Multi-Touch iWork, Complex Gestures for Apple’s Tablet (Rumor)

A former Apple designer claims that Apple has been developing a multi-touch version of iWork for the past two years, in what looks like a move to equip the rumored iSlate tablet with productivity software. The source fails to indicate to the New York Times whether the efforts are centered around the actual tablet Apple is believed to unveil this month.

The paper digs up older reports regarding the operating system of Apple’s forthcoming tablet device saying that, “Conversations with several former Apple engineers who worked on the long-gestating tablet [...] suggest that Apple may be asking users to learn a somewhat complex new vocabulary of finger gestures to control it, making use of technology it acquired in the 2007 purchase of a company called FingerWorks.” That technology is widely known today as Multi-Touch. Apple is believed to have developed a tablet operating system entirely based on this technology.

“The tablet should offer any number of unique multitouch experiences — for example, three fingers down and rotate could mean ‘open an application,’” a former Apple engineer, who declined to be identified due to Apple policies that demand secrecy from all current and former employees, said , the New York Times reveals.

In its report, the site includes information disclosed by another Apple employee, a designer who claimed that a team at Apple had “spent the past couple of years working on a multitouch version of iWork.” The NY Times speculates that Apple may have developed a tablet more like a full-fledged computer, “rather than a more passive device for reading books and watching movies.” This aspect would justify a higher-than-average price, the paper says.

This falls in line with predictions coming from Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, who says, “I think the black-and-white readers still survive in the niche market as reading devices. I’m not expecting the Apple device to be as good as the Kindle or Sony Reader for reading.”