14 DAY TRIAL // Apple CEO Steve Jobs is set to kick off his company’s Worldwide Developers Conference with a number of announcements the industry has come to expect following major hardware leaks, as well as planned (confirmed) announcements, such as iPhone OS 4. Surprisingly, a new Apple product has reportedly escaped in the wild just hours ahead of WWDC10, in what can be considered the ‘one more thing’ of these dreadful, leaky times at Apple.
According to tech-site Engadget, which has obtained the images in question, the leak of Apple’s “Magic Trackpad” lines up perfectly with talks by pundit John Gruber who reported earlier this year that Apple was set to release a “Mentioned-Nowhere-Else-But-in-This-Very-Headline Multi-Touch Trackpad Gadget for Desktop Macs.” MacRumors, for its part, took notice of an Apple trademark application for the “Magic Trackpad.” Going by today’s leaked imagery, the rumor that Apple was planning to introduce desktop Macs to Multi-Touch is more than confirmed.
An update to Engadget’s original story points Apple fans’ attention to several new pictures of the product in question. The site then adds more details on the particularities of this device. One of them is that it supports handwriting recognition, in addition to “every feature you can find on a Magic Mouse (and possibly features of a MacBook Pro trackpad),” according to a person who claims to be personally testing the Magic Trackpad.
Softpedia Note
If proven not to be a fake, the Magic Trackpad is indeed likely to bring MacBook-specific gesture input to desktop Macs, although Apple may not stop here. If history is any indication, an all-new peripheral such as the Magic Trackpad will most likely innovate in some key areas (as far as user input is concerned). Chances are this device will address designers, and perhaps even gamers. What’s your take on this, dear readers?
Update: we have updated this story to inform our readers that Apple has not confirmed the existence of the Magic Trackpad. As expected, the Steve Jobs WWDC10 keynote address was mainly focused on iPhone 4.
