Apple Bin The Humble Mouse Forever

What looks like an oversized trackpad lifted from a PC like the MacBook Pro, the aluminium, wireless trackpad is designed to be used with the finger.

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Apple claims that the The Magic Trackpad, which will sell in Australia for $90 brings the intuitive Multi-Touch gestures of Mac notebook trackpads to the desktop. With its glass surface, the wireless Magic Trackpad enables users to scroll smoothly up and down a page with inertial scrolling, pinch to zoom in and out, rotate an image with their fingertips and swipe three fingers to flip through a collection of web pages or photos.

The Magic Trackpad can be configured to support single button or two button commands and supports tap-to-click as well as a physical click.

Analysts are saying that iOS has taught Apple that the general public responds extremely well to gesture-based computing, and while Apple trackpads still force a level of abstraction that a touchscreen device does not (controlling something by touching in one place while seeing it elsewhere, rather than direct interaction with content), they nonetheless enable users access to intuitive multitouch gestures that are becoming increasingly commonplace.

Currently the  Magic Trackpad is a standalone accessory with many tipping that in 2011 it will be bundled as standard with all Apple PCs.