The mouse dead by 2019 ... not so fast!

According to AppleMatters, the mouse will be dead by 2019:

Hear it from Apple Matters first. By the end of this decade, the mouse will go the way of the floppy disk and VHS tapes.

This was most evident at CES 2010 in Las Vegas, where large tech companies revealed 3D movies and gaming technologies to dazzle—Intel's i7 or Nvidia/ATI's newest graphics cards were impressive—but by far the most pervasive evidence of a mouse killer was the multi-touch screens that seemed to be everywhere.

Sure, touchscreen, and multi-touch screens are the latest "best thing since sliced bread," but I just don't see how they will replace the mouse. Augment the mouse, sure, but in their current form, and as long as our desks and workstations remain in their current configurations, I don't foresee the mouse going extinct any time soon.

[poll id="497"]

I like the idea of touchscreens and multi-touch screens but you have to be pretty blinded by the tech not to see the shortcomings. First, touching a screen makes the screen dirty, and that reduces its capability as a screen. Look how dirty your keyboard and mouse are, and now imagine trying to look through all that dirt. Sure, screens could be made easier to clean, but you'd still need to clean the screen. Do you want your friends, family and coworkers pawing your screen with their sticky mitts?

Then there's the issue of ergonomics. Sure, it looked cool on Minority Report when Tom Cruise was controlling his PC by waving his hands about the place, but is that something you really want to be doing all day? Doesn't sound like fun to me. Now imaging doing that while reaching over your keyboard. Hmmm, even more of a challenge, right?

Then there's the whole issue of precision. Just how precise are your fingertips? OK, they're probably pretty good, but when you place your finger over a screen, you're obscuring what's beneath it, so you're working blind. what about drawing with your fingers?

Also, a mouse is more than a pointing device. There's those buttons that do useful stuff. How can those functions be replicated on-screen?

I'm not saying that touchscreens don't have their place in tech (they do), but I don't think that they are the game-changes that some people make them out to be.