It's hard to drag a legacy UI into a touch world

As Microsoft well knows, it's hard to drag a legacy UI system onto touch devices successfully. Microsoft tried numerous times, notably in the past for the UMPC format and Windows mobile, and more recently in Windows 8.1 to evolve Windows into a touch OS. or to bifurcate it and leave the legacy UI behind. Neither approach worked.

Touch and the browser

Microsoft has, however, dragged OEMs into building touch laptops. Google acknowledged this trend by creating the Chomebook Pixel with a touchscreen. Google felt they needed to "own" the issue of touch and Chrome in case touchscreen PCs were successful. Chrome OS and the Chrome browser, as well as Google's Web apps would have to adapt to a world with lots of touch systems running Windows. Chromebook OEMs are following Google with their own touchscreen products in laptop form factors. But that never happened and touch in Chrome OS has become a stagnant and underdeveloped capability.





Dubious ergonomics

It's an open question if laptops are any good for touch. The screen is an awkward distance from the user. The laptop hinge can't resist the pressure of touch near the top of the screen. You can't pick up a touch laptop and wield it like a clipboard. Software aside, there are good reasons for the idea of a touch laptop to fail.





An accidental feature

With a track record of failure and obvious ergonomic issues, touch in PCs is a kind of accidental feature. It propagates among products via weak product management that's fearful of competitors' bad decisions. Nobody got fired for aping a larger competitor. So touchscreen laptops, and even large touchscreens in desktop all-in-one PCs ripple through the industry like the echo of a Rick-roll.





Athena is coming

Now that Windows 8.1 has landed with a thud, and OEMs are kvetching about being misled by predictions about the success of touch, there are some signs that Google has decided to take another shot at touch in Chrome OS. Or, perhaps, the Chrome OS developers are just tidying up loose ends in the Chrome OS touch interface, of which there are a considerable number at the time of this writing, based on a search of open issues mentioning "touch."





As of this writing, Athena is the next version of Chrome OS. Chrome OS is developed in the open, with the issue tracker for the project open for anyone, friend or foe, to examine. This enables speculation by pundits on topics like touch . But it also enables a deeper examination of the Athena feature set





More than touch