Take a moment to watch this popular Web video of how a 2.5 year old adroitly handles a brand new iPad that her dad gave her to play with. Remember: She's 2.5 years old! If you're reading this blog, chances are you're in your 20s or older -- and I'd bet the closest touch interface you came in contact with at age 2 was nothing. Now, I have an 18-month-old daughter who loves to handle my iPhone. She knows how to open apps and how to play with the ones that make animal sounds. She also knows how to set the music on the iPod we keep in her room to play her sleepy-time music.
And today, we get news from the Gartner research group that these touch interfaces for computers are going to be quite popular for PCs in five years time. I believe it.
From Gartner:
"What we're going to see is the younger generation beginning to use touchscreen computers ahead of enterprises," said Leslie Fiering, research vice president at Gartner. "By 2015, we expect more than 50 percent of PCs purchased for users under the age of 15 will have touchscreens, up from fewer than 2 percent in 2009. On the other hand, we are predicting that fewer than 10 percent of PCs sold to enterprises in 2015 for mainstream knowledge workers will have touchscreens."
Many have lamented the death of penmanship (is it really taught in school anymore?) as the keyboard and computers rose in prominence in education. Now I wonder in a generation, or less, if we'll be lamenting the death of
skills in the face of touch screen computing? Am I crazy? With voice recognition vastly improving, people will be able to "write" with their voices more easily. Already, word recognition software can automatically complete your words, so you don't have to bother typing the whole word out. What do you think?