in brief Rumours of Apple working on a touchscreen Mac have been circulating for years, and will only grow with the revelation that the company is hoping to patent similar technology.
(Credit: US PTO (via AppleInsider)
A number of Mac sites on Thursday in the US started pointing to a US patent application granted for what would appear to be a Mac tablet. AppleInsider has a description of the device discussed in the application, which appeared to bring a lot of the iPhone's multi-touch functionality to a slate-like tablet computer.
Given Apple' focus on multi-touch user interfaces over the past year, there has been a fair amount of speculation that the company wants to do something similar with a larger, more powerful computer than the iPhone or iPod Touch.
Apple's explored this territory before: There are patent references dating back to 2005, and other sites are reporting that the current application is similar to technology Apple patented two years ago. Tablet PCs in the Windows world haven't sold very well.
