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by dkokelley 6143 days ago
The G1's hardware does support multi-touch, but Apple requested that it be disabled. http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/02/09/apple-asked-google...

The Palm Pre supports and uses multi-touch in the same manner as the iPhone.

It would seem that multi-touch isn't Apple's sole intellectual property, though they have IMO implemented it the best.

2 comments

It's so frustrating when progress gets stuck against someone's greed. I think Google should make Android open source so everyone could commit their code to support features despite the will of Apple or mobile carriers. And this will also invite smaller vendors to use and populate Android.
Android is open source (http://source.android.com/). The hardware is proprietary (AFAIK). People have run MT demo applications.

It's so frustrating when progress gets stuck against someone's greed.

I would actually argue that greed has driven the majority of progress over the last century.

I've heard that Pre's implementation of multi-touch is the source of one of the legal battles between Apple and Palm.