Apple files for touchscreen Mac patent

Apple appears to be working on the concept of a touchscreen Mac, based on a recent patent application.

A number of Mac sites on Thursday pointed to a US patent application granted for what would appear to be the much-rumoured Mac tablet. AppleInsider had a description of the device discussed in the application, which appears to bring a lot of the iPhone's multitouch functionality to a slate-like tablet computer.

Given Apple's focus on multitouch 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 has explored this territory before: one patent reference found by ZDNet.co.uk's sister site, CNET News.com, dates back to 2005; and other sites have reported that the current application is similar to technology Apple patented two years ago.

Tablet PCs in the Windows world haven't sold very well, and the concept has almost completely fallen off the radar of the PC industry. That reluctance may be the result of software that isn't quite advanced enough to match the hardware, but few people seem to want a handheld computer the size of a piece of paper and the weight of a regular laptop.