Fingering Chart...yikes.

Looks familiar...

[www.fingerworks.com]

But they did buy them ;)

same deal when Palm (and the like) were first introduced - had to learn a "new" a;phabet to write with the stylus

Looks like the mayan numbering system.

What I am seeing here is a healthy set of extremely intuitive hand motions that can be applied to various tasks. When you translate them onto paper, they come across as very complicated. However, this is no different than the existing finger flick (scrolling), touch and drag (moving around), pinching and squeezing (changing zoom setting), etc. Waht Apple is doing here is an attempt to prevent anyone else from developing an intuitive multi-touch interface. If you dig through the patent filings of the past two years, you'd find similar charts for what we now know are gestures in the iPhone interface. They look just as ominous and complex.

I think they look pretty complicated like this but hopefully, a lot of work has gone into actually testing them out so there are scenarios (like with the iphone's few gestures now) where they feel natural and logical so looking at a chart of them is quite bewildering but when you come to actually use them it's quite intuitive.

I guess if they have just got round to this, we won't be seeing multitouch macs quite yet. Shame, I was really hoping they might have a huge surprise up their sleeves with the new imacs on Tuesday. imac would seem to make the most sense as the first computer to have multitouch, I can't see it working quite so well on a laptop screen but it's a feature the all in one imac would seem quite suited to and, to a lesser extent, the cinema displays as well. More eye candy than anything but it wouldn't half be fun!

Anyone else notice the part that talks about "Event: key, mouse, none"? I'd say that's a pretty good indication that Apple's going to be implimenting this into a computer setting and not just for iPhone.

...or the entire column that talks about all the shifts, commands, etc. LOL

@vasicp: YES, I agree. If such basic patent filings are ignored and allowed to continue, all the computers of the future worth a damn will have to necessarily be Apples! (Nooooooo!)

I have a pair of chording keyboards (The BAT) which, if patented (I don't know about that) would constitute prior art. Chording is a great input method, but I don't think any one scheme should be patented.

Imagine if QUERTY was patented! Patent holder would say "All your keyboards belong to us!"

And yet they still refuse to add a proper right mouse button to the macbook... wtf folks.

Because the 'proper' right mouse button is unnecessary and confusing. I've seen it a million times; people right-clicking by accident on a Toshiba or a Dell, when there are two thumb mouse buttons next to each other. Apple's solution is more elegant, more intuitive and less error-prone than anyone else's. Keep the single button with the multi-touch clicking for right-mouse equivalent!

@awemaker: Imagine if QWERTY was patented!

It was. In 1878.

we probably can "type" way faster with the finger chart thing than with a qwerty keyboard.

@vasicp: I am tired of hearing that argument... There is nothing stopping Apple from doing the same thing on their macbooks as they have done with the mighty mouse - include two buttons which default to button 1, allowing users to chose which is more "intuitive", which is entirely subjective and can not be quantified. Apple seems to be intent on "making a point" which can never be made.