Computer Mouse Facing Extinction

Within five years, computer industry experts believe the mouse will be extinct due to obsolescence. This common PC peripheral is doomed to be replaced with touch screens and facial recognition.

According to the BBC, vice president and Gartner Fellow Steven Prentice, credits new motion control innovations like those used in Nintendo's MotionPlus for the Wii and Apple's iPhone are driving the mouse out of business.

"With the Wii you point and shake and it vibrates back at you so you have a two-way relationship," said the analyst.

"The new generation of smartphones like the iPhone all now have tilting mechanisms or you can shake the device to do one or more things."

"For all its faults, the keyboard will remain the primary text input device. Nothing is easily going to replace it," he said. "But the idea of a keyboard with a mouse as a control interface is breaking down."

Gaming Today has covered a few innovative uses of the PS3 Eye and the Wiimote for head tracking in conjunction with PCs for desktop virtual reality displays. It's not hard to believe the PC industry would implement it's own version to compete with consoles.

via PC Authority

It will take more than 15 years to make facial recognition hardware and software precise enough and people don't actually use touch screens for work :|, the closest thing to that are the digital artists with tablets like Wacom Cintiq.Touch screens are more like a fancy gadget not something that actually has some value and that is a necessity.

So the 3rd option for me, because all of this is BS.

I can't believe this kind of crap gets as much publicity as it does. This isn't an authoritative analysis - it's pure speculation by someone who goes by the title of a "computer industry expert". So interaction with gaming and mobile devices is changing - what does that have to do with general PC keyboard and mouse interfaces? The mouse may be extinct one day, but certainly not in the next 5 years. Standards have to be created, changed, operating systems have to be redesigned - even legacy applications such as partition tools would need modification. What about games that rely on mouse input (namely, all of them) that have been released in the past 5 years? Are we just going to forget about them..?

This is what happens when you get analysts looking at "trends" and "sales" without the faintest idea about the underlying complexity of the industry.

Rat turds. That's what they're smoking.

As a general input device? The decline may have started within five years.

As a gaming device? No chance.

I doubt it'll be replaced soon, especially for gaming. The touch pad on my laptop is annoying to use for games, especially for FPS. However, who knows... tomorrow someone might come up with something that is much more convinient to use. For the moment, none of the current technology will replace it - not for gaming anyways.

What are they smoking. :P

Seriously, thats the dumbest prediction I ever heard.

Hey all, lets all play games using tilt functions and other crap!

yeah the mouse isn't getting replaced anytime soon for FPS games. I mean seriously can you imagine how a touch screen FPS game would work, everyone would be getting headshots. The mouse is definetely here to stay.

I HATE touchscreens and touchpads. They are horribly imprecise/unresponsive, and in the case of touchscreens, you always end up smudging and scratching the screen if you use them long enough. I hate them on phones, and I hate them on laptops, but I put up with them because a mouse isn't a viable option in either case. But that doesn't mean I like them. At all.

And I'm sure some of you guys have used the Wii-mote. It's good and fun in short bursts for party games like Wii sports, but very tiresome to wave your arms around like that for any extended period of time.

I can't believe this kind of crap gets as much publicity as it does. This isn't an authoritative analysis - it's pure speculation by someone who goes by the title of a "computer industry expert". So interaction with gaming and mobile devices is changing - what does that have to do with general PC keyboard and mouse interfaces? The mouse may be extinct one day, but certainly not in the next 5 years. Standards have to be created, changed, operating systems have to be redesigned - even legacy applications such as partition tools would need modification. What about games that rely on mouse input (namely, all of them) that have been released in the past 5 years? Are we just going to forget about them..?

This is what happens when you get analysts looking at "trends" and "sales" without the faintest idea about the underlying complexity of the industry.

chemeleon_789

Well said man, i think the situation should be looked at all angles, not just gaming. Maybe in gaming we'll have specialised input devices in order to have sheer fun. But in everyday computing the mouse is here to stay till atleast 2012.

If in 5 years I wont be able to buy a mouse anymore, I better start stocking up on them now. If they dont sell them and im forced to use a touchscreen... I will break my computer with a sledgehammer, honest to god, allah, jewish god and whoever else cares.Helbrec

Hey don worry man, computer is for the people.........And if situations like those comes up, maybe we'll start an OpenHardware initiative like OpenSoftware :lol: