Actually, youd be surprised how few of us CG-artists are actually using Wacom Cintiq devices as shown in your photograph. Many like the idea of using a Cintiq/Touch screen, its true, but they rarely live up to artists' expectations. Problems most commonly experienced are:
Cursor lag (onscreen feedback is unable to keep up with quick gestural strokes).
Cursor misalignment (the onscreen cursor is not precisely aligned beneath the tip of the stylus, especially in the corners of the tablet).
Heat radiated by the display makes long drawing sessions uncomfortable.
Poor display quality. Narrow colour gamut, inability to be properly colour calibrated, etc.
No driver support under Linux.
Uncomfortable surface grip. Painting on a display front made of glass (or some other highly smooth surface), with a plastic tipped stylus is slippery and not particularly pleasant.
Uncomfortable to use in combination with a keyboard that offers hotkeys, marking menus, pie-menus, hotboxes, etc. Using one with a 3D application, while certainly possible, is often experienced as awkward and limiting. The Cintiqs have a few controls on the side that the user can program to function as hotkeys. And that works kind of. I cant see Apple designing a Touchscreen/Stylus Mac with controls like that on the side.
Now these problems may eventually be eradicated by better hardware and designs but there are other problems that are harder, maybe impossible to solve, like:
Ergonomics. Its hardly the best posture to maintain for 9-10 hours a day.
Dirt/grease on the screen. Youd be surprised how often Ive mistaken a grease smear on my display for a very light grey brush stroke on a white canvas in Photoshop.
A touch screen would have to have a coating with low porosity to make sure it cleans properly. Matte coatings are problematic here. So this poses a problem with reflections of ceiling mounted lighting on that glossy surface, which after all needs to be orientated more or less horizontally to avoid further fatigue. Working on dark/black canvasses in such a situation would be horrendous. Forget about drawing anything subtle in shadows and expect it to come out correctly.
Hands are in the way of the artwork. And this is a big one. Lots of artists dont want to go back to having their own hands obscure the piece as they are working. Having a regular Wacom tablet in front of a normal display is actually favored by most, myself included. One hand on the tablet, holding the stylus, the other on the keyboard controlling hotkeys.
There are exceptions of course. Search and you will find artists that love their Cintiqs and would never go back to more, shall we say, conservative input devices.But they are in the vast minority, despite Cintiqs having already been out there for quite a few years.
Im not saying things wont ever change, just telling you what the current lay of the land is as I far as I can see.
I use an Intuos4 by the same company and it works fine for me. However, the Cintiqs are growing in extreme popularity (there are at least 2 or 3 models of them now in different sizes and features), even though they are VERY expensive.
For the most part, digital illustrators love them to death and I see it all the time in conceptart.org or in digital art magazines. I don't think I would want the Touch screen version of the Cintiq but a standard Cintiq would do the job well enough.
I can see why glare could be an issue due to the glass but that depends on HOW they adjust the levers away from the light. I don't know about your studio/firm but they need some kind of shroud to block incoming light to glare off. LaCie did that with their infamous CRTs over ten years as I remember it.
I love my Intuos4 because the shortkeys on the side and can use the Macro button to do tighter line art in large strokes. Very, very handy. I don't see how Apple can truly do a pressure sensitive iPad because if they want to do something like this for creative professionals, they're gonna have to have a licensing agreement with Wacom to do it.
And if they did that, the iPad will have to go back to being thick in size, or they will have to design their own pressure sensitive pen. And this is a reason why Cintiqs are expensive due to the large scale size of it and components involved for industrial strength quality (if only they can solve the shortened nib problem first that eats away from the surface).
