SECOND TIME A CHARM?
As an Apple fan, do I wish the speculation by UMPC News (via memeorandum) about Apple 
introducing their own version of the UMPC is true?
UMPC of course stands for the "ultra-mobile PC" that Microsoft is launching with a host of partners (see previous post here).
It's been a long time since Apple's last foray into the PDA space with the Newton, a device way ahead of it's time, but pretty special nevertheless.
Part of the drivers for the rumors are some UI (user-interface) patents that Apple's filed for, that govern new ways to interact with the screen. The article by UMPC News has a lot more on this, including the pictures shown here.
Now regular readers know that I've been a proponent of the UMPC platform (aka Origami) that Microsoft has pioneered. The first of half a dozen models is soon to be available from a company called TabletKiosk, with a model called the eo.
Rob Bushway of GottaBeMobile put up a good video review (24 minutes) of a pre-production model of the eo, a few days ago.
Although he generally liked the eo, one thing he didn't like that much was the "Touchpak" virtual 
keyboard, which are two arced halves of a virtual keyboard that show up on the bottom left and right of the screen at the touch of a button (pictured on the left).
In particular, Rob points out how the two arcs cover up a good deal of the screen so that one can't see what is being typed on the screen. Apparently, the designers realize the problem and have included a "nudge" button on the eo that literally "nudges" the image up the screen, one line width at a time. And it doesn't help apparently, when the arc keyboard is made transparent, so that one can see "through" it as it were.
Why bring up all this in the context of a rumored Apple UMPC?
Well, what's interesting is that Apple seems to have a similar thing in mind, judging from the pictures in the UMPC News article (see picture below).
Here's what UMPC News has to say about this:
"It looks just like variation of Microsoft Touchpack software, except it is a single arc QWERTY keyboard, instead of two split panes in Touchpack.
This drawing comes from the latest Apple patent application filed today describing “activation of virtual keys of a touch screen keyboard”. The form and shape of the keyboard doesn’t appear to give any benefits to larger tablet PC or laptop sized devices and seems best suited for a small portable computer just like UMPC."
Here's hoping that Apple's implementation of this is a bit more elegant than the one in the Windows-based UMPC.
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