Steve Jobs enters. ” We’ve had tremendous, unbelievable success with multitouch. And that’s why starting next year, we’re bringing it to the Mac.”

Crazy? a bit. But additionally inevitable. Apple isn’t going to abandon the Mac and OS X , despite successful with iOS that maybe even they didn’t expect, but that doesn’t mean OS X has to remain an identical form of operating system we’ve gotten used to during the last decade.

As good as I suspect Apple’s touch products are, I find it hard to believe they’d let the Mac grow stagnant, especially when sales continue to climb. The Mac could have taken a backseat to iOS products at WWDC, but it surely’s going to remain a core product for the foreseeable future. They’re not likely to signify you write iPhone apps on a Windows machine, if nothing else.

But there’s without doubt that multitouch has made the ol’ mouse and keyboard look slightly long inside the tooth, even superficially. We may wonder whether multitouch on the desktop and laptops is healthier than traditional interfaces-and definitely for plenty applications it’s simply not-but it surely’s not a silly question to wonder whether there is one way wherein multitouch is known as a useful addition.

Apple has definitely been thinking an identical thing . Patent applications had been bubbling up for years that show iMacs that may swing all the way down to sit parallel with desk surfaces or convertible laptops . Remember when the MacBook Pro was updated to include a tremendous touchpad before the iPhone was even on the radar? At the time, most people thought that signified that some style of touch interface was heading to the Mac. There are Inside Apple the tablet project that became the iPad was being developed long before they decided to take advantage of those ideas within the iPhone.

Already there are numerous multitouch gestures available within OS X. They’re just not terribly useful. You’re able to pinch and twist and swipe using the built-in trackpad (or the Magic Trackpad on desktops) all day long. It’s nice enough, but without the tactility that includes a real touchscreen, the feeling that comes from actually touching the windows and widgets you’re manipulating, it’s only ever going to be an amusing, occasionally useful adjunct to older input methods.

That’s why there’s some speculation-at the very least inside the Gizmodo editor’s chat room-that the October 20th event could hold a significant reveal for a new MacBook Air that incorporates some type of new multitouch method, a flip-over touchscreen that turns the Air into a tablet. Rather than running iOS, however, the brand new Air would run OS X.

Something feels off to me about that idea. I actually have a troublesome time imagining that Apple would release a hybrid product that instantly makes current Macs feel outdated and makes iOS products like the iPad seem less powerful.

But even as, if Apple were going to experiment with bringing multitouch to the Mac, the Air often is the product with which to do it. The Air was Apple’s take on the netbook, a completely featured laptop in a really portable chassis. Only it turned out that the iPad expands into that niche neatly, leaving the Air with even less of a vacuum to fill.

If Apple really is bringing multitouch to OS X 10.7 , I expect we’ll hear about it quite a lot earlier than time before the actual launch. Something that requires that much of a fundamental rejiggering of interaction design shall be impossible to hide from developers, if nothing else. And Apple doesn’t announce new hardware until they’re able to sell it (unless they should!). But if we see a MacBook Air redesign on the 20 th consisting of talk of multitouch in 10.7, expect it to be the last hurrah of Apple’s old interface thinking, with nothing more than a token gesture (get it?) to what Macs will seem like in a year from now.

iOS MacBook Air

There is another possibility worth addressing, but not considering: That the MacBook Air shall be reenvisioned as a clamshell iPad with a built-in keyboard. I don’t think that’s potentially-and it certainly wouldn’t be called a ” MacBook” at that point-nevertheless it is fair to note that I didn’t expect Apple to embrace the usage of physical keyboards with iOS, but I’m typing this up using a Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad straight away.

Original photos from Shutterstock

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This post is tagged: core product, foreseeable future, patent applications, silly question, touch-interface, unbelievable success, windows machine