TECH BLOG
Will the Next MacBook Touchpad Look Like an iPhone?

So what are these products? Most certainly we're looking at some sort of new innovation, perhaps combined with a price decrease. But Apple is notoriously stringent with price cuts, so my money is on a new feature that will amp the production cost of the product and totally wow all of us consumers.

Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro case designs are old and in need of a refresh. New versions may roll along as early as September, and blogs and trend watchers are predicting (if not reporting by way of unnamed inside sources) that the new MacBooks will sport aluminum enclosures and echo the MacBook Air's thin and curved design.

Sounds reasonable -- hardly groundbreaking, though.

Apple could, of course, revitalize a different product, like the Mac mini, by gluing an Apple TV onto its back to create a truly useful home media server . But I don't think so. It wouldn't affect Apple's financial reports much because the market there is too small. How about the iMac then? It's possible that Apple could boost the iMac -- bigger screens, add some touchscreen love, maybe -- but again, a refreshed iMac isn't going to capture the hearts and minds of all that many consumers, even if Jobs turned it into a bona fide high-definition TV with a glowing Apple logo.

No, the key revision is going to be in the mobile space, and it's either going to be a laptop or mini Internet device like the iPod touch. The iPhone 3G is out -- can you imagine the backlash Apple would get if the company released a new iPhone? Tens of thousands would scream for their money back. Heck, it's happened before, and that was only when Apple dropped the price on the first-generation iPhone.

The Major Play Will Be in the MacBook Line

Tech writer Arik Hesseldahl over at BusinessWeek believes Apple could be readying a touchscreen MacBook, albeit a mini MacBook. While lots of people have been waiting for a Mac tablet, few seem to think the market is ready for such a device. But what about a tiny laptop? Asustek's EeePC has been doing surprisingly well, and Apple must certainly have noticed.

Why does it have to be small? Currently, it seems as though the leap to a multi-touch screen isn't ready to go above 9 inches or so. Hesseldahl cites sources at iSuppli that put the cost in reason at screens in the 9-inch size.

Back in June, Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies, told MacNewsWorld that multi-touch screens are hard to build in larger sizes.

So can Apple create a mini laptop with a multi-touch screen?

Maybe.

Does Apple believe the market is really there? I like the idea, but I can only afford so many laptops. If Apple wants volume, it's going to be something with a full-size keyboard and enough power to be used on the desktop day in and day out. While I do believe Apple will enter the mini mobile market beyond the iPhone and iPod touch, I'm hoping for something far more groundbreaking come September.

Don't get me wrong. A full-size touch screen laptop -- with a sturdy screen that won't shake when I swipe at it with my fingers -- would be awesome, but I don't think we'll get it yet. I would settle for a cheap little laptop, but Apple, no matter what Oppenheimer said, has a hard time with cheap.

Drop Margins and Leap Ahead

So, what would simultaneously drop Apple's margins and be a massive leap forward for an existing product segment?

Consider this: Alongside all the MacBook rumors is a single bulleted item that almost everyone seems to have not paid much attention to: The next MacBook touchpad will be glass.

So what are the possible purposes of glass touchpads? Cool industrial design? Certainly. Is that enough? Not for Apple.

If you're going to use glass, why not use the iPhone's multi-touch screen as a touchpad? Apple is already manufacturing them in bulk; why not add more to the production orders? And while we're at it, why not turn it into something really cool -- light it up, let it glow, let it shine, and by all means, turn it into a massively cool new way to interact with Mac OS X.

This would not be a second-place showing to a touch-screen laptop. In one tiny little integration, this could give Apple a massive lead over Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Vista for years to come. Maybe more.

What if all the cool applications that are in icon form in an easy-to-use and intuitive menu system on the iPhone were available at your fingertips via your MacBook's touchpad? Want to look up an address in Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Maps? Forget the browser; just triple tap the new touchpad, and touch the Maps icon. Suddenly, you've launched a tiny, tight, yet insanely handy application that could run in the touchpad or be mirrored in a window on your widescreen.

All the existing Apple apps, along with the 1,000-plus that are in the Apple iTunes App Store, could easily run from your touchpad.

So yeah, you could play the iPhone's version of Texas Hold'em on your Mac.

The Dock Is Old Tech

What about the Apple Dock? Doesn't that function like an application launcher? You bet it does. And it fills up. At any given moment, I can have three dozen tiny little icons crammed on the bottom of my screen. Finding the right one after I've been working for a few hours is an exercise in patience. Can I tweak the settings? Yup. But the dock is old-school technology. It's handy, but it's not primed to radically extend the usefulness of your laptop. The doc is like a crocodile -- in terms of tech time, it hasn't evolved much in millions of years.

An iPhone-like interface built into the touchpad can be a massive evolutionary leap.

This is beyond scaling Web pages and photos. This is at once using an intuitive menu system to radically increase the efficiencies anyone can gain by using a Mac.

Plus, wouldn't it be wicked cool?

The iPhone menu is customizable already -- hold an icon and the screen jiggles, which lets you move applications and Web pages around on nine different swipe-able pages. It's a far more useful kind of OS/navigation/launcher device than I've ever seen or previously imagined before. It makes the Dock in OS X look like a child's toy.

What about the Dashboard -- again, it's handy and useful, but the iPhone interface trumps it completely.

But what about those chip rumors? This is where we get some synergy with all the rumors. There's another line of discussion going around that Apple is looking to slice and dice Intel's (Nasdaq: INTC) chipsets ... or possibly add some sort of new processing component to its laptops. Might Apple need a dedicated processor to run the touchpad?

I think so.

Acer Already Did It

OK, so that subhead isn't quite accurate -- but Acer is heading in the right direction. The company's shiny and blue-lit Aspire 8920 HD widescreen laptop comes with a striking design element -- a touch-sensitive "CineDash" media console. Primarily it's just a collection of dedicated buttons for managing media -- playing, pausing and skipping through music and videos -- and we've had dedicated buttons on laptops that provide these functions for years. Acer just made it look like something that begs to be touched.

But Acer's implementation is only a glimmer of what Apple could do with an iPhone-like touchpad.

Why not use the simple iconic elegance of the iPhone interface -- the brilliant icons, the slides, the swipes that let you move past whole customizable pages? Can you imagine how this kind of integration would blow every other laptop maker out of the water?

The possibilies are huge, and what's more interesting here is that Apple starts training consumers to think of the iPhone and iPod touch device interfaces as interfaces to their computers, their homes, their Apple TVs. Not only would it be a functional leap, it would be a device leap as well.

What's more, a glass touchpad with iPhone-like applications isn't mutually exclusive of a touchscreen laptop. In fact, it buys Apple time to deliver the touch screen and simultaneously provide a wide open roadmap for future OS X development.

Uh Oh

I've just realized something.

Now that I've considered the possibilities of a glass multi-touch touchpad with an iPhone-like interface, I can't get it out of my head.

I'm staring down at my stupid little black opaque touchpad on my MacBook, and I'm thinking, "Come on, Apple ... will you hurry up and rock the world one more time?"