Patents hint at iMac Touch and touchscreen MacBooks

imac touch

With the sweet glass-fronted, LED-backed displays on the newer MacBooks, Apple seemed a step closer to giving us touchscreen displays beyond the current ultra-portable devices. Patently Apple has recently unearthed a couple of Apple patent filings that seem to point in that direction, not just for MacBooks, but for a future iMac as well.

Apple is clearly driving very quickly toward mass adoption and integration of its iOS software, and these patents certainly support that. As far as the “iMac Touch” patent, apparently you’d get the best of both worlds as far as Apple’s OS offerings are concerned. Based on the orientation of the display, the iMac would switch between Mac OS and iOS. Lay it flat, you get iOS. Stand it up, you get Mac OS.

Obviously there are many Apple patents reported that never will see the light of day, but I believe this one has some meat to it. For an iMac refresh, this seems a very logical update. Though it makes sense we could see the same thing in a MacBook update, I’d say we’ll see an iMac sporting this dual-OS first.

TUAWPatents hint at iMac Touch and touchscreen MacBooks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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