The PC in 10 years

6/18/2008

In 1998 most of us were running Windows 95 or Windows 98. Ten years forward we have USB, faster processors, better graphics, but the general paradigm has remained the same. Windows, mouse, and keyboard are our primary inputs. Ten years prior to 1998 it was quite a different story, and I believe 10 years from now we will go through another change, hopefully even bigger than the one from 1988 to 1998.

And if we go farther back before the screen we had teletypes. Farther yet, punch cards. No doubt the mouse was a major revolution, especially when we left the world of console screens as the usage of the mouse in those days was rather limited. But we are still interfacing with the computer in an inefficient way.

When we moved beyond punch cards, the type writer model (a.k.a. keyboard / teletype) was the most obvious of choices. It provided simple input that the computers of those days could handle, and provided a methodology that users were familiar with and could be easily trained on. Since then we have added the mouse which was quite revolutionary, but essentially we have evolved based on these premises. Anyone who has been in one of my presentations that contained "The Tale of Two Sinks" knows all about this.

We are at a point now and actually have been for a number of years that we should reexamine this premise. What would a computer look like if we had never seen one before? Why do we always assume it has to have a keyboard and mouse and only try to incrementally improve on that?

Most users when given this question think of Star Trek. Have you ever seen a keyboard on Star Trek or any science fiction? Very rarely. The closest concept is the command console seen on the bridge of the Enterprise. Its usage is easy to understand, you cannot have a dozen people all shouting out their commands to the computer so the command console provides a 1:1 interface while eliminating the creation of external interference to others.

But most of the time, how do users on Star Trek interface with the computer? They simply say "Computer" to get its attention then give it a command. This works well when you are in the privacy of your own quarters, or you are the Captain, but can you imagine a plane full of passengers all talking to their computers? Let's forget the accuracy and speed issues. It would be a nightmare for everyone. If you do not believe me, just remember the last time you had to endure people in an airport waiting lounge all blabbing on their cell phones because they have nothing else to do and lots of spare minutes. Let's not also forget all the teenagers who will get in the act, and you can see that airlines will see an increase in hijackings by passengers just wanting some peace and quiet, and the cubicle farms will begin to go postal.

With the advent of a TED presentation and Microsoft Surface there is a lot of excitement about multi touch computing. Microsoft has also stated that multi touch computing will be one of the major features in Windows 7 (Video of multi touch in Windows 7). Some are now predicting multi touch will change everything. It will have a big impact. But lets think about this for a minute. Look back at all those multi touch demos. They are great for selecting menus and moving pictures around. But how will you word process, enter data, or use the average business application? Multi touch is a niche feature limited to specific applications. In general purpose applications, multi touch will likely at best replace some mouse functionality. Multi touch also is less granular than the mouse, so do not expect the mouse to go the way of the Dodo. Instead we'll have keyboard, mouse, and touch.

Lets imagine a new user who has not used a computer before. Some of you may find this hard to imagine, but many older people and people in third world countries have not had great exposure to personal computers. And there will always be children who at some point will have their first computer contact. How do such people expect to interact with a computer? Well most have at least seen computers in movies and when others use them, so they know. But if you were to give them a blank slate with no preconceptions, most would expect to touch a computer and use a pen for text input.

Windows has supported the pen since the early 1990's. In fact the Tablet is one of Bill Gate's own pet projects. So why are we still using the keyboard? Most non tablet users simply assume that the software cannot decipher most users chicken scratch reliably yet. But amazingly enough, XP Tablet Edition and even better yet Vista do quite a good job at the handwriting recognition part.

The problem is that all the software expects keyboard input. So with the exception of a few verticals and a few truly pen enabled applications, the pen is a keyboard simulator. The pen is not integral but and afterthought. This makes using the pen like trying to snorkel in Lake Erie (a.k.a. "The Great Muddie"). Anyone who has tried to use the pen in Windows quickly finds themselves quite unproductive, frustrated and quickly abandoning the pen for the keyboard except for art programs or browsing web page links. Applications like Inker strives not to reach the ultimate goals listed below, but at least make the pen experience "tolerable".

The pen has been successful in a few verticals where custom software has been written and the user only uses that software. Environments where the user is quite mobile such as delivery, warehouses, and medical are a few examples. But the minute any one of these users sits down at their desk or wants to run any normal piece of software, its straight back to the keyboard.

A few applications like Microsoft One Note and the beta software Ink Seine. The problem however remains. These are  niche applications and still offer what users consider only basic pen functionality. The user experience is slightly better than paper, however users want to use a computer to do much more than paper.

Office also supports Ink in many places, but only very minimally. PowerPoint allows you to annotate with the pen. But try and use PowerPoint without a keyboard and anyone will agree its not really pen enabled. Outlook allows you to send ink emails. But who wants to get someone else's chicken scratch as an image for an e-mail? Such e-mails are annoying to recipients. They cannot be quoted, nor copied and pasted in text form.

Users want:

• To interact like they do naturally with paper, but they want the full feature set of Microsoft Word.
• For each and every application to work well with the pen, and not as a keyboard simulator.

That is the ultimate goal and something we are still very far away from. I expect Windows 7 will make only incremental improvements in this area, although any improvement is welcome.

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