Erica Ogg from CNet believes Apple’s newest operating system, Snow Leopard, is a precursor to the allegedly forthcoming Apple touchscreen tablet.

Of course, the Apple tablet has become the Apple press corps’ version of a Bigfoot hunt. Some believe the evidence is overwhelming. Others are, well, underwhelmed. And Apple doesn’t discuss products before it’s ready to.

However, based on the features demonstrated at the developer conference last week, the newest version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.6, dubbed Snow Leopard, could turn out to be the most touchscreen-friendly Mac OS the company has ever built. Snow Leopard won’t be available until September, and so far, Apple does not sell a touchscreen notebook or tablet. But some of the features in the upcoming OS at least show a path on which Apple could be headed toward offering a larger touchscreen device.

I’m curious to see the Apple twist to a touchscreen computer. I’m sure the gestures would remain the same from the iPhone, but what would change? What would the on-screen keyboard look like? Would you have a physical keyboard and mouse to use at the office? Would it dock to your desktop or laptop?

Would it be roughly the same size as the original Newton?

Remember the Newton?

Apple released their newest iPhone this morning, called the 3G S, almost exactly two years after the first iPhone forever changed the mobile phone market. Not only did the iPhone revolutionize how we think about phones, but it hastened the advent of touchscreens. Three ways the touchscreen industry has changed:

1. Lower costs: Apple has been buying millions of capacitive touchscreens and driving down costs in Asia. Three years ago resistive screens were ubiquitous because of price, but now capacitive screens are cost-effective in many applications. The hot new product of 2007 spurred the adoption of touchscreens in all types of devices–further driving down costs. Even HP now markets their razor-and-blade Photosmart printer with a 6″ touchscreen LCD screen.

2. Innovation: Five years ago who would ever have really imagined watching television on their cell phone in some remote locate? But now Major League Baseball and Apple offer an app that streams live baseball games to the palm of your hand. Competitors have been scrambling to compete with the iPhone and introduced some new technologies and approaches to designing phones and phone software. Samsung has since introduced an AM-OLED touchscreen (active-matrix organic light emitting diode). Blackberry introduced the Storm with SurePress touch screen technology. The Palm Pre (below) is a very sensitive capacitive touchscreen with a higher pixel density than the iPhone. Touch technology is also expanding into personal computing with Windows 7, NextWindow and N-Trig.

3. Touch Fluency: I attended the Interactive Display conference this spring and there was a healthy debate over multi-touch vs. dual-touch screens. Jeff Han was arguing that his technology was true multi-touch (you can use all ten fingers or even multiple users) whereas the iPhone is limited to dual-touch (pinching with just two fingers). The fact that this would even be discussed at the conference is a testament to Apple’s penetration in the market. My father (age 61) and my son (age 3) can both easily zoom in and out on the iPhone with what are now standard touchscreen gestures.

Touchscreens have been around for years, but we must pay homage to the iPhone for bringing touch to the people and making touchscreens acceptable and even demanded in all kinds of devices.

For those Apple nuts who can never get their fill, David Carnoy from CNet is already looking ahead to the iPhone 4G (in 364 days if you’re counting).

Having just returned from the SID Display Week trade show in San Antonio the most interesting booth was the splashy entry from N-Trig. No doubt this booth was made possible in part from Microsoft’s $24 million in January.

N-Trig is an impressive Israeli company that has made great strides in the PC touch environment with their DuoSense product. According to their website, DuoSense is “Pen, touch and multitouch in one device.”

The Wall Street Journal gives N-Trig’s multitouch capability some press in their recent touchscreen article:

“You don’t even operate your TV with two fingers,” said Amichai Ben-David, the chief executive officer of N-trig, which produces touch-screen technology for PC makers. “In order for this to feel really natural, you need more than two fingers for sure.”

Ben-David also reports that 2 million of the 300 million PCs sold last year were touch-enabled. Microsoft, N-Trig and NextWindow are all betting big that Windows 7 will open finally open the window to mainstream PC touch usage.

At D7, the company will reveal two of its newest technologies: TouchSense for touchscreen keyboards and Immersive Messaging. With TouchSense, the user is not only supposed to be able to get haptic feedback, but can also feel the virtual keys. Immersive Messaging will also use haptic feedback, as well as gesture recognition, to send messages that employ physical senses rather than text.

Immersion’s website explains:

Mobile handset users want a high touch experience with the one device they carry with them all the time. That’s why OEMs, network operators, and content developers are using Immersion haptic technologies to make the user experience more effective and engaging.

I’m not sure how more vibrations from my phone makes the experience more engaging. Most of my time is spent reading emails, listening to music, watching videos, etc. I could only really see game apps benefiting from this.

Reporter Wolfgang Gruener weighs in as well:

The success of texting lies in its simplicity. Adding tactile feedback and countless new ways how to hold and move your phone isn’t exactly simple. In 2002, Immersion had come up with a concept to translate certain sounds into vibrations – and claimed that users would be able to perceive happy and angry vibrations. We all know where this idea has ended up. Immersive messaging looks like such a dead end as well.

Between the new multi-touch enabled Windows 7, the continuing growth of Apple and BlackBerry and the continued innovation within the industry I think $9 billion is within reason. I think a more interesting question is where will touchscreens NOT be adapted in 2015? Are there products and functions that don’t stand to gain from adding a touch surface?

Wikipedia has–after much debate–decided the one word, ‘touchscreen’, is the best option. The WSJ is hyphenating, but plenty of others (like Elo) use two words.

You can see from our masthead how we think it should read.

The article reports that IBM, Dell and Asusteck are also fighting for a piece of the market. If IBM bailed when the PC industry became too cut-throat, how long until the touchscreen PC market loses the current profit margins?

With more than 350 booths and 6,000 attendees, SID is the leading North American show for the electronic-display industry.

Visit us at booth #235.