Call me an anti-Apple anarchist, but I am not convinced that Apple will ever see the need to produce a non-tablet lappy with a touchscreen. I also believe that I am well prepared to prove this fact, though I have no concrete facts, just opinion. I realize that, due to the sheer volume of traffic on this particular subject, that a great number of people really think they want a touchscreen laptop. I’m sure its quite possible that a percentage of these people believe that if Apple does touchscreen laptop that it specifically means they will be making a tablet device.

I don’t see this as a credible prediction. Sure, there’s the iPhone and the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models with the multi-touch, but I think that’s about where its going to go. My first thought behind this theory of mine is that people won’t want to take the trouble. To get to a leptop touchscreen you have to lean over it, which is generally uncomfortable. I don’t know many people who keep their lappy right up in their face, either. Its just not ergonomic, and you end up smudging your screen, and nobody likes to smudge up their glossy lappy display.

Second on the list is that Microsoft is already doing it. In order to assuage people about their future, Microsoft has already unveiled Windows 7 and announced that their Surface PC’s multi-touch technology will be a keystone feature in the OS due in 2010. They even demonstrated it on a laptop. How ridiculous can you get?! The Surface PC is already a joke, and many pundits have called it a giant iPhone. Its really nothing more than a marketing piece which customers like Sprint want in some of their stores to promote goods. That’s not a good basis for a consumer-oriented technology.

Third and last on my list is the lack of functionality. There’s really not all that much you can do with multi-touch unless you start using guestures, which is really what multi-touch is. There are a ot more combination potentials with two or more fingers, but who in the hell is going to remember them all enough to warrant using the touchscreen most of the time. Then there’s typing, which is kind of a staple of data entry. This leads us back around to the tablet concept, and I just don’t see Apple doing that. Microsoft’s own tablet market sucks wind, so why should Apple think that an Apple logo would make it any better.

One technology which is making strides which most people haven’t really noticed all that much is voice recognition, the only thing which will, in my opinion, effectively supplant keyboard and mouse interaction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Its all Star Trek sounding, but reality has shown that Star Trek really has had an influece on what scientists have been able to create, and touchscreens just aren’t there. I doubt that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, had a portal into the future, but I think he got it right when he figured on voice control.

Of course, I could be wrong.

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