Is Apple Stacked Up For Touch On A Mac?

I’ve been watching much of this year’s Apple news from afar, and vicariously living through the blogs and posts of others. One of the benefits and curses of seeing things from the outside is that it makes you ponder on what you see. So, I’m pondering.

With the advent of multi-touch on the iPhone and subsequently the iPod Touch, Apple has certainly taken the world of touch computing forward in a big way (in my opinion). As I look at, again from afar, the UI in the recent release of Leopard, which includes Coverflow and Stacks, (to name two) it makes me wonder if Apple isn’t setting the decks for that long and oft rumored Apple tablet, albeit with touch and not the pen. Both of the two examples I mentioned above seem a natural for a touch interface, and certainly Coverflow has proved that on other devices.

Those rumors of an Apple tablet come and go with a regularity that it is almost predictable, and certainly borders on the boring. Who knows if and when something like that will come to be. But, if you add the multi-touch functionality to an OS that has those UI features, I can’t help but think that it isn’t too far a leap to create a Mac or Mac tablet that uses touch to manipulate those features.

So, I’ll put this question to Rob, who I know just upgraded to Leopard on his Mac. Do you think that the Leopard UI would work will with a touch tablet? Any other Mac users out there feel free to chime in as well. What do you think?