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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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Touch screens?
Yeah a huge thing at one point. Anyone use a laptop with a tochscreen?
Everyday, big thing in schools.
Of course, of course. At the time though, it was expected that this would change the face of computing - no more keyboards! No more mice! No, this is more like Star Trek where you glance down at some geometric assemblage of colored shapes and tap several in random succession to immediately bring up the data you were looking for.
That, uh, did not happen.
The trackpad and trackpoint of my aging linux laptop stop working if the thing gets its lid shut. The touchscreen continues to work just fine, however. It turns out that while two stupid things can’t make a good thing, they can sometimes cancel each other out.
A handy benefit no doubt, but not quite the earth-shaking revolution the touchscreen hype-train promised at the time.
Aren't touch screens literally everywhere? What was the hype?
It's always so baffling to me to learn about those things because I was way too young to actually experience any of the "hype" around most of those technologies. Touch screens are cool and they penetrated society so much there are at my grocery shop, what the fuck were they supposed to do if that's not living up to the hype?
To add to the others' comments, they were much less impressive before we had capacitive touch screens. Older resistive screens needed a good deal of mechanical force to register a press (great for longevity!) and required frequent re-calibration. They just weren't very satisfying to use compared to any modern smart phone or tablet.
yeah partly this
and also the other kinds of issues: touchscreens are (even now still) a vastly more complicated engineering item to add than simple toggle switches, and in many places they don't make sense or are a bad solution to pick
but in the hype of then, touchscreens everywhere! turning your lights on? touchscreen. starting your shower water running? touchscreen. opening your window? touchscreen. calling a flight attendant? touchscreen. running your microwave? touchscreen. configuring your fridge temperature? touchscreen.
so, y'know, the usual "this new technology will save us, on everything" bullshit that industries seem so prone to. same reason as why we're seeing so much llm-everywhere bullshit