No doubt the new iMac launched 7th August 2007 is a beautiful machine. My jaw hit the flaw, and I couldn’t type in www.apple.com fast enough to have a better look, after catching a glimpse of it on another website. But for the first time in many years of gorgeous looking Macs I’ve seen a product which doesn’t have that timeless quality to it. Similar to modern BMW design, every new iteration looks compelling whist still having the look and feel you expect from a BMW, but in my eyes, they don’t last the test of time. Often BMW designs look dated as soon as they launch a new design, where as an older Mercedes will look great even when a new Mercedes design comes along.
So with some spare time to burn in my lunch hour, I thought I’d make some changes to the new iMac and give it a multi-touch interface. Yes I’ve been reading how a great many people can’t stand the idea of multi-touch on large scale computer screens, recommending the technology be relegated to handheld devices. I think that is short sighted. Smudgy finger prints can be wiped clean, and if you’re really sweaty you can wear latex gloves! Also as I have 8 fingers and two thumbs I can point and click 10 times faster than anyone using a mouse. Alright I’m exaggerating, its unlikely there would be an application any time soon requiring me to use all my fingers and thumbs simultaneously, but you get the point that making an argument for staying with a mouse over multi-touch is limited to the screen being covered in paw marks and your hands getting in the way of what you trying to look at etc. I think remarks like that come from people with a limited amount of imagination. Yes applications of today would not work well without the mouse, but iLife ’08 hints at a shift of direction to multi-touch using large event grouped buttons with left to right flip through functionality.
This is a chicken or the egg argument. Without large screen multi-touch technology we don’t develop applications suitable to use the technology. If we rollout large screen multi-touch technology without the applications suitable to use the technology we might be frustrated with the functionality. For these reasons I believe the perfect device to bridge the gap is a tablet based Mac.
I would also add, that Apple will no doubt have had a similar point of view for some time, and whilst waiting for the right applications, hardware price falls, and some competition in the market (remember apple doesn’t tend to create markets, it innovates inside existing ones) Apple has already designed some if not a lot of the necessary architecture within the iMac. I would bet it is a question of when not if.