Now this is a reasonable objection. Small form factor touch screen interfaces just don't work the same way as mouse-based desktop interfaces with acres of space. Trying to use a phone UI on a desktop is heinous (as is pointed out above with Windows 10 as the example.)

I used to regularly remote into a windows box (GUI mode, classic desktop) from my phone. 2560x1440 pixels of 21st century glory. Believe me when I say you do not want to use a desktop UI on a phone either. No, pinch-zooming hasn't proved to be a sustainable workaround.

Just fire up windows 10 and install something from the app store for an example of why the convergence makes no sense.

I don't know. I think many "tablet" apps would work fine on the Surface 4 (if they got scaling right).

I still think touch screens is the future - also on desktops (there either in tablet form or "drafting table" form).

I think editors more like acme and less like vim might rise up. Along with new input types like the power bar and surface wheel.

> I think editors more like acme and less like vim might rise up.

Acme, and anything like it, would be completely horrendous on a touch interface. I use it regularly (although I find that I prefer Sam).

Edit: Then again, I have touchscreeens on many of my laptops. I don't find them useful. With the exception of drawing art, I wouldn't miss them if they disappeared.

I'm no so sure about "anything like it". A pen for easily selecting text, a one-two-three finger tap and/or a wheel/secondary input might work with a similar interface to ACME?

What does acme do to help on touch screens? I while ago I toyed around creating a vim keyboard for android, instead of having a virtual keyboard popup it show commands/motions instead. I abandoned the idea, but if text edition on a touch screen ever becomes feasible then I think the virtual keyboard has to go.

> What does acme do to help on touch screens?

Unlike emacs or vim, acme leverages the mouse/gui for powerful editing - and I believe (multi)touch screens have the potential to be better guis than than screen+mouse. For one thing mice generally utilise at most three fingers and one hand - and IMNHO while eg blender/photoshop combine mouse and keyboard - the combination is awkward and not very intuitive.

I think (but am far from certain) that acme is a more promising approach.

I'm not saying that the app would have exactly the same UI on a phone and a desktop computer - the developer is free to customise the UI for the device.

Most of them already fail to do so for tablets, why would that change?

'Most' apps do not get used even once [1] so their user experience doesn't really matter.

Most popular apps are designed for both tablet and phone. The ones that haven't specifically been designed for tablet are usually basic things like Guitar Tuner or Flashlight which don't suffer much from having a phone layout on a tablet.

Sure, you will still sometimes encounter a crappy app which has a horrible user experience on your device - similar to web pages and webapps which assume you have a 24-inch display - but not often enough for users to avoid the platform.

[1] http://www.phonearena.com/news/400000-apps-in-the-App-Store-...

At that point it's less complicated to have multiple apps than a single all form factors one.