Every so often, there’s a burst of chatter about Apple working on a touchscreen version of its venerable iMac desktop. Yes, it’s that time again.
The Taipei-based rumormongers at DigiTimes say component maker Sintek Photronics has "reportedly sent samples" of a capacitive touch panel to Apple, supposedly for use in a future, touch-enabled iMac.
DigiTimes (which has a spotty track record when it comes to Applerumors, so I’d take this with a hefty grain of salt) says the alleged touchscreen iMac is "rumored to have a good vertical and horizontal viewing angle" as well as a "one-glass" design to "reduce thickness and weight."
DigiTimes (which has a spotty track record when it comes to Applerumors, so I’d take this with a hefty grain of salt) says the alleged touchscreen iMac is "rumored to have a good vertical and horizontal viewing angle" as well as a "one-glass" design to "reduce thickness and weight."
That’s about all the detail to be gleaned from the DigiTimes post, which follows a flurry of headlines late last month on the discovery of an Apple patent detailing a so-called iMac Touch with a flexible base and a touch-enabled version of the Mac OS.
Of course, Apple has never been shy about filing patents for a wide range of products, many of which never see the light of day — and as Gizmodo points out, Apple’s been filing touchscreen desktop patents since at least 2004.
Still, a touchscreen iMac doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch from the company that brought us the iPad. The product described in the patent that got so much play recently would essentially be an iPad attached to a flexible bracket, complete with a hybrid version of Apple’s desktop OS.
And it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for a touchscreen, all-in-one desktop. Touchscreen PCs and laptops from the likes of HP, Sony, Gateway and Asus have been around for years, and Windows 7 marks the first Windows OS to natively support multitouch input directly on a display. Whether touch support for Windows desktops has been a game-changer or merely a novelty is, however, a matter of debate.
Mac OS X also supports multitouch, but only on input devices like the touch-sensitive Magic Mouse and the new Magic Trackpad, including multifinger gestures for scrolling down Web pages and flicking through photo albums. There’s no touch input for the iMac screen itself, though.
So, what possibility is there of Apple unveiling a touchscreen iMac in the near future? If "near future" means the next 12 months or so, I’d say the chances are slim to none. Yes, the grapevine jerks every now and again when an Apple patent for an "iMac Touch" surfaces, but other than that, the buzz surrounding an imminent touchscreen iMac has been faint, at best.
That said, if I had to predict what a Mac desktop might look like, say, five to 10 years from now, I could see some kind of iMac Touch coming down the pipe. It seems like the natural next step, not to mention an obvious way to give Apple’s middling desktop business (well, compared with the iPhone and the iPad, at least) a shot in the arm.
Do we really need a touchscreen iMac, though, any more than we need a touchscreen Windows PC? Tell me what you think.
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