Driving recently with Apple's iPod Touch in my car, I passed a billboard advertising an LG media player, which read - "Buttons are so 2006".
About to flick, swipe, pinch and zoom my way around the Touch, the sign got me thinking about whether touch screens will be the tech fad of the decade, or if they're here to stay.
The way they're developing and the seriousness with which the likes of Apple and other phone/laptop/monitor makers (ie Sony Ericsson, Motorola and other Symbian UIQ devices, Microsoft) are treating them suggests they'll facilitate better and more easy to use devices for some time to come.
Around for a good 30 years, and certainly over 20 in a commercial setting, touch screens are now commonplace on phones, PDAs, media players, cameras, and are expanding into notebooks and monitors, even Microsoft's Surface table display. They're no longer the preserve of things like ATMs and kiosks, and fingers are the preferred operating mode over a stylus.
Multi-touch (recognising many, simultaneous touch points and software to interpret them), and gestural interfaces mean we're able to do more than just use one finger to select an item from a navigational menu.
Support for multi-touch is what attracted has so many to buy the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The interaction gets more intuitive, which has to be a good thing when using a device for the first time, and it gives the user a wow factor that makes using it more fun.
The technology is also reaching the affordable stage in its lifecycle.
With its application earlier this year to patent a multi-touch dictionary to define different input gestures in these systems, it seems Apple is in it for the long haul with touch screen development.
Nokia is also reportedly planning an interface which gives the user a physical pulse when they touch the screen.
