I agree. Maybe desktop-style UI's are dead for - well - desktops, too?

What are the pain points in desktop UI's for touch devices? 1. Drag and Drop - many inexperienced users find drag and drop difficult so killing it wouldn't harm anyone. It always was a bitch with overlapping windows anyway.

2. Managing overlapping windows in general just sucks. I've often argued that tiling windows are a much better idea and these could be made to work on touch devices with larger screens too.

3. Scrollbars are useless on touch-devices and not much fun on the desktop. Luckily touchpad scrolling and mouse-wheels mean I don't have to use them much so maybe they can die too.

4. 'Hover' type interactions are usually inessential. and when they aren't it's usually a sign that something is horribly wrong with the UX

Maybe even with touchpad/mouse/keyboard, the changes made necessary by touch devices might force desktop UI's to shed some of their weaker aspects.

Another thing to think about is the '10 foot interface'. This suffers similar limitations to touchscreens and with Google TV and similar products spreading their influence, the remote control could become the most commonly used input device of all.

Points 1 and 2 are solved (at least on OS X) to a degree where I would be annoyed if those things were taken away.

How so? Last time I checked 'drag and drop' was still the primary method of file management in Finder and Apple hasn't added a tiling window manager.

Yes, drag and drop is widely used in OS X and it works very well. Your windows aren't tiled all the time, but Expose puts them into a tiled structure, and it works with drag-and-drop. So I can have all the windows open I want, in whatever configuration I want, start dragging something, enter Expose, and drop it wherever I want.