Photo: Apple

To be fair to Apple, it’s impossible for the company to keep any secrets with so many people watching their every move. Here’s the Apple Magic Trackpad, which is essentially a giant multi-touch surface for any Apple computers.

What is it?

The Magic Trackpad brings the multi-touch functionality Macbook users have become accustomed to to Apple’s desktop machines. With 80 per cent more surface area than that found on the Macbook Pro’s touchpad, it’s also the largest multi-touch trackpad on the market (for now). Like its Macbook Pro counterparts, the entire touchpad is clickable, too, meaning it’s designed to replace your mouse completely.

Pricing and availability

The Apple Magic Trackpad is priced at (a fairly steep) $69 (£44) and is only available for Apple computers that have Snow Leopard (ver. 10.6.4 at the least) installed. Though this splinters the Mac userbase, this requirement is presumably down to gesture-types introduced alongside Snow Leopard.

Multi-touch now a standard

What the Apple Magic Trackpad confirms is that multi-touch computing is no longer a novelty, but quickly becoming a standard. Smartphones – most notably the iPhone – were first responsible for introducing this form of input to users, before being adopted by computer touchpads. So much so that we haven’t reviewed a single computer in the last four months that doesn’t have some limited form of touch input.

And if we’re wrong about our assertion that all of computing is moving this way, it’s at least a certainty that Apple is moving this way, with the iPhone, iPad, iPod, Macbooks, the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad.

Priced at the same $69 (£44) mark as the Magic Mouse isn’t exactly priced to go, but we imagine Apple will sell a few, if for no reason other than curious buyers.

Does this device interest you at all and what do you make of the move towards touch computing?

Photo: HTC

The Nexus One, Google’s flagship HTC-manufactured Android phone, was launched with great fanfare but lacked what many consider a key Smartphone feature, multi-touch functionality. A soon-to-be-issued software update that fixes 3G connectivity issues also comes with limited multi-touch functionality for a handful of applications: Google Maps, the browser and gallery applications will now feature pinch-to-zoom functionality.

Patent Infringement Fears Dissipate

Photo: Apple

This feature has been omitted in this Android Smartphone up until now because it is believed that Apple holds the patent to it. Whether this is true, or whether it is in Apple’s interest to take legal action, is not known with certainty, so Google has gone ahead and added it to their Nexus One feature set.

Why Is This Important?

Present day multi-touch implementation is limited, but given this Apple patent, a multi-touch language capable of replacing all keyboard and mouse functions is not outside of the realm of possibility. Google, RIM and other competitors and innovators in the field are not ignorant of this possibility, hence the incredible R&D resources being developed for this surface-based technology. Taking a look at Portuguese company Displax’s technology should give an indication of where this technology is taking us.

The Nexus

Photo: Google

Google speaks of the Nexus as being the junction where great hardware meets great software and the omission of multi-touch, even in its current limited use, was widely regarded as a negative against the Nexus One, to the extent that the Android development team is aware of this and has reacted to it. This gives great credit to Google’s flexibility and willingness to adapt as they go along. The Smartphone Wars have only really just begun.

The HP TouchSmart tx2z is the mark of professionalism, performance and productivity. This one is designed for mobile professionals and is the best example of a consumer focused convertible tablet PC. The tx2z is an upgraded version of Hewlett Packard’s tx series portable computing machines and takes the basic design and functionality from the tx1000 and tx2000 models. But this time the company has added the support for multi-touch commands.

The design of the HP TouchSmart tablet is sleek and it has got a titanium finish with lots of gloss to get some attention on the move. The tablet looks good from inside also. Colour combination, tone and shades are great and the keyboard is of good size which offers regular typing. Only the function keys are little bit small, the rest is as good as a desktop keyboard. An ultra-sensitive touch pad is also provided, in case you don’t want to navigate by touching the screen with digitiser pen or finger. The Hewlett-Packard HP TouchSmart tx2 comes with a dual mode display. It supports digitiser pen for taking notes and drawing and also responds to finger touch while navigating through different options, opening applications and flipping photos. You can also make use of multi-touch commands to rotate or zoom photos with the help of two fingers, just like you do in case of iPhone or MacBook.

Display is 12.1 inch widescreen sitting on a rotating hinge and offering a resolution of 1280×800 pixels. You can place the screen in three ways. You can use the device as a traditional laptop, detach the screen and use the display only or fold the display and use the device as a tablet. Most of the processing power comes from a 2.4GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual Core Mobile processor and 4GB RAM. The TouchSmart tx2z also sports variety of wired and wireless connectivity options.

Latitude XT2 is Dell’s first multi-touch capable tablet PC and an industry first. It’s a high performance tablet with exceptional touch screen capabilities and unprecedented digitiser pen functionality. It simply works the way you want. Apart from the normal touch screen operations, the Latitude XT2 also responds to some advanced multi-touch gestures like a pinch or tap to quickly scroll through pages, zoom in or zoom out, enlarge e-mails, maximise and restore the windows, change windows orientation and much more. It’s so user friendly that you will rarely feel to use keypad and touchpad.

Besides this the XT2 attracts the mobile computing fans because of its ultra-thin design. Just like its predecessor the Dell Latitude XT, you can slip it into any bag and carry with ease. The tablet features an ultra small power supply and high capacity slim battery that can keep you ON for hours in both notebook and tablet PC mode. When working in the tablet PC mode the XT2 offers a large multi-touch display that is optimised for use under direct sunlight.

Apart from its impressive design and exceptional multi-touch performance the Latitude XT2 packs cutting edge technology and speedy hardware. It supports dual core multi-threaded processing, large amount of RAM, optical disks, SATA hard drive, eSATA, USB, FireWire, ExpressCard slot and other connectivity and expansion options. The XT2 makes it easy to manage all your tasks by offering preloaded tools and applications that make sure you don’t have to deal with complexities of the cutting edge technology incorporated in the device.

Tags for this article: tablet, touch, dell