Death Of The Mouse?

True indeed. But painting involves steady motion of the hand whereas interaction with computers requires much less motion and thus is far more straining for our arms.

Basically, it all revolves around strain: We don't want to strain our arms by holding something up in the air for a long time and we don't want to strain out neck by holding the head in an imbalanced position for a long time. As long as the head can sit more or less balanced on the neck, we are fine. Hence, if we sit back, the comfortable position for the head is to look slightly downwards compared to the rest of the body. However, the head actually is still upright, only the body is at an angle. Of course, we can still move our eyes without straining the neck muscles. We are fine with looking something like 45° downwards. (Actually, we are most comfortable with looking at the ground a few dozen meters/feet away. That is the natural looking angle.)

Hence, monitors should sit slightly below eye level (for practical reasons, they usually extend from there to desktop level). Manual input devices should be located slightly below elbow level one forearm-length in front of the belly.

It will be interesting, which manual input devices will sit there in the future. But I would guess that they will always sit there, and not on the display.

I would absolutely expect the death of the mouse. In its current form that is. In my opinion the mouse interface introduced with the MBP and now purchasable as an external component is a sign of the future. It has the same precision as a regular mouse so you don't have the iPad's touch problem of lack of precision, but you move your finger on the device instead of moving the device.

That alone wouldn't be enough to unseat the vulnerable mouse but the advantage the touchpad is that it can track multiple fingers. I envision a future where the keyboard is extended with a kind of flat space that can take precise input from all 10 fingers.

I've seen a demo somewhere that had exactly that, but I don't know what's come of it.

I would always buy a good mouse till i bought my macbook pro.

After each 2-3 day hacking session, i would resurface with paining dry eyes and aching wrist and elbow.

Now, after similar sessions, i am only left with dry eyes.

I haven't really read up about the ergonomics of multi-touch track pads, but i think they inflict either lesser RSI or are attacking a different set of muscles.

How so?

It seems that you are proclaiming that touch would provide more flexibility at the expense of maximum speed and efficiency. I would actually say it is exactly the other way around: Touch killing the mouse makes about as much sense as airplanes killing helicopters. And you know what, I actually kind of prefer airplanes for most commercial flights just as I would say that touch interfaces are actually faster to use and easier to learn than mouse interfaces.

Of course, I often do need helicopter precision on my desktop... But yay for the iPad for casual gaming, websurfing and communicating.

Just get a gaming mouse. They're exactly what you want (sturdy, comfortable and reliable) so don't be put off by a high DPI - you can always reduce the sensitivity. I like the Logitech G9 or MX518. The latter is $35 at Newegg and you can regularly get them cheaper with rebates.