Thankfully some sanity has reigned in car interiors and the manufacturers have realised the benefits to tactile feedback. He might be right when screens can reconfigure themselves with raised sections. Or mind control I guess.

Many things worked fine 30 years ago and yet have been immeasurably improved since - it's a tempting argument to not fix that which isn't broken, but ultimately a weak one. Also, there is little point in comparing computers, phones and car interiors. Incorporating physical buttons on phones involves a significant trade-off that is not an issue with computers. Car interiors are a different matter entirely. A more appropriate comparison might be conventional TV remotes vs the Apple TV remote. I've found the latter to be much more user friendly and intuitive.

I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this one. Sure, it's an alright attitude to have towards non-essential parts of your life/consumer experience, but imagine if mission critical stuff (like, flight consoles) changed on a regular basis - that would be completely insane.

For phones and tablets I prefer the giant screen approach.

A lot of HN users seem only to write in English. I write in three languages, one of which is very different from the other two. Using one keyboard is possible on a PC, but would make for a lousy experience on a smartphone where the ideal layout for high speed typing in that latter language has nothing to do with the typical keyboard layout. To transplant this language's layout on to a shrunken down imitation of a full keyboard would be a productivity loss. This is a scenario where a physical keyboard on the phone would be a hinderance, not a help.

And that's not even considering many languages that are similar, use the same alphabet, or whatnot. They might be able to get away with the same physical layout, but now the manufacturers have to decide whether to print the legends on or near the keys with the standard US layout, UK layout, French AZERTY layout, and other layouts specific to each region, sometimes at great expense for relatively small markets.

That is if they can fit all the legends in. Some languages will still need a visible set of Roman characters, so not only will the local language's characters be printed on or near the letters, but so will the standard QWERTY layout, taking up valuable physical space, possibly necessitating a smaller phone.

I'm not mentioning what specific language I used that's quicker to type on a keyboard layout other than the standard PC one because it doesn't matter: it is within our capabilities to not have to manufacture a hundred different configurations of physical keyboard for smartphones and tablets for years, long before the arrival of the iPhone and iPad. Nobody needs to know what language it is because it doesn't matter: those who don't even vaguely consider the needs of international audiences as being first class, on the same level as the needs of US English users, don't have even the beginning of an understanding of designing products for international audiences.

The whole /world/ uses smartphones with touch screens. Not just business users, not just executives on meandering lunch breaks with their Blackberries; every day actual people who don't want to be bothered with which SKU to get in order to fully support their language, who don't touch type on regular keyboards let alone tiny ones, children, grandparents, and everything in between.

A touch screen is a bit better than a mouse for lots of stuff and it preserves the discoverability of a mouse-based UI. Unfortunately it retains the drawbacks of a mouse based ui. Worse is that there is no fixed controller on a smartphone that might allow faster interaction w/ apps. This is where I think we are getting in trouble. In a traditional computer setup, you interact with the mouse when you are learning new software, and eventually transition to using a keyboard more and more. With touch based stuff, it seems like when an app is first released it has a simple, discoverable UI. But over time, as people become comfortable w/ the app, its UI becomes less approachable to suit the needs of more expert users and new users are left behind (snapchat for example).

In my opinion a touch screen is fine for consumptive devices where many different UI elements are required and input is light. Creative devices should have a fixed controller like a keyboard, joystick, etc.

I think mice are excellent, and I think their longevity has proven that people like them, understand well how to use them, and that they are very useful for many computer tasks.

Touchscreens and digitizer tablets and trackballs and all sorts of alternate input methods have existed for thirty years or more, yet they have never broke into the mainstream on desktop computers for anything but niche applications.

The ergonomics and precision of a touchscreen on a desktop or laptop computer are generally abysmal. I can easily move my mouse one pixel at a time when doing graphics work and such with a mouse. Stuff like this is impossible with a touchscreen and big clumsy fingers.

Creative devices should have a fixed controller like a keyboard, joystick, etc.

Or maybe a mouse...

Mice are great. They can be used for drawing, dragging, context menus, scrolling, and to quickly and precisely select and manipulate distant controls. Those things are significantly more tedious when performed with a keyboard, or require pre-configured hotkeys. The mouse has stuck around for a reason.

With a mouse, you can use any application right away with no learning curve, and also interact with the content itself better than with a keyboard.

No. This is wrong. The mouse is faster. Apple did that research, too -- and the mouse won every time:

https://asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

Recognizing and pointing is always faster than remembering command sequences you have to press/type in. It imposes less of a cognitive burden too, which means you can focus more on the task you're doing and less on the interface itself.

Apple absolutely made the right call with a mouse-centric UI in 1984 and they made the right call with touch in 2007. That's why they're Apple -- you don't become the most successful and influential tech company in the world by making stupid choices.

Apparently he said once (a looooooong time ago) that a mouse is a useless device and nobody would need one. So with the use of the touch-screens mouse use will be reduced.

I have to say that although my laptop does have a very good touch-screen, I still use my mouse for 80% of the actions. Perhaps when browsing or changing windows (to continue browing) I may be using my fingers. But try to select text and change it to Bold on Word, when on the highest possible screen resolution, and well.. you know what happens.

Of course for small portable devices, such as a phone, to write a small note it 'good enough' when using the software keyboard, and the fact that the usual mode on smartphones is 'one-app-at-a-time' displayed on the screen, makes for a simpler UI and UX.

They solved the problem... by putting "exit, maximize, minimize" buttons at the top-right (or top-left) of every window. By putting "file, view, edit" dropdowns at the top-left of ever application. By putting "back, forward, refresh" at the top of the browser.

And even then they don't align to the on-screen text.

There is no reason for the screen text not to align to the buttons other than sloppy design.

I have a phone with a knurled power button, and a smooth flashlight button next to it. It's a minor example, but dynamically remapping those buttons would destroy a lot of their utility for me.

Buttons on the side of the screen are not the correct user interface for all activities, as an example they would be inconvenient for browsing the web [1] and useless to sign for delivery of a parcel.

[1] ...but not impossible: number the links on the screen as if they are footnotes, number the buttons on the side, click the button which lies next to the desired number. If there are more links than there are buttons the last button can be used to select the next set of numbers. If there are zillions of links the last two buttons can be used to page through sets of numbers. Inconvenient, maybe, but it would work.

Where he was wrong is that professional use requires muscle memory to build mastery of the tool, and that the flexible nature of touchscreens fundamentally prevent people from developing muscle memory. Professionals derive enormous benefit from fixed-button interfaces that are impediments or limitations for the mass consumer market.

(Automobiles are the main exception to this rule, since they require blind usability, but most consumer products don't require blind usability.)

Those have existed for decades with the same functions and each one of them does a particular task very well. Nor do you do anything on those devices that involves reading a lot of text or watching full screen video where buttons (or UI in general) could get in the way - the polar opposite of smartphones.

But seriously, you are exactly right. There is no need to retrain the user for no benefit.

No, you create a new product with the new buttons and sell something different to your competitors, now all the phones look the same, on top of that you have only 2 Operating systems to choose, there used to be creativity in the design of devices now they cycle from round edges to square and back.