter of past experiences, managing those preferences, and the type of media people are creating and consuming. For designers, the ability to sketch and take notes on a high fidelity notepad may be a dream of the future, but to lose Photoshop's keyboard support and all of its fancy shortcuts may be something hard to for veterans to simply drop in a heartbeat.
What do you think? Will physical keyboards eventually go the way of the dodo bird? Let us know what you think!
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Comments (6)
I hope that physical keyboards never go away!
Touchscreens everywhere look great in sci-fi movies, but I just fail to see how they would hold up to everyday usage. I personally prefer typing on an actual physical keyboard - with a touchscreen I always seem to poke the wrong adjacent key by accident. Besides, with a touchscreen, I think I'd be obsessively wiping the computer/tablet screen every time after finishing typing... don't have such a problem with physical keyboards.
Then again, I love typewriters too ;)
It's a matter of time, but now's not the time. It's a matter of time because single-use surfaces are a horrible waste of space, so multitasking surfaces just make sense. Haptic technologies can solve the deficiencies of a touch screen keyboard, but they're just in the research stages. Tech's gonna be awesome in a couple decades. =)
If you are sitting down working on a desktop with a screen size like the 27" iMac then it makes no sense as your arms and shoulders would be exhausted in no time.
Maybe, but I could see keyboards all becoming touchscreen devices with haptic feedback.
There is a reason why rock hammers, sledge hammers, and rubber mallets all continue to exist: though similar tools, they're each designed to best do a particular job.
On screen keyboards are fine on small devices where most of the typing is for the tasks of web searches, Tweets and Facebook updates. If you want to write the Great American Novel, you're not going to do it on a screen keyboard. On the other hand, if all you want to do is look up the lunch menu at the deli down the street, the screen keyboard works fine and doesn't require your portable device to be larger.
The way we interact and consume information will change over time in ways we can't really imagine now. This will likely make the physical keyboard less important and at the same time do the same for the screen keyboard. Neither will likely go away altogether but you might find them relegated to niches.
@Ansella, I don't understand what is so exhausting about a touchscreen. Unless you think we mean using a touchscreen on our monitor itself? That would be impractical, but replacing the traditional keyboard with a touchscreen keyboard would work. I would love if my keyboards were replaced with touchscreens--no more stupid crevices to collect dust and crumbs and dirt.
Yes, it's the future of computing.