2010-07-31 10:34:05 - Despite its title, this is not an article by a second-grader predicting yet another peril of global warming. Being an iPhone blog, we would rather discuss techie stuff. The relationship we have with the “mouse” has, let’s face it, become too comfortable.

We use a mouse to interact with our desktops almost subconsciously. Despite comparative inefficiency with newer touch-screens and multi-touch desktop pads, we can still operate a computer effectively, thanks to repetition, using only a mouse. But the complexity of synched devices and processing capability almost requires us to evolve beyond the mouse (which causes one to wonder when its older brother, the keyboard, will too find its habitat in decline). We admit, to those frequent readers of our blog, that we are biased towards hand-held Apple products. But we are happy that the multi-touch gestures we love on our iPhones are making their way to the desktop market.

In the multi-touch peripheral area for desktops, Apple is the natural leader

and innovator. Apple had a removable touchpad first available for a modest $7,500 price in 1997. In that year, the Twentieth Anniversary MacIntosh introduced a detachable touchpad. While the user was still tied to the desktop with a cable (i.e., no Bluetooth), the touchpad concept was still pretty cool. Many of the touch-screen “gestures” we have grown comfortable with as iPhone users (e.g., pinching, scrolling, tapping and other touch features) have popped up on the newer Apple “Magic Pad” device designed for desktop users. If one were to use a Magic Pad, which is a clickable device as a whole, he would no longer want a mouse. Going with their success with the touchpad on their MacBook Pro laptop series, Apple now lets a user use the same “gestures” he would use on an iPhone, but instead on a desktop. This makes a mouse look outdated in plain and simple English. A mouse is cheaper for now, and that is a mouse’s only benefit. The Magic Pad, of course Bluetooth enabled. What’s better (and this is significant for those of you who have run into this annoying quirk) is that the Magic Pad is the exact same height as the Apple Wireless Keyboard. Apple copy-cats are as predictable as a hurricane. And as more copy-cats and similar devices find their way into the market, the cheaper they will become, and the fewer reasons a rational person will have for using a mouse. Thus would be the death of the clunky mouse and the birth of computing on a new, more tactile, level. Apple did not invent multi-touch screens (I am sure that such technology was present in the move Minority Report, for instance). But Apple did what they always do; Apple made us demand the technology. Apple made the touch-screen a taken-for-granted need.

While not a boon for those of us in the iPhone repair and handheld wireless industry, multi-touch (what we like to call tactile) computing still a sign of what an innovative and great country we continue to be.