Touch-screen technology is available for consumer flat-screen TVs. Pioneer has a naturally transparent cover that fits over the top of their Plasma TVs that activates a touch screen capability when running the Windows Media Center OS, and is quite fun to use.

Touch screens on ATM machines always seem to work well, with no bad experiences immediately coming to mind, unlike the experiences of many PDA style smartphones. While it is quite easy to become proficient at using an interface with a stylus, many people instinctively use their finger with such phones, which doesn’t always work because of the size difference between a stylus and your fingertip.

Someone even invented a pointed tip that you could slip over your index finger to use way back in the Palm V days. But sadly they never really seemed to take off, otherwise everyone would be using them today.

High-end remote control manufacturers who have created expensive and highly advanced touch-screen models are reported to have found that users simply prefer buttons on this kind of device, in addition to some kind of screen to display information, simply because the tactile feedback in a remote control is a very handy thing – you can change channels, volume and take control without needing to look at the keypad to see which button you’re pressing.

Perhaps future touch screen displays, large and small, will have the ability to somehow create little bumps in different patterns on the screen, (be they squares, circles, triangles, little pyramids, semi spheres) with some kind of transparent nano-gel. That would give people the tactile feedback they want while enjoying the benefits of an infinitely re-programmable screen.

One report mentioned the iPhone has to be used with your bare finger – you can’t wear a glove and have it work. Given that gloves can come in different thicknesses, future touch screens may need incredibly accurate sensitivity to compensate for the bigger impact zone of a gloved finger, yet still actually work.

Also - how easy it is to enlarge button sizes on the iPhone screen for those whose eyesight might benefit from larger icons and larger text? This is probably already a feature, and if not, it could easily be programmed. It will be interesting to see how it would look. Larger buttons would also have larger impact zones, which may help some users.

While Steve Jobs’ demonstration of the iPhone at the Macworld keynote looked insanely simple to use, prompting me to think that the iPhone and its control system are something that even my mother could understand and start using within 5 minutes.

Apple's online iPhone demonstrations makes it look very easy, too. Actually they look like almost exact duplicates of what Steve Jobs was showing on stage. Reports of people having actually used an iPhone, including that of iTWire colleague Stan Beer have all been very favorable, although it has to be said virtually everyone that has tried it has only been granted a few minutes controlled access, with only a lucky few getting a few minutes more.

So what are some of the other questions we want answers to, and what happens if the iPhone doesn't deliver as expected? Read onto page 2 for the conclusion...