doogald the handwriting recognition in Vista or W7 works with touch screens without the need of a Wacom digitizer.

MacBooks and other Mac OS X systems don't have handwriting recognition? I bet you've never hooked up a Wacom tablet to one before, or seen the Axiotron ModBook in action.

You see, OS X does have a handwriting recognition system called Inkwell, inherited from the Newton MessagePads. Most people don't even know it exists because the "Ink" option in System Preferences doesn't even appear unless a drawing tablet is connected and its drivers have been installed for proper tablet support.

However, that's not really talking about touch input, which OS X doesn't seem to be particularly optimized for. (This assumes finger use-if you're going to use a pen/stylus, the system manufacturer will probably integrate a Wacom digitizer anyway, just like all of those Tablet PCs that do NOT have touchscreens for fingers.)

@doogald:

I really do wonder how much people want to actually Touch a traditional vertically-mounted notebook or desktop display like this? It is very tiring, compared with, say, using similar Touch gestures on a horizontal trackpad or tablet PC.

I wonder that myself. I think it's a nice option to have for limited usage. For example, if I want to move a window on my screen, it's probably easier to reach out, touch the window and drag it to where I want it instead of having to find the cursor on the screen, move it to the window, click then hold the button while I'm dragging the window.

However, I can't see it becoming somebody's primary means of input, either. HP sells a desktop with a large, vertical touch screen (the TouchSmart, I think). It's cool, but I don't think I could justify the extra cost for the limited advantages.

To a lesser degree, I feel similar about voice input. It's less effort than touch, but there are places where it's not a good idea (busy offices where you don't want everybody talking at once, at home watching TV, noisy coffee shops, etc.).

I'm looking forward to thought input (although I hope thinking "I hate John Doe" doesn't end up deleting John and all of his E-mail and contact data :D).

Steve

That's is sweet...

You can attach a digitizer to a Macbook (or an iMac or Mac Mini, for that matter) and use the InkWell software included in OS X for handwriting recognition. You can also buy a modified MacBook called a Modbook that uses InkWell.

Inkwell is not as good as Vista/Win7, but the video you include here of multi-touch looks pretty laggy compared with the Mac.

Inkwell demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm8iAE9xRR0
Inkwell info page: http://www.apple.com/sg/macosx/features/inkwell/
Modbook: http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=home

Again, I find it dubious that people will enjoy working by touching a vertically oriented display rather than on a notebook-like trackpad. Human arms just weren't meant to enjoy working held out like that for a long period of time. (Though perhaps it would be good for us to get some extra upper body exercise.)

MacBooks support touch better than W7? They even don't have handwriting recognition support!

You must mean that there is no other desktop OS with better support for screen touch, as recent MacBooks support Touch really well on trackpads, and, of course, iPhone OS supports Touch well on smartphones (along with many others.) Even my two-plus year old MacBook has some multitouch features (two finger right-click, two finger scrolling, plus the more typical tap to click.)

I really do wonder how much people want to actually Touch a traditional vertically-mounted notebook or desktop display like this? It is very tiring, compared with, say, using similar Touch gestures on a horizontal trackpad or tablet PC.