Steve Jobs have called Multi-Touch interface on Macs an ongoing experiment. Sure it is. But it’s quite an intensive experiment that is very likely to produce the results soon.

The latest Apple’s patent filing  to become public called “Wide touchpad on a portable computer” (it’s a continuation patent for earlier 2004 patent application), shows how Multi-Touch may get onto your next Macbook Pro.

While touchscreen interfaces are great on an iPhone or Tablet PCs, they are not that good on your regular laptop. Just imagine using your finger to enter text or manipulate multiple of objects on your Macbook screen.

The answer to getting Multi-Touch on a Macbook is the good old touchpad. Only bigger - covering the whole area that is currently used as a palmrest. And smarter - able to recognize between resting palms, accidental touches and intentional manipulation gestures.

Special sensors determine the position of the hands and fingers relative to keyboard and touchpad and the software figures out your intentions:

• whether you are just typing and the touchpad should be disabled,
• are you using a finger to move the cursor and other fingers are just accidentally resting on a touchpad
• are you trying to manipulate objects on the screen with several fingers and Multi-Touch should be enabled
• etc;

If implemented the right way, such wide touchpad combined with the Multi-Touch gesture dictionary software can easily pave the way for the new touch user interface on your next Macbook.