Speculation on a possible tablet from Apple is constantly circulating. However, I had not seen a truly compelling reason for them to make one... until Dell announced their foray into the tablet space (http://www.gottabemobile.com/DellOfficiallyLaunchesXTTabletPC.aspx).
Dell's first offering sports a capacitive touchscreen, like Apple's iPhone. Only problem is they don't have the software to back it up. The hardware can register multiple points of contact but they don't have the software ready to take advantage of it. Apple, however, does have the software to use multi-touch and it's not just on the iPhone; it's on the Mac.
The touchpad on the Macbook recognizes multiple points of contact. Two fingers sliding over the pad is recognized as page scrolling. Zooming in and out on Google Maps can be done with pinch gestures (http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/04/touch_in_contex.html), same as on the iPhone.
Does this mean Mac OS X is as multi-touch capable as the iPhone? No, but some functionality is there, and it would not be tough to port over (or simply activate?) the rest. Regardless, Macs support multi-touch.
So, with Dell rolling out multi-touch capable hardware without software support, it seems an ideal time for Apple to give them a sucker punch with a tablet of their own with multi-touch software. | 
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3 Comments:
"To spite dell?" I hope so : ) I like the idea of Mac introducing anything of touchscreen and tablet technology. Whatever Apple is doing, Times, Newsweek, NY Times, and WSJ will advertise their products. It will be good for expansion of our beloved tablet technology : ) Don't you think?
By
Unknown, at 12/13/2007 02:07:00 PM
I think extrapolating multitouch in the track pad to the level needed in full OS interactions is kind of a stretch. If that's the case, Vista already has multitouch as well
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=266221
I think a more compelling view is that Microsoft has a full multitouch implementation on the way using nothing more than WPF and .net, two technologies already standard in Vista.
By
Anonymous, at 12/14/2007 03:25:00 PM
chun shun: Yep, sure would be nice.
antimatter: Is multipoint in Vista? Looks like it's still in development. As for making multi-touch work in the OS, Mac OS X recognizes the difference between one touch and two. Now it's just a matter of determining what each gesture does. Registering a two-finger tap as a right-click would be simple to implement, yet provide very useful functionality.
By
Sumocat, at 12/14/2007 07:47:00 PM
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