But wait a minute -- multi-touch isn't available on Macs. It is only for phones and iPods -- so how can it jump-start PC sales? Unless ... soon, it will be? Pointless speculation, I know.

Maybe it's already baked in. The latest MacBook has the ability to distinguish between a single finger and two fingers. Seems like a reasonable guess to say that Apple's been toying with full multi-touch capabilities but is "testing" the functionality on the iPhone.

Considering that Apple doesn't like to share it's plans for world domination (and what evil empire does ... I jest), only an electrical engineer familiar with multi-touch systems could make a truly educated guess.

The one thing I constantly complain about with my PC is that the monitor isn't all covered with fingerprints.

Yeah, that, a doubling of the price, and incompatibility with 95% of the world's other computers would be purrrrrfect.

More cutting edge technology from the people that brought us a $600 telephone.

Bring it on. Not.

Thinking about long hours in front of a touch screen just makes my shoulder ache.

Yeah I'm with ya man. Fuck progress. My amber VT100 is good enough and anyone who doesn't agree can wear it. Back in my day we didn't have stylii for our cuneiform tablets, we had to use twigs, but Baal dammit we liked it just fine.

Actually if you think about it (yeah yeah I know this is Salon, bark and fart first, think, never) if you can remove the keyboard from most of the required functions then you can embed some frightfully complex interfaces and controls into devices today that are well nigh unusable. Like DVRs, Fax machines, printers, copiers, car dashboards, phones and just about anything else that suffers from their own version of the blinking 12:00 syndrome.

When an IPhone like device combines most of the functions of a laptop computer/palmtop etc with the features of a midrange digital camera/camcorder and a phone with EVDO or EDGE or WiMax plus Bluetooth and WiFi Then I will run to get one, assuming it has an interface that's A) usuable and B) small.

We've been stuck with the same desk drawer based icon interface for about 30 years. If anyone wants to improve on that crap, I say please please please do.

Uh, Tablet PC? Anyone?

The multitouch interface is has also been implemented by Microsoft with their new Surface initiative. Except instead of a four inch iPhone screen, it's a table.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY

Which can not be adapted to small scale interfaces.

LOL. Shhhh, it's marketing...um, I mean "progress". Don't you know we're in the midst of a revolution!? Instead, of using a keyboard, a finger or a sytlus on a touchscreen and programing "frightfully complex" programs into "well nigh unusable" devices like DVRs, Fax machines, printers, copiers, car dashboards, etc., you can use more than one finger at a time on a touchscreen and program "frightfully complex" programs into "well nigh unusable" devices like DVRs, Fax machines, printers, copiers, car dashboards, etc.

s/b "Instead, of using a keyboard OR a finger or a sytlus on a touchscreen...."

If you're happy then you don't have to use them K. But don't grace me with you flinging your Sabots into the Jacquard looms either. Like I said, I can get a mule and ship my amber VT100 to you and you can knock yourself out.

In the meantime, when my OEM ink cart doesn't work in my fax machine, I want you to come over and debug the message menu to tell me why it doesn't work. I also want you to push buttons on my appliance like it's an Xbox controller in order to program it. Because for my money ^^>v>>>> press 2, stop,> start, VVV>>V>^^menu>start just doesn't articulate the apotheosis of human factors design to me.

Dunno, maybe angry liberal-anarchist-luddites have tentacles or something.

BTW unless you've worked with the iPhone interface you really shouldn't need to hate it. That's just dull

I hope so.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

You wish they could come up with anything innovative. How about trying to find stuff in Office 2007?

The Reactble touch surface interface for music:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vm_FzLya8y4

Actually, Farhad, the rumor I've heard (Gizmodo, perhaps?) was even more intriguing to a certain class of nerd: an Apple notebook computer. Bigger display, multimedia capability, touch screen interface, but with things like cut-and-paste, an ebook reader, and so on.

Maybe not, but it's fun to speculate.

HI,

GOOD AFTERNOON,

THIS IS PRAKASH SHUKLA HERE I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHAT IS THE DIFFRENCE BETWEEN "APPLE" ie. MAC AND "MICROSOFT" ie. WINDOWS..

AND WHERE DO I LEARN MAC OR APPLE STUDIES BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE ANY INSTITUTE AT MY CITY AND COUNTRY. PLEASE LET ME KNOW ITS MY HUMBLE REQUEST TO YOU'LL.

AND SEND UR REPLY ON MY MAIL ID. ie. GATES@EBIZEL.COM

The reason Mac Screens are so expensive is production volume. If MS and it's PC builder slaves wanted to push bigger screens then the cost could have dropped and we'd all have 27" wide screen monitors. But MS is like the phone company - they don't care what you spend or how much it costs. The price of Windows hasn't gone down, ever - in fact it's more than it was in 1980. Now for a cheap PC 30-40% of the price is the OS. As compared with 1980 when the PC cost $5000 and the OS cost about what it does today, about 2% of that PC price. But somewhere along the way Redmond decided that 14" monitors, then 15, then 17 then 19 then 20 were all you ever were entitled to use. Of course Windows really couldn't take advantage of big monitors anyway - they weren't any more functional just bigger and blanker. Also video driver companies were constantly getting whipsawed by Redmond to comply with a crazy quilt of licensing rules which resulted in no one really investing in better screens or better interface design.

But hey - as I was lectured here before; "Fuck Progress". Ok