Apple’s research project
This from MacWorld’s coverage of today’s Apple announcements:
Will the iPhone’s “multitouch” features filter down to the Mac eventually? Jobs said that it doesn’t make a lot of sense in the Mac. “I would classify that as a research project at present,” he added.
There’s been some talk that features like Cover Flow (and perhaps the new skimming, though I’m still downloading the demo) could be a good bridge into multitouch on the desktop. A few commenters on this Coverflow article point this out, for one example.
I’ve been mulling over the next “interface evolution” article and hope to discuss desktop multitouch in more detail (sneak peek: it’s not going to replace the keyboard). Still, I can see Apple keeping multitouch as a potential addition to future versions of Mac OS X, growing out of features like Coverflow, skimming and resolution independence.