TabBlogger : Touching is Good (finale?)

Hilton Locke has finally spilled the beans: the big announcement that he was so charged up for is that manufacturers are going to be able to ship the Tablet version of Windows XP with machines using a touchscreen interface, instead of just an active (or passive) digitizer.

I'm sure this will open up additional avenues for the Tablet platform, but I think Hilton said it best ...

What I do know is this: don't think that all touch input is created equally. On top of that, touch input is not nearly as precise as pen input, so it'll take you some time to get used to the coarseness of the input. We generally treat the touch digitizer like an additional mouse, so you can ink with it, but again, with the lack of precision and lower sampling rates of mice, I think you'll quickly appreciate what pen input really means to the Tablet experience.

If anything, I fear that this may dilute the Tablet PC experience. Cheaper touchscreen machines will likely get prime retail space, and if people using the inferior hardware have a less-than-desirable experience, that's probably going to color the entire concept. Frankly, I think Microsoft should tighten up the specs even more, not open them wider. Require OEMs to use specific digitizer hardware (and incentivize the OEMs of those digitizers to keep the cost down). Require OEMs to include stylus' that include eraser buttons and a side-switch. Keep the experience consistent and high-quality ... that's the only way to grow the platform.

I suppose we'll find out if this gamble pays off once the first wave of product announcements come in, and consumers respond to the new specifications. Hilton said that this has come from requests from many parties, including users. Part of smart product design is knowing when to listen to your users, and part is knowing when to ignore them. User's know what they want, but they don't always know how to communicate it properly. Focus groups aren't always right.