Apple 's new iPad aims to remake a market touched on by laptops, tablet computers, netbooks and even the iPod portable devices for the creation and consumption of media, largely text and video.
That's bad news for Microsoft, which is working on the first version of its operating system, Windows 8, that is designed from the ground up to take advantage of the touch screens on tablet computers, rather than keyboards and mice.
Put TileWorld and its universe of new touch screen apps on tablets.
Intel and others are investing in research to make touch screens, now standard on tablets, a feature of ultrabooks as well.
And further down the line, users may grow up on touch tablets and won't even understand the concept of the mouse.
When it launches, Windows 8 will be optimized for touch-and-slide gestures on tablets and smartphones (Mac's Lion OS X, too, has been "iOS-ified," taking on several touch-and-slide capabilities familiar to iPhone users).
Developed for use on tablets and touch interfaces, as well as desktop PCs, Windows 8's touchable interface resembles that of the company's smartphone platform, Windows Phone 7. The new Windows 8 will also rely more heavily on the cloud than previous versions of Windows.
ClrTouch allows publishers, agencies and ad networks to create, traffic, serve and track "touch-driven" rich media advertising on tablets.
For example, they speak of a "touch first" philosophy, meaning the touch features of Windows 8 work smoothly on tablets and on notebook and desktop PCs.
I like Windows 8 a lot on touch-screen tablets and laptops, but I don't use it on my desktops.
