[cturner]

    mice .. are still quite necessary.

They're not.

There are plenty of examples of mechanisms for computer interaction that don't require a mouse and cultivate strong loyalty from people who could instead be using a mouse interface: Bloomberg, the unix console, tiling window managers.

People who are into graphics tend towards tablets.

The mouse's success is due to path dependence. New users like it, and so we end up with all these mouse-dependent interfaces.

[stratjakt]

Sure, if you live in vim, emacs, unix console, etc... I, and plenty of other people do not. Not everyone wants to live within a command prompt.

[numix]

You can have a usable mouse-free GUI fairly easily with a tiling window manager (xmonad, awesome, etc) and a keyboard driven browser (vimperator or conkeror).