Microsoft is making a big noise about its coming touchscreen capability. It is being placed front-and-center as a revolutionary new interface that will be delivered with Windows 7 – the OS that will supersede the lackluster Vista. Microsoft is pretending that Apple hasn’t already delivered a touch interface a year ago with the iPhone and will almost certainly be delivering a touch interface with the next version of OS X, which will surely hit the streets before Windows 7.

But never mind, Microsoft can demonstrate its touchscreen publicly, right now, on screens much bigger than the iPhone will ever have, and Bill Gates, thinking perhaps that Microsoft has invented a better mouse trap, is confidently predicting that:

The touch screen will kill the mouse!!

No it won’t Bill.

Here’s why:

The main problem is a simple. Arms weigh quite a lot – roughly about 10lbs each. If you have to keep your arms in the air to use an interface, you’ll very quickly revert to a mouse – within about 20 minutes is my guess. (Think of that tortuous exercise where you hold your arms out for as long as you can). What this means is that touchscreen is usable interface primarily for a tablet PC, or one that has a screen that can be laid flat or almost flat.

A second reason why the mouse will remain alive and well is that it gives you more flexibility in where you sit, as does the keyboard. You put keyboard and mouse at a preferred distance from the touchscreen is more constraining. This isn’t to say that the touchscreen hasn’t got a role, just that it won’t commit mousicide

Incidentally, Bill also believes that voice input will kill the keyboard. I don’t think that’s on either, because of the noise pollution of people shouting at their computers, but it is feasible in some contexts.

Competing With Apple

Microsoft seems to believe that the way to compete with Apple is to beat it at the interface. This problem is similar to the one it has with Internet Explorer competing with Firefox . Microsoft let the market slip and Firefox didn’t just develop a better browser, it developed its own business model and business ecosystem, which ws completely different to Microsoft’s or Netscape’s. When Microsoft realized what was happening it was too late. It cannot catch Firefox now because it cannot penetrate the Firefox business model.

The same has happened with Apple, only more severely. Microsoft was all over the place with Vista (see 10 Reasons Why Vista Is A Disaster), but the worst of it was that it had a naive belief that a better looking interface (the Aero interface) would fix the perception of Windows being dowdy, when compared to the Mac.

But that wasn’t the point of competition that mattered. The Mac was also winning because OS X was very very reliable, because the Macs looked better just to look at, because Apple had created its own retail channel, because you actually could get support and because of iTunes and the iPod and later the iPhone.

It was and is all about ecosystem. The best that Microsoft can hope for is parity with the OS X interface, but that won’t stem the strong drift from Windows to OS X. In fact, right now, I can’t think of anything that will.