I'm not so sure
Instead of moving your mouse over a pad on your desk to move the cursor on the screen to an item you want to move, double-clicking on the item, and finally dragging it, simply touch your finger directly on what you want to move and drag your finger to where you want it to go. Which would you say is easier and more intuitive?
I'm not trying to being flippant or dis what you're saying, but actually I think the mouse is still better. To sit in front of a monitor with a keyboard, to lift up my arm and try to touch the screen to input actions would be tiresome, slower, and not as precise. I think I would just go back to using the mouse. This is what prompted my question in the first place.
Try it. Pretend like you are going to move a window out of the way and select something underneath it, or grab an item to drag to the dock or trash. Lift up your arm and reach out to the screen. Reach out all the way to the Apple logo in the menu bar (if you're right-handed, or spotlight if you're left). It's awkward and slow, you're whole body moves; I think your arm would get tired of doing it. Also, the mouse can instantiate Expose with a button, right-click for contextual menus, etc. How would these actions map to touch input? And if you are using both the mouse and touch, it seems to me you would end up just using the mouse.
So, I'm still not getting it. I mean, maybe new actions, things we haven't really thought of could be mapped to touch, maybe scrolling like on the iPhone. Perhaps some new application that would work better this way. I don't know. But for just moving stuff around the screen or inserting a cursor, highligthing text, the basic stuff you do with a mouse doesn't seem to translate well with touch.
