> Ever watch a bartender ring up a complex order?

Too many times to count and I'd disagree it's better than a keyboard equivalent. It's easier for new/casual staff and can be easier for visual people but it's awful compared to someone with a bit of training for complex things. They seem to fail at making the complex things achievable for the less trained as well IME.

Plastering drink logos on big buttons is easy for some, but for non-visual people and those not familiar with the products it's harder/slower than an alphabetical list or typing the first 2 characters. Want to put something on my account? Good luck with the touch keyboard.

Compare those modern touch screen apps to something like a TUI that used to run in the local video shop 30 years ago and there is no comparison in speed and efficiency.

I like TUIs because their limits have made their creators strive for extremely efficient UX.

Or a sufficiently complex establishment with a sufficiently trained bartender could do better with keyboard macros. Sure it may be rare but the point is touch interfaces have a complexity limit whereas keyboards and grammars don't.

How can a touch interface have a complexity limit that a keyboard doesn't? You can literally emulate a regular keyboard on a touch screen.

The answer is agility of thought and execution, and that if you emulate a keyboard on a touch interface as its main interaction paradigm it's to all effects a keyboard, but with less tactile feedback thus harder to get agile with.

Hard to imagine a more confined problem domain.

Ever watch anyone using a FreeDOS based POS system?