[DarkShikari]

Not at all. My own experience with iPhones and iPads has been awful, with the touch recognition being finicky and the lack of force-feedback making it nearly impossible to use.

The core problem boils down to the exact same reason why the Wii's interface is terrible: it forces you to make much larger, slower motions -- motions that can easily be misinterpreted and have very low accuracy -- instead of spending 0.05 seconds tapping a key or clicking a button.

Tablets are another fad like 3D movies. They're popular with a lot of people, but in the end, they just give everyone pounding headaches.

The fact that the interface is a fat finger instead of a mouse does not magically make the interface any easier to use. What mobile devices (not just tablets) have demonstrated is the power of simpler operating system user interfaces -- not that touch screens magically make everything a million times better. This will be the primary legacy of tablets, not the touch screen.

[gnaffle]

Of course, not everyone seems to get pouding headaches from 3D movies, and not everyone finds the touch interfaces finicky to the point of being impossible to use. Extrapolating from your own experience to conclude they are a fad is a bit shortsighted.

From my experience with iPhone/iPad, the people who "think" that the touch interface required precise input are the ones that end up with lots of spurious inputs, because they use very light and "careful" touches that are misinterpreted instead of letting the input prediction do its work.

I do agree that there is a lot to be done regarding keyboard input, but even the keyboards seems to work OK for most people.