The case where there is no mouse won't happen for a very long time.
And MS did not steal anything from Apple. They actually showed multitouch technology before apple did and invested in this research area for the past 10 years.
It was actually apple that took the idea and pushed it faster than MS into the retail. MS did not seem to realize or like the idea of a micro gadget with multi touch but saw its potential on the larger scale retail sector where the technology is still by far too expensive to reach enduser. A "end user" touch screen display (not even multitouch) costs about twice as much as a regular one even today ... and they are very rare and hard to get at least here.
So I would say that they are pretty good at their timeline handling, by the time Windows 7 will be released there is at least a potential chance that the technology is affordable enough to start spreading the home user market.
And MS did not steal anything from Apple. They actually showed multitouch technology before apple did and invested in this research area for the past 10 years.
It was actually apple that took the idea and pushed it faster than MS into the retail. MS did not seem to realize or like the idea of a micro gadget with multi touch but saw its potential on the larger scale retail sector where the technology is still by far too expensive to reach enduser. A "end user" touch screen display (not even multitouch) costs about twice as much as a regular one even today ... and they are very rare and hard to get at least here.
So I would say that they are pretty good at their timeline handling, by the time Windows 7 will be released there is at least a potential chance that the technology is affordable enough to start spreading the home user market.