Hi. For the specific issue of handwriting, I do stand by my original comment. Any sensible form of handwriting requires stylus usage, and therefore a stylus usable UI. It would make very little sense to go towards finger usability while insisting on a stylus usable input method.

As a purely personal opinion, the stylus must be killed, the sooner the better. It's good for specific limited operations, but it's about the single geekiest part of using a PDA or a tablet. Mass market acceptance will never come with a device requiring extensive use of the stylus. The slideout keyboard in the N810 is the first stab in the physical domain, but for the health of the platform the onscreen methods need also to be kept healthy.

Practically I see also very little interest in handwriting solutions, even those that Karel is praising. If HWR really would be the killer input method, those solutions would be very much more popular than what they are. The situation is of course different with certain scripts, like Japanese and Chinese, but for Western input the virtual keyboards are simply faster to use and require much less effort, both physically and mentally from the users than what handwriting does. I don't see this changing. If Apple owns the Best Ever handwriting input method and engine, then I don't really see much light coming even from their direction in this issue.

Then again, I'm only an interaction designer. If some manager higher up wishes otherwise, then what I say has rather little significance.