Today Steve Jobs responded to reporter questions about whether touch will be integrated into the Mac aka iPhone style.
According to Engadget, Jobs says that touch "Makes sense for the iPhone, not sure it makes sense in the Mac."
For anyone that's used a Tablet PC or UMPC touch seems natural--especially when you're on the go. The question for Apple may be whether their Macs are used this way or whether people sit and type more than move around and work. In addition, adding touch support isn't simply a matter of adding some hardware and a driver. They'll need to make sure their apps work well with the new capability.
There are some options open to Apple that could be interesting though. Multi-touch is one. It could lead to some interesting artistic apps, which would fit very much in Apple's market. Another possibility is to integrate the touch not into the display, but rather a touch panel on the keyboard. I'm thinking of something similar to what the OLPC XO notebook has. If the touchpad allowed multi- or dual- touch, Apple could support the pinch gesture for zooming as well as simple flicks actions for moving windows between monitors and the like.
My guess is that we'll see touch with a twist. I'm looking forward to what it might be.


Incremental Blogger