I’m an early adopter. Surprised? It means I get to play with cool stuff pretty early on, and it also means I often get stuck at a dead end, having invested in a technology that went nowhere. If I weren’t constantly culling out the old stuff, I’m sure I’d have a massive pile of smartmedia cards, DCC cassettes, Sega Master System cartridges, Windows Media “playsforsure” MP3 players, HD-DVDs, and all sorts of other associated casualties of the war for consumer sentiment.
Add my touchscreen monitor to that list. The last time I bought a completely new PC, Windows 8 (the original, not the revamped 8.1) was still the top of the line. I invested in a touchscreen monitor because honestly, it looked like that big horsey start screen and all those weird gestures were going to be the only way I actually could get to things. Of course, a few weeks later Windows 8.1 was announced and things got a little better, and now that I’m running Windows 10 things are pretty good. I don’t touch my screen more than maybe once a week.
I said it at the time, touch technology doesn’t belong on the desktop. It’s ok on a tablet, obviously that’s the only way it’s going to work unless you have a keyboard or something. But it’s just a big waste of time on the desktop unless you’re in a conference room full of people who are (inexplicably) still impressed by your ability to swipe across the screen to change slides.
People didn’t want touch, they wanted bigger screens at a fair price, and adding touch just made those screens more expensive. So touch is going away, and fast. A quick look revealed that there are very few consumer-level touchscreens now; most are designed for point of sale systems. On the other hand the number of monitors in the 27″ and up range has really jumped. People have enjoyed the dual monitor life for a few years but honestly, dual monitors is kind of a pain and if you can get one really massive monitor it’s clearly better.
It doesn’t hurt that there’s no market for touchscreens in consumer TVs. The worlds of consumer TV and computer monitors are completely merged now — unlike the days when computer monitor technology didn’t apply to TVs at all. Now there’s simply no difference other than a TV having a tuner and a monitor not having a tuner. Ignore the tuner and you have a big ‘ol computer monitor, simple as that.
Just one one that responds to touch commands. That’s… just out.
