XRay: Microsoft Surface and the iPhone

Every now and then you come across an really cool Microsoft Surface or iPhone application, but how often do you come across a really cool application that uses both?

Stimulant has created a prototype application that is so cool I had to blog about it. Inspired by Microsoft Second Light the folks at Stimulant created an application that synchronizes the display of an iPhone with the display of a Microsoft Surface so that when you lay the iPhone on the Surface you can see aspects a drawing or image that are otherwise invisible. It's cool enough to make David Copperfield jelious and it probably has some really interesting applications. Check out this well produced video and the accompaning narative to learn more.

Interactive Displays 2009!

I just read the program for Interactive Displays 2009 as well as their press release and I'm really pumped. Keynoting the conference will be Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel and Steven Bathiche, the guy that invented Microsoft Surface. There are lots of sessions on multi-touch development and plenty of product demos to tickle anyone's multi-touch fancy.

The conference is being held in San Jose, California on April 21st - April 23rd, 2009. I plan to attend and I'm really looking forward to the chance to stalk meet Jeff and Steve while simultaneously ogling all the interactive displays. It's going to be a blast!

It would be great to meet other multi-touch developers and designers at this conference. If you are going send me a note!

Super Bowl Security with Microsoft Surface

The Tampa Incident Command is in charge of coordinating security with 60 Federal, State, and local agencies in to ensure the safety of over a quarter million football fans during Super Bowl XLIII. Central to that coordination is Microsoft Surface which will provide staff with a digital birds eye view of the stadium and surrounding area allowing them to identify and track incidents over the course of the Super Bowl week.

Credit goes to Microsoft, E-SPONDER, and Infusion for developing the Surface security solution. E-SPONDER provides a portal for reporting and coordinating incidents and its the data from this portal, in combination with the Falcon Eye technology developed by Infusion (demo here), that will allow security personell to see and coordinate emergency responses using Microsoft Surface at and around the big game. Information is available in an E-SPONDER press release as well as short blog posting by Larry Larsen at on10.net. How cool is that?!

Update February 5th, 2009

A video demonstration of a policeman using the Microsoft Surface device for Super Bowl security is now up - it adds a little more context to the story which has been very widely reported.

Sparsh: Build your own Multitouch Table!

With price points for multi-touch table devices coming in at around $7,000 to $20,000 US its not like everyone who loves the technology can afford to buy one. In fact, just about everyone who comments on Microsoft Surface for the first time talks about how cool it is and then how its too expensive.

Those of you who are not as crazy as I am (I bought my own Surface despite the price point) may want to consider building your own multi-touch surface. That's exactly what a combined inter-disciplinary team of students from the Govt. Engineering College, Bikaner did. They used the open source Touchlib multi-touch SDK and advice from the NUI Group along with some affordable equipment to build a wonderful multi-touch device programmed in Adobe Flash.

Sparsh (Hindu for "touch") is the name of their project and you can see a really compelling video of it and what they programmed it to do. The team (Anirudh, Ashish, Rahul, Sudanshu, and Swami) built their own surface device out of plywood, Plexiglas off the shelf components and a little secrete sauce of their own making.

Specifically the device, according to emails communications with Anirudh, was built with the following components:

Hardware

Table's Touching Area: 1m X .568m
Infrared LED Illuminator's rating: 120mw/sr.
Projector enclosed: Mitsubishi XD 490U
IR detector: Modified Microsoft LifeCam VX1000, detects upto 30 Frames/second
Graphics Accelerator: NVidiA Geforce

Software
MS Windows XP/Vista, DirectX 11 Sept. Update, Open GL, Adobe Flash CS3, AS3
Tracker: modified Touchlib v1.0 beta

The most expensive component is probably the projector which retails for between $1,800.00 and $2,500 US brand new (used models can probably found cheaper). The least expensive component was probably their own special formula for a compliant surface which is needed in order for their method of gesture detection they used (FTIR). I won't go in to details but that particular component can be very expensive but our friends from India found a solution that costs only $5.00 US per unit.

The team based much of their design on guidance they obtained from the NUI Group. NUI Group is commercial company specializing in multi-touch but they also host a thriving open source multi-touch community where you can find a plethora of information on building your own multi-touch device. Just check out the videos of all the home made multi-touch devices features on the NUI Group web site. It's inspiring.

The Sparsh team is currently distracted with final exams (remember they are students) and so have temporarily halted work on Sparsh, but not for long. After graduation the team will probably, again according to Anirudh, develop of a much larger multi-touch wall. The members of the team are very interested in becoming deeply involved in multi-touch device development and are looking for summer internship. If I had my druthers I would hire them in a second for an internship. If you are looking to fund a multi-touch start-up, Sparsh will probably give you the most buck for your investment dollars. There located in India, they are students, and they are obviously very productive. A good investment for any venture capitalist or angel investor looking to break into the multi-touch device market.

My hat is off to the Sparsh team as well as all the inventors who have contributed to the NUI Group community. Building my own surface device that uses Flash would be a wonderful experience but given my current building skills (I’m dangerous at best) and my schedule (I’m totally booked right now) its not going to happen anytime soon.

Chrysler Embraces Touch Computing

The Chrysler 200C concept car unveiled at the 2009 North American International Auto Tradeshow features a really cool touch screen interface for controlling certain aspects of the car including environmental controls, windows and locks, music, and dashboard configuration. The dashboard itself is a screen with no moving parts - its all projected - which allows unlimited flexibility in how information is displayed.

The touch screen interface provides full Internet access, Geo location and maps, and the ability to synchronize with your home PC or even your iPhone. For example, you can use your iPhone to start the car and manage the environmental controls - something we in the cold North would like to have.

The concept car also has a touch screen interface that extrudes from the passenger side dashboard as well as touch sensitive screens on the arm rests. Although a concept, the 200C really shows the power of touch screens for automobiles. By the looks of the videos its not multi-touch, which is probably good since you should keep at least one hand on the wheel, but its still really cool technology and exciting.

There are a couple videos you can watch to see the touch screens in the Chrysler concept care. This one is the unveiling at the auto show - fast forward two minutes and fifty seconds to get the good part - and this video - fast forward two minutes to find the good parts.

I'm Now Employed by CSG!

I'm really excited to announce that I have accepted a position as the Sr. Experience Architect at Customer Solutions Group (CSG)! I went out to Denver and interviewed with CSG this past Thursday and Friday and was offered the job this weekend.

I'm really excited for a few reasons:

1st: I get to do Surface development full time.
2nd: I get to develop really cool surface applications with real business value.
3rd: The folks at CSG are top notch and their product and business plan are rock solid.

Sadly, I can't say much more than that right now as CSG is kind of in stealth mode. I'm really looking forward to sharing what I'll be doing with everyone when I can.

In the mean time, thank you to everyone for all your help in finding new employment. It was really fun talking to other companies and I'm honored that this old dog was considered to be of some value by those with whom I interviewed. It was a difficult decision because there are a lot of great companies out there!

On a last note, my heart goes out to other people who have been laid off. It's hard not to see a layoff as an indictment of your own career but don't take it that way. Lots of people of the best caliber are getting pink slips these days.

Apple Successfully Patents Multi-touch

According to the US Patent office records, last week on January 20th, 2009, Apple Inc. was awarded a patent to what is essentially multi-touch. If I understand the patent correctly this will have far reaching ramifications to the multi-touch industry.


Patent Number:
7,479,949

Patent Title:
Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics

Patent Abstract:
A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.

I’m not an expert or even a novice at interpreting patents but as I read it they have patented not only multi-touch in general but also many of the gestures used in iPhone and elsewhere (e.g. Microsoft Surface), such as pinching, swipe, tap, rotation, and others. If this is the foundation of threats of legal action against Palm than its also the foundation of legal threats to all multi-touch devices. It’s scary. I would greatly appreciate comments from people who can clarify the meaning of the patent and its implications.

UPDATE January 29th, 2008

Engadget has a pretty good article on the Apple patent - probably the best analysis I've seen so far. It puts my mind to rest to some degree as it seems the patent is very focused on specific gestures rather than covering any and all multi-touch gestures which is what I was afraid of. Nice reporting guys!

UPDATE: January 27th, 2009 (morning)
Based on a comment on my posting on the NuiGroup.com forums and many comments on a Slashdot.org post, it seems that the patent is for "heuristics" which is essentially the interpretation of gestures on the touch screen into actions on the interface. So, for example, the idea of placing your fingers on the screen and swiping down to scroll through a list is a heuristic of multi-touch; the interpretation of a finger contact gliding down the surface of a screen resulting in a scrolling motion. That's really bad for the industry.

Multi-touch is still new to the mass consumer market and the use of standardized gestures is key to the success of the technology. Take the scroll motion above. It's intuitive and natural way to scroll through a list based on decades of experience of using scroll bars on Windows, right? Now imagine that every multi-touch phone had to implement this gesture differently. What if on the Android phone you have to rotate your finger in a circle while on your Nokia phone you have to tap three times. That's a pretty ugly situation and if it had existed with WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, and Pointers) it would have severely injured the development of the graphical computer interface. But that didn’t happen with WIMP. Instead, all WIMP-based interfaces treat scrolling the same way; you click on the scroll handle and drag it the direction you want to scroll. It's the same on a Mac, Windows, GNOME & KDE (Linux), X11 (Unix) and just about every other WIMP interface.

If Apple had patented just a few gestures that would have been bad but tenable; instead they seem to have patented the very idea of multi-touch gestures. That moving your fingers on a touch sensitive surface can be interpreted as some kind of interaction with the user interface. That's absolutely horrible and quite possibly the worst possible outcome. How will any other company be able to implement multi-touch (including Microsoft with its Surface device) if Apple holds patent on the very concept of gestures in multi-touch?

If my analysis is correct there is going to be one of two outcomes. Apple will license the technology to all comers which will be tolerable but also will hinder development of multi-touch systems by open source and small companies; OR Apple will simply use its patent to completely corner the market on multi-touch in general (not just phones but multi-touch on any device). The later scenario would result in serious injury to the advancement of multi-touch. I find it hard to believe that this type of patent will stand up in court given the abundance of prior art dating back at least to 1982. In my opinion, it’s up to Microsoft at this point to challenge the patent – if they don’t who will?

NanoTouch

Patrick Baudisch of Microsoft Research has been working on back-of-the-screen touch services for a while now. His work in this area was first brought to the attention of the public when he introduced the LucidTouch, which was featured on Engaget in 2007. After some experimentation Baudisch has determined that LucidTouch works better on very tinny screens where the fingers occlude the visual while interacting.

This year Baudisch introduced NanoTouch which allows you to interact with a very tinny screen though back-of-the-screen touch input. NewScientist has a great story and video of the prototype NanoTouch device.

The idea is really cool and has lots of possible applciations including watches which are tinny but useful general purpose computers. Also its not hard to imainge Apple using this technology in its nano iPods some day.

Patrick Baudisch is a prolific inventor who started his career at legndary Xerox Park research center. You can see his other multi-touch and interaction research here. Baudisch provides design guidelines for NanoTouch here (PDF).

500 Million iPhone Apps Downloaded

As reported (and apparently predicted) by Softpedia, there has been more than 500 million iPhone applications downloaded from Apple App Store. That's 500 million multi-touch applications download! Apple App Store now hosts 15,000 iPhone applications which is just crazy.

To give you some context on that number, there were about 2 billion mobile phones sold in 2007 and 2008 combined, which means that there was one iPhone application downloaded for every four mobile phones (of any kind) sold in the past two years.

An acquaintance of mine who is also a angle/venture funder spent the entire summer last year researching the potential of funding an iPhone start-up and determined that it was too difficult to make a profit. When you consider that there are 15,000 applications (most of which are games) it's not surprising that only a small percentage of the applications are actually profitable. In fact, many of the 500 million downloads were probably free applications which generate no revenue at all.

That said, the fact that third party iPhone applications are so popular is complelling. While you may not be able to hit the jackpot creating and selling mass consumer applications, with the increasing popularity of iPhone (now out selling just about everything else) it makes it a wondeful platform on which to build additional value for existing customers.

A while back I went looking for a decent book on iPhone development (I prefer books when getting started with a new technology) and found nothing of much interest. Yesturday, however, Slashdot.org posted a very positive review of "Begining iPhone Development: Exploiting the iPhone SDK". I took a look at the Amazon.com reviews and they are excellent with (as of today) 48 reviews avergaing 4.5 out of 5 stars. I've been writing books sold on Amazon.com for 10 years and I can tell you first hand that that is an very impressive score. Kudos to the authors Jeff LaMarche and Dave Mark as well as Apress!

The bottom line is that iPhone remains that most commerically successful multi-touch device in history and will probably remain so for some time to come (five years at least). Thanks to the iPhone multi-touch is a main stream technology.

"The Clever Monkey" is now "Multitouch"

As I noted in my blog entry "Multi-touch or Bust" I have changed the focus of my career from Enterprise Java and RIA to Multi-touch. This was not a decision taken lightly but it’s the right one for me at this time.

With the change in my career this blog has also changed. Most, if not all, of the articles posted here have been about multi-touch since I first posted about Microsoft Surface back on September 18th, 2008. As I said a couple times in this blog I'm absolutely obsessed with multi-touch and the creative opportunities it affords me as a software developer and designer.

It's my sincere hope that this blog will be useful to people other than myself. There is an entire community of people interested and working in multi-touch and its growing rapidly. Every opportunity we have to share information about devices, development, and design of multi-touch systems promotes the multi-touch industry and helps all of us.

There are some fantastic resources out there for multi-touch but they are scattered about and not always easy to find if you are new to the industry. I'll provide links to them as I go and perhaps I'll create a wiki or at least a traditional reference page for those interested.

So welcome to “Multitouch” by yours truly, Richard Monson-Haefel. I'm not going to change the URL of the blog as that is a sure way of loosing readers (this I know from experience) but hopefully the new title will make it clear where my interests lie and the focus of this blog. Viva la Multitouch!

Learn at Lynda.com

If you like good quality video training, as I do, than you are going to love lynda.com. It provides training on lots of tools including Adobe CS3, Flex Builder 3, Expression Blend and Design, as well as dozens of other products.

I used it to learn how to program in Flex a while back and now I'm using it to learn how to use Expression Blend for Surface development. I can't say enough good things about the training videos lynda.com offers - they are simply excellent.

The Multitouch Cell

Multitouch Oy, a multi-touch company in Helsinki Finland, has recently (as far as I know) introduced their own multi-touch platform called Multitouch Cell. There are a lot of things that are interesting about this product including its Lego-like modularization. Each display is self contained but they can be assembled into larger displays. That's very cool! Displays come in 32" and 46" models with HD.

Another thing that is really cool is that the displays, even a large cluster of them, will run off a standard Mac, Windows, or Linux box. So you can use your current computer (assuming its fairly modern) to run the cornerstone software that does the touch tracking and runs the applications.

I haven't found out yet what the SDK is - I suspect its C++ but I've put out a request for more information and will let you know when I find out more.

Update: Jan 16, 2009

Multitouch Oy was kind enough to send me more details about pricing and the SDK. The price of the 32" cell is currently 5,700 Euros (~ $7, 550.00 US). This model is about the same size as the Microsoft Surface but obviously less expensive and it offers higher resolution images. Where Surface supports 1024 x 768 the Multitouch Cell supports 1920 x 1080. That's a pretty significant difference in terms of resolution. Of course its not clear to me if their inferred camera is more sensitive or not. The 46" model, which is quite a bit larger than Surface, is currently priced at 11,500 Euros (~ $15,200.00 US) which is close the price you'll pay for a Surface unit for development.

In addition to the cost of a cell you will also need to buy a SDK license which costs 2,000 Euro (~ $2,600.00 US) so the grand total for a 32" Cell with developer SDK is 7,700 Euros (~ $10, 200.00 US). The cost of a 42" Cell is with developer license would be 13,500 Euros (~ $17,850.00 US) which doesn't include shipping. That's a lot more than a surface but at 42" its a lot larger too.

The SDK itself is written in C++ so you'll need to know your C++ to do any development. That's a barrier to a lot of developers but Multitouch Oy plans to eventually support other languages including Flash and even Processing (a very cool Java visualization language) in the future via interprocess communication using XML and eventually other formats including the TUIO protocol.

Multi-touch or Bust

I've decided to throw all good sense and caution to the wind to focus entirely on multi-touch as my next career path. I've had a lot of wonderful opportunities presented to me since I was laid off a month ago, but there is only one option for me right now and that’s multi-touch development and design.

I have a family of 4 little ones (ages 7, 5, 3, and 1) and a wonderful wife and if I was sane I would focus on getting a nice paying job, any job. But sanity left this body months ago when I interacted with Surface for the first time at Web 2.0 Expo. Since that fateful day I can think of nothing else. Working in any other field of software development right now would be giving up on a dream and I'm not going to do that. The economy is horrible. The market for multi-touch developers and designers is growing quickly but is still small, but none of that matters to me. I will make it work.

I've only been this obsessed with technology once before, when I stumbled across Java in December of 1995. Java development was not a job for me, it was an obsession. I ran my own Java magazine, started a Java user group, and worked full time in Java development within 10 months of discovering Java. At that time no-one wanted Java developers - at least locally - and finding work was difficult. Hard to believe, but true! I spent half my time writing and evangelizing Java every day.

I feel the same way today about multi-touch and in particular Microsoft Surface. It's all I think about and it consumes every moment I'm not with my family. I stay up all night working on it and reading about it. I had missed that kind of passion. My love for Java is still strong but the passion left my bones a long time ago. Today, it’s all about multi-touch and Surface. Surface is not the only multi-touch platform in town (I would like to learn to develop for others) but it’s the best one outside the iPhone and one of the few where there is a job market. I'm hooking my horse to the Surface bandwagon and holding on for dear life. So far I love the ride!

So I'm no longer going to consider any work that isn't multi-touch related. That means I'm turning my back on fifteen years of enterprise Java development and expertise. Surprisingly it's not a difficult decision for me. Multi-touch or bust!

Windows 7: Developing Multi-touch Applications

Thanks to Jonathan Brill for providing a link to a video of the PDC 2008 talk "Windows 7: Developing Multi-touch Applications" by Reed Townsend and Anson Tsao. At 81 minutes the video is probably a bit long for anyone other than hardcore multi-touch developers, but it provides a pretty good idea of where Microsoft is going.

Apparently, WPF 4.0 will have built in support for multi-touch that will be a subset of the WPF support for multi-touch in Surface 2.0 (not yet released). Remember that Surface can handle not only multi-touch but also tags and blobs which is something that probably won't be in Win7. That said, Win7 will allow you to use both touch and stylus in combination which will be very valuable (Surface SDK 2.0 may also enable the use of the stylus but that's just a guess).

I suspect from the presentation that there are a lot of changes in Surface 2.0 SDK and WPF 4.0 with regard to multi-touch. You can do multi-touch today with Windows 7 BETA and WPF 3.5 sp1, but touch gestures are translated into stylus events so its not really the same as what will be in WPF 4.0. If you want to see WPF multi-touch demoed in the video, fast forward about 44 minutes into the video. The 30 minutes prior to that is dedicated to the native Win32 API for multi-touch.

Microsoft's Vision of the Future

A while back I read a blog entry by Jonathan Brill which pointed to a video created by Sun Microsystems of the future of surface technologies. It was pretty cheesy and I said as much on his blog. That started a conversation between Jonathan and I. Since then Jonathan and I have become friends, but I still think that video he showcased is bad (sorry buddy).

A much better video was created by Microsoft which shows the future of medicine. It's well crafted, inspiring, and full of stylus, multi-touch, and even augmented reality concepts. It's about 4 minutes long but worth it. Enjoy!

IntuiFace 2G Multi-touch Table

Ryan Stewart has an interesting video of a multi-touch surface table called IntuiFace 2G (they have a smaller version called 1G). What was really cool is that the programming was done in Adobe AIR.

That's exciting to me for a couple of reasons. First, Adobe AIR is an excellent platform for interface development. It supports the Flash and Flex, Ajax, HTML and even PDF documents. Second, the number of developers already familiar with Flash, Flex, and/or ActionScript is large and growing. I don't know if its more than those doing WPF development but its significant.

IntuiFace doesn't say how much their device costs or what the SDK is or the development enviroment. I would be curious to find out - it looks very cool and if you can do development using Adobe tools well that would put it right on par with Microsoft Surface development using Visual Studio 2008 and their expression Blend. (Note: Some people would argue that Adobe's design tools are better, which is probably true, but Microsoft's development tool, Visual Studio 2008, is better than Adobe's Flex Builder 3 so it all evens out.)

Adobe does Multi-touch

I've been trying to get Adobe to tell me what their multi-touch strategy is going to be, but without much success. I figured they have to have one. Who would they partner with? What would the SDK look like? And so on ...

So I was excited when I read on the NUI Group that Adobe and the NUI Group is planning on hosting a summit on multitouch Flash in Europe this year (2009). If I can get there I will.

If you didn't already know this, there is an open source multitouch SDK called TUIO, which already supports Flash's ActionScript as well as C/C++, C#, Java, Objective C, and Python. This may be the foundation on which Adobe will add multitouch to Flash. I haven't worked with it yet so I don't know how well it works. Here is a video of multitouch applications programed in Flash using the NUI Suite 1.0 Snowflake tracking software - very cool! (thanks to Rob Gonda's blog.)

It seems obvious that if Adobe becomes active in multitouch then mass adoption of this paradigm is not far off. There are millions of Flash developers world wide - opening up multitouch to that audience is a huge step for the multitouch industry.

The NUI Group is an awesome resource and deserves a post of its own which I've meant to do for a long time but haven't gotten around to yet.

iTable - by PQ Labs

Well its finally here. They have released the iTable! - only its not Apple, its a small company, PQ Labs. While not an Apple product its very cool in its own right. The iTable Multi-Touch G2 is actually an adapter you can affix to your own 32" display (they build to order for 42", 46" and 50" displays). It comes with software that allows you to use it with Microsoft Windows XP or Mac OS X - Vista may be supported as well but they don't say on their web site. In fact, their web site is really information poor.

The demo of the iTable Multi-Touch G2 is pretty good - looks like it has some exciting preinstalled applicaitons. There is no information on whether or not they will provide an SDK. This story, which is what led me to the iTable, provides a little more information saying that they plan to make a SDK aviable and to distribute with full integration into a 32" display with optional table. The screen adapter itself is $2,399.00, but you need to have your own 32" display. As a full table like the one shown in the photo above its supposed to run around $10,000.00.

I like the technology as its been shown on video. It looks poweful and while the gestures are a bit different the software supposively would allow you to change the gestures (or at least the SDK should). I really like the table form factor as shown in the image but there is no infornmation about it on the site and its obviously a 3D graphic on the video, not a real table.

I really hope they make good on providing and SDK - I would love to get my hands on one and do some programming. A couple things I really like about is its price (obviously) but also it provides higher resolution (1920x1080) than Surface (1024x768), can be used in bright lighting conditions, and can be used with your regular Windows or Mac operating system.

Onion News Network

Obviously this is off my usual multitouch subject, but I just had to share with everyone a great on-line show that is simply hilarious, Onion News Network. If you enjoy watching The Daily Show, you are going to have a lot of fun watching this news parody show. Check out the videos, they are smart and funny!

Multitouch in Cold Weather

Multitouch systems based on capacitance, such as the iPhone, cannot detect finger contact through material - in particular gloves. This has been a source of frustration for me living in Minneapolis. When I'm outside I have to remove my gloves use my iPhone.

To avoid this problem I have flipback mittens that are specially made so that the part of the mitten that covers the fingers can be flipped back to reveal fingerless gloves. It works well but in Minneapolis, where I live, it can get well below zero and exposing your fingers is not always a great option.

Outside the flip gloves there is only one company that I'm aware of that makes gloves which support multitouch without exposing your fingers, Dots Gloves, LLP. Dots Gloves sells knit and wool gloves with small nodules at the tips of two or three of the fingers made of nicle and brass which conduct your figers to the glass of the iPhone. These iPhone gloves just became commercially available yesterday (Jan 1st, 2009).

It seems that Apple is aware of the problem with using the iPhone and iTouch in the cold. According the MacRumors they have submitted a patent for specialized gloves that are not dissimlar to Dots Gloves - I hope Dots has submitted their own patent.

Rumor of Apple's multitouch tablet

TechCrunch has a story about Apple releasing a "large form iPod" in the fall of 2009. Apparently the same rumor of an iTablet or iPad has come up before, but TechCrunch's Michael Arrington seems more confident in this rumor because he has three different sources.

A larger form factor for the iTouch or a tablet version of the Mac would be really great and would help further promote multitouch as a human-computer interface. I'm pretty excited about the idea. I love my iPhone and having one with a larger form factor would be awsome. Of course, something the size of Microsoft Surface would be even better in my opinion.

I suspect that knowlage of XCode IDE will probably be needed to program an iTablet (or whatever) but I'm not sure if iPhone/iTouch SDK will be used - I think a slightly different SDK for a larger touch screen would be needed.