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Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Looks like Apple's Snow Leopard is a multi-touch OS

A few good Mac bloggers are digging up evidence that Apple's Snow Leopard was designed to operate as an iPhone-like multi-touch operating system. For example, Expose looks to be "tailor-made for fingers," according to Cult of Mac's Leander Kahney. He also points out that the new virtual keyboard now expands all the way to full screen.

As I've been predicting for years, I believe 1) multi-touch tablets, convertable clam-shell laptops and desktops will all get multi-touch user interfaces; 2) Apple will be first and best in this space; and 3) it will start with a "new Newton" small tablet device, and grow in size from there until desktop versions are bigger than 40 inches.

I wrote two years ago that:
"Apple's iPhone user interface is a glimpse of the future, not only of future Apple mobile computers, but desktops and the future of all PCs as well. It's inevitable that Apple will ship a tablet Mac that works like the iPhone."
Looks like my most frequently-made prediction is finally coming true. (Props to Cult of Mac and 9to5Mac)

Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The HP Touchsmart and Dell Latitude XT have multitouch capabilities and software; Windows 7 has full multitouch support (including iPhone niceties like physics-based scrolling). Touch-based Windows tablets have been around for years.

Like most things Apple does, they won't be first. But, you're right that they'll probably be best.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 10:45:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous Coward said...

Touchscreen? I spend too much time now keeping fingerprints off screens! I have an HP tablet/laptop with touchscreen. The fascination was gone in less than a week.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 2:35:00 PM  
Blogger Mike said...

You can bolt a handle on a desktop PC, and that doesn't make it a mobile computer. Likewise, you can slap a touch screen on a Vista machine, and that's not a multi-touch computer.

This is a multi-touch computer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGDNFpOMcA

The only real multi-touch system Microsoft has ever shipped is Surface: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Mike

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 3:03:00 PM  
Blogger Pirilampo said...

For me, one of the best features in Snow Leopard is the new ability to use a native (not third party) keyboard change....you can now set your Mac keyboard to U.S. International-PC, which I have enjoyed on Windows machines for years. I have to type in several languages and it makes doing accents, umlauts, and Scandinavian diacritical marks a breeze to use. And to top that off the keyboard viewer is now full-screen!!! I love it. Now I only wish Windows would make their character map scaleable, it is still way too small!

Wednesday, September 02, 2009 3:41:00 AM  

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