Apple patents indicate multi-touch MacBook and portable Home folders.
Apple has filed for two new patents which imply that we could see Macs with Multi-Touch technology in the near future. This may confirm rumours circulating at the moment that Apple is at last about to announce the launch of a tablet format MacBook.
“Force and Location Sensitive Display”
The first of the patents entitled as above is for multi-touch technology gives a description consistent with the way that the iTouch and iPhone work. It describes a display that can detect the location and force of a finger-touch. The patent covers integration of the system into LCD, Plasma and CRT displays.
This technology on a large scale screen combined with Apple’s suspected plans to remove DVDs from laptops resulting in very thin machine point to the tantalizing possibility of a tablet format MacBook.
“Method and apparatus for selectively switching IC ports to card slots, Method and Apparatus for Rendering User Accounts Portable”
Provides a way of transferring user accounts between different systems via external storage devices which would then be recognized by the destination system and imported. This effectively allows for portable user accounts.
Apple says:
“The multi-user computer system, e.g., through its operating system, locates user accounts on not only in local storage of the multi-user computer system, but also in any removable data storage attached to the multi-user computer system. Hence, by coupling the external, portable data store to another multi-user computer, a user is able to login to any supporting multi-user computer and be presented with their user configuration and user directory.”
The account would have all the features that it did on the original machine but any data changed on a non- ‘Home’ machine would be updated automatically on the storage device. This would then automatically update the ‘Home’ machine on returning to it.
October 16th, 2007 at 9:15 am
[...] Patents Point to Multitouch MacBook? [Machines That Go Bing] [...]
October 16th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
[...] Patents Point to Multitouch MacBook? [Machines That Go Bing] [...]
October 16th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
No. Never. Not in the way the image suggests, at least. See, an OS with an user interface like OS X just won’t work with a touch screen. It *needs* a mouse, a finger is just too large to hit such small targets. Apple will surely not be that dumb and try to force a touchscreen down our throats with OS X.
But. When you look at the iPhone and the iPod touch you see a user interface that *does* work with fingers. So one can imagine a tablet with the same OS and UI as the iPhone, with a larger screen and faster hardware. It won’t be a Macbook, though.
Still, I do believe that 10 years from now hardly anyone will use a physical keyboard and a mouse but a touchscreen with a virtual keyboard very much like what the iPhone has.
October 17th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
You are a Mac Freak. That’s good.
October 17th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Since multipoint works well on little tiny iPhone screens, it’ll work on a 13-inch screen. And the new glass screen on iMacs make a possible tablet design a lot more sturdy. But it still won’t work until you get a workable small battery. It needs to be razor thin and light, with a deep draw. Non-existent right now.
January 5th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
[...] This of course could be taken to mean that he considers the iPhone, and the iPod Touch, to be a “computer”, or was he hinting at a future Mac? Possibly a multitouch tablet Mac? [...]