MacBook Touch rumours grow online

Rumours of a tablet Mac with touch sensitive controls continue to echo online, and Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer's promise of future product transitions to come last week has done nothing to dampen speculation.

ABC News this weekend said: "The brief, perhaps innocuous comment appeared on several blogs the next day alongside a rumor that analysts say has been floating around for years - that Apple would debut a touchscreen laptop."


The report describes the purported product thusly: "Think MacBook screen, possibly a bit smaller, in glass with iPhone-like, but fuller-featured Multi-Touch. Gesture library. Full Mac OS X."

Rumours of an Apple tablet have been in circulation for years with credible claims at one point suggesting a 2003 release for the product.

The New York Times' John Markoff says the iPhone itself began life as a 'Safari Pad': "Apple’s multitouch technology began life not as a cellphone, but as a notepad-sized skunkworks project internally dubbed Safari Pad, run by Tim Bucher, then Apple’s head of Macintosh hardware. To his credit, Mr. Jobs seized on the technology and morphed it into the iPhone," Markoff revealed.

Speculation online now favours the introduction of the product, dubbed (at least my the Mac-rumour engine) as the 'MacBook Touch' in September, with more information expected to reveal itself this week.




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