Multitouch desktop? No. Multitouch laptop? Yes.

From the Q&A section of this week's Apple press conference:

"Introduced multitouch on iPhone, what about for the Mac?"

Steve: "Makes sense for the iPhone, not sure it makes sense in the Mac. Classify that as a research project."

(taken from Engadget)

Some people really latch on to this idea. Other people dismiss it, citing the well-known gorilla shoulders effect. I think they're both right, because they're not necessarily talking about the same thing.

But first, if you're not familiar with gorilla shoulders, you need to be. Try this:

1) Extend your arm straight in front of you, parallel to the floor.
2) Extend your index finger.
3) Keeping your arm straight, rotate your index finger in a circle approximately four inches in diameter.
4) Every third rotation, make a jabbing motion with your arm.

Keep doing that, and make a note of how long it takes you to reach "uncomfortable" and then "tired." It's faster than you think. Lots of people use their arms all day - it's called "manual labor." But the particular angles of using a touch screen display on a desktop present unique physical demands. Touchscreen displays have already been tried in the mid-1980s, usually on the workstations of places like banks, and the fatigue effects became known as "gorilla shoulders."

Now with a laptop, it's a different story. The distance is much shorter and the angle is different. I could see a multitouch display on a laptop, in addition to a keyboard and trackpad. So instead of reaching for the trackpad, I just reach out and touch the thing that I want. Try it on your laptop right now. Personally I'd find that superior for most cases of scrolling, and manipulating icons, but I'd go to the trackpad for fine details, like bandboxing an image region for cropping.

That's why I say both camps are right. People who get excited about a multitouch "Mac" really want a multitouch Macbook, and people who already know the history of gorilla shoulders automatically hear multitouch iMac and reflexively say no, that doesn't work.