Bold statement. Keep in mind lots of us were balking at the idea of touch screens for even writing text messages when the iPhone came out.. Or jump back less than a lifetime to assumptions about how long it would take to get computers the size of our bedrooms.

Take a step back, and really consider how likely it is that laptops are FOREVER. It might be true, but things change and I think it's historically much more likely that ANYTHING you point a finger at today will be transformatively replaced in due time, than it is that you'll be able to accurately predict a permanent future for whatever an ultrabook is.

I actually don't have any idea what an ultrabook is, but it sounds like a very small idea... not something I'd bet on or invest in for the very long term.

I still hate writing on a touchscreen. It's slow and error-prone. It's only better than not writing at all.

Touchscreens are fundamentally limited by the size of your finger. Firstly because you have to physically press the UI element you want to interact with. Secondly because your finger obscures whatever's underneath.

Of course, you can get around this by decoupling the physical location of the UI element and the physical location of your finger. It's called a trackpad.

Touchscreens are great for some tasks. But they are not great for tasks involving high information densities (writing, spreadsheets, mostly anything that can be classified as "editing"). For those, people will continue to use keyboards and mice until they evolve cone-shaped transparent fingers.

Ultrabooks are MacBookAir-like laptops. Technically the term is an Intel trademark, but it's a widely-accepted synonym for "very thin and light laptop with extra battery life and no optical-disc bay".

As soon as they start to get over the 11-to-13'' form factor (and lower in price), they're going to replace the current generation of work laptops. They'll get thinner and thinner; as batteries and bluetooth-like technologies improve, sooner or later they'll even lose USB ports, and you'll be left with a device that is literally a screen and a keyboard. Some models will have a detachable tablet screen, no doubt, but the heavy lifting will still be done with a real keyboard.

But interestingly, the touch keyboard does suck very badly. It's only because of other factors that I accept the "touch keyboard." But in reality, it's very, very annoying, let's be honest. Pre-iPhone, I texted happily without even looking at the screen. Now, I can never figure out why I keep hitting certain letters that I didn't mean to. I feel like an elderly person typing. And you can google this stuff, it's a very common view. We haven't really innovated with a touch keyboard, we just deal with it. If I had a technology that could let me have a touch experience but give me a tactile keyboard when I need, it would be great. Although, I agree with you on the ultrabook thing, not sure about that.

I don't know. What happens when you can dictate your documents? That and gestures and the occasional keyboard might go a very long way.

I don't think it will change tomorrow. But I could see the home market making the shift, gradually. Where the business market will be fifteen years from now we'll have to see.

Two futures:

1. Every office in the world will buy each employee a separate office room so they can dictate their documents without being disturbed by the other employees.

2. Every office in the world will buy each employee a $10 physical keyboard.

3. Every employee works from a room in their house.

But we were talking about real scenarios. :) Seriously though, there are practical, life reasons, why that would be unlikely to be the 90% case.

I don't think folks will do all their work from home, but I think it will increase quite a bit for professional workers over the next 20 years -- mostly because space is expensive, and working from home is desirable for many people.

I wonder what this will do to the divorce rate.

Surprised I got down-voted. It's kind of naive. Many programmers that have families prefer to go to work instead. Working at home, as a non-bachelor, you're seen as being able to take care of all the domestic issues (dishes, trash, run errands) and many people would just rather strike that balance. Sure, a lot of people like it but I don't think it's going to be that common. Even our industry, supposedly the most forward thinking, and even in SV, many require working on-premise. If working from home is too liberal for SV, it's going to be too much for the rest of the country for much longer than 20 years.

Well, I didn't down-vote you and I have a family, but my wife worked from home for quite a while and liked it. I think it would be tough when the kids are little, but when they are older it would work fine.

I don't think most folks would end up working from home 5 days a week -- there are still things that work better face-to-face. But I could see folks _only_ coming in for face-to-face time.