News 

Where Vista borrowed from features including Spotlight and Dashboard - as satirised by Missing Manual author David Pogue - Windows 7 gets a dock and OS X's latest innovation - mulitouch technology.

The new features were unveiled at the first public demonstration of Window 7 at this week's All Things Digital conference,

ADVERTISEMENT

where Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and chief executive Steve Ballmer fielded questions from the Wall Street Journal.

While little was said about the dock, the multitouch capabilities got a good airing - as this video shows - and demonstate the potential for touch technology on the desktop. And they hint at the possibilities for Apple's own extension of the multitouch capabilities of OS X currently deployed on the iPhone, iPod touch and MacBook Air.

Windows 7 is due for release in 2010, giving Apple plenty of notice ahead of the introduction of the next version of Mac OS X. The first four OS X upgrades arrived at the rapid rate of roughly one each year. After 10.4 Tiger Apple said that it planned to slow the release schedule, and so it proved, with Leopard coming after an interval of two years. Sticking to that schedule, 10.6 could debut towards the end of 2009.