Pretty impressive, even if all the economic recovery plan numbers have sapped "billion" of some of its impact. "It's rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company," Logitech's general manager Rory Dooley told the BBC. "Look at any other industry and it has never happened." OK, members of paper clip and toothpick industries, among others, might want to quibble, but we'll let it slide.
The larger question that arises on this occasion is: Whither the mouse? Is it within a relatively few years of extinction, as some experts believe, to be supplanted by interfaces using touch, voice, movement and facial expressions? "Just look forward five years and computer screens will be built into the walls of our homes and that would make it difficult to drive with a mouse," says Gartner analyst Steve Prentice. "That's where all the new technology like multitouch and facial recognition comes in. This is where the computer stops being a computer and becomes part of a building." Prentice's timetable may be off, but regardless of the pace of interface advancement, Dooley sees many happy years ahead for the mouse.
"The challenge with these new technologies," he said, "is going to be will you touch a screen that is two feet away from you a thousand times a day? Is touch accurate enough to let you get into the cell of a spreadsheet? Those are just some simple questions we believe will not necessarily be answered by the touch interface of tomorrow."
That billionth mouse, by the way, is getting the celebrity treatment (if the celebrity is Dick Cheney). The unit, christened Billie, rolled off an assembly line in Suzhou, China, and was immediately sent on a roundabout secret journey to an undisclosed location. Logitech is inviting folks to follow online clues to deduce Billie's whereabouts and win a prize.
