I think this is just a question of somebody do it right. We just dont use this right now, because what we have now is too crude. But give it the right number of iteration trials, and im pretty sure a tiling window manager can be competitive, and more so, in a more touch oriented desktop.

My hunch is that its just lacking a good amount of iterations. Our modern windowed desktop didnt came out ready either. So give this some love, and im sure something really cool and usable, can bootstrap from this.