Steve Jobs has unambiguously said that Apple does not see a place for an iMac or MacBook with a multitouch display in their line-up of Macs. Citing the problem of gorilla arm, Jobs says that touch needs to be something that can be done in your lap, not accomplished reaching across the table. Trackpads and multitouch mice are the future of Macs.
Seems pretty unambiguous, doesn’t it? Then again, this is the same guy who just a year ago said that Apple was “pretty skeptical” about the cloud, when they were already working on iCloud. So guess what? Despite what Steve Jobs says, Apple’s also working on multitouch iMacs.
A patent highlighted by our good friend Jack Purcher over at Patently Apple shows that Apple’s already thinking through how to make the Macintosh operating system fully manipulatable through multitouch.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen patents suggesting Apple is more seriously exploring multitouch on the desktop and notebook form factor. Last year, Apple patented a touchscreen iMac, as well as a multitouch MacBook. The momentum’s building!
