A few moments of conciliatory silence for the legion of Apple Mac Desktop and laptop users. They will have to wait maybe for Christmas or maybe the NewYear for their multi-touch screen computers. There was no touch+gestures in the MacMini announcements this past May . Ditto again for yesterday’s iMac announcements.
Oh and Mac users got Intel’s more beefy Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 CPUs – a little behind most PCs which have had them for 3-5 months, but welcome because graphics design really eats up CPU power. Not quite a touch screen and the productivity that is implied with that type of interface – no hand eye coordination required with touch screen in contrast with a mouse or even trackpad.
But there may be valid reasons for this delay in bringing touch screens to Macs:
1)Fingers may be too fat for graphics using touch screen and the precision of a stylus or lightpen pointer may be a)incompatible with current touch screen technology or b)too expensive;
2)software vendors [including Apple itself with its Final Cut Pro, Aperture and many other graphics oriented programs] may have to make major adjustments to support touchscreen operations;
3there is a master plan for bringing touch screen + gestures to the Mac masses and that time is not now.
Whatever the reason this leaves an opening for Microsoft and Google and the thousand one tablet vendors to beat Apple on the laptop/netbook borderline. Currently, the iPad with full touch screen operations is the Apple line of defense against netbooks and laptops encroaching on it light, touch-enabled market leadership. But what if the 1001 Google Android powered tablets or a Windows 7 Touch screen land on store shelves in the Fall and in time for Christmas? Will iPad be enough to blunt this PC and smart tablet onslaught? Clearly somebody in Cupertino is a)betting that is so or b) has his own touch screen surprise up a turtleneck sleeve.