dewme

I’m also a true believer in the microfiber cloth method for wiping fingerprints and smears from screens and eyewear. I’m fanatical abound it and have microfiber wiping cloths staged pretty much everywhere I ever use an iDevice or eye/sun glasses, in my cars, at all my desks, in my backpack, in my travel toiletries bag, on coffee tables, and in sweatshirt, jacket, and suit pockets. I bought a stack of these at Sam's Club several years ago, cut them into quarters, so it’s not a big expense or space hog. I also have some Apple branded black microfiber wipers that came with an Apple device I purchased years ago, but I don’t recall which Apple devices these came with.

I do disagree that the smears and fingerprints aren’t an issue when the screen is on. I can still see the smears, even with a predominately white background, but dark screens are much worse. Perhaps this is why I find the whole notion of a touch-screen Mac so horrifying. Still waiting for Apple to implement proximity sensors that allow air touch and contactless gestures. 

The mock ups depicted in this patent are strikingly reminiscent of some of the early user interaction controls and displays used onboard naval ships and aircraft, dating back to the early 1960s. Of course everything back then was based on physical buttons (many of which were multifunctional with tiny film chips), dedicated screens, keyboards, and a trackball with multiple buttons as a pointing and selection device. While effective in the hands of a highly trained operator, it was a mountain of claptrap begging for something better. A single large slab of glass that supports virtual buttons, onscreen functional grouping, touch selection, and contextual overlays would have been several orders of magnitude better and easier on operators. Modern equivalents of these control and display workstations have exactly these types of virtual controls and touch features. 

So yeah, if the tasks at hand and the jobs that need to be done would not benefit from touch screen  interaction then it makes no sense to provide it. A Good example of pointless touch screen interaction is the early incarnations of Microsoft mobile devices that had touch screens. All the touch screen did was turn your finger into a mouse pointer. It totally sucked. 

At the other end of the spectrum there are problems that would benefit from touch screen interaction, for example someone tasked with a high cognitive workload task requiring highly dynamic situational awareness, like a air traffic controller or combat system operator.  In these domains a touch screen interaction can make a world of difference and even save lives because it removes a layer of claptrap imposed by traditional human-machine interaction devices like keyboards, pointing devices, and buttons. In these situations you don’t want people thinking about how to manipulate controls, you want them thinking about how to deal with a real world problem. 

In between the extremes there are places where touch screens make sense for other reasons, like convenience, environment, and ease of access. Imagine what the self service checkout station at Walmart would be like if you had to use a mouse and keyboard to use it. It would suck.