Comments on: New Mac Touch Patent Surfaces, Shows User Interface Manipulation by Touch

By: Mac OS X and iOS Shown Running on a 21″ Touch Screen (Videos)

Mac OS X and iOS Shown Running on a 21″ Touch Screen (Videos) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:00:08 +0000

[...] and several other touchscreen Mac patents have been awarded to Apple, ranging from general a Mac-like touch UI to full blown touchscreen MacBooks. Patents don’t necessarily mean any such imminent product, [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:18:35 +0000

Came here to post this. I could see using an Ipad to handle the on screen movement, gestures, clicks, virtual keyboard, etc.

By: Darius

Darius — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 08:46:17 +0000

i think that when technologies will be able to put a lot of power in such a small thing like ipad we will see an ipad with os x, and it could happen in the near future

By: Bryan Forrest

Bryan Forrest — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:54:45 +0000

Vertical touchscreens are great for kiosk based information booths where the interaction is a few minutes or less. However, the longer you stand or sit with your arm outstretched to touch a screen, the more difficult it becomes. It’s a case of ergonomics. Steve has said as much in previous interviews and presentations. A touchscreen iMac has its place, but not on the typical user’s desktop.

By: bOrg

bOrg — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:27:35 +0000

I predict hybrid Mac iOS machines in a few years, it is inevitable. It doesn’t mean the Mac will loser it’s power, it means iOS will be more powerful.

By: Sue Dunham

Sue Dunham — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:05:17 +0000

I certainly don’t want greasy finger marks all over my screen. What a dumb idea.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:50:52 +0000

Apple has a lot of patents for stuff that they never end up doing – it seems like they just take the better safe than sorry approach and just patent everything as they think of it.

I don’t think we’ll ever see something like this on the Mac. Steve Jobs himself has said at the “Back to the Mac” presentation that they looked into this in the past and found it was not feasible – “touch surfaces want to be horizontal”. And he’s insisted many times that the flaw with other touch computers in the past has been that they try to use a desktop OS for something that should be tailor made to fingers. That’s why they have the iPad and iOS.

We’ll see I guess, but my bet is this won’t ever come to fruition. And I think it’s for the better.