I am currently watching the Macworld 2008 Keynote speech, and Steve Jobs – though starting off a bit slow – wowed the gadget hungry crowd in his usual fashion.

Besides some new Apple TV innovations (limited to the US – bah!), iPhone/iPod updates and the new Timecapsule; the key component of the speech was the introduction of the new Macbook Air.

Although I run my servers on OpenBSD, I write my blog from my Mac and prefer my Powerbook over all the other computers I use. A great part of using the Powerbook is that the trackpad has the scrolling functionality built in, which once you use, you sorely miss on all other devices.

Steve tells the audience that the new Macbook Air has learnt from the iPod touch and iPhone, and it now has gestures! The major new Multitouch features are:

• Pinch to zoom just like the iPhone and iPod touch
• Two finger panning has been taken to a new level. No more just left-right and up-down but you can scroll around on your photos.
• Three finger photo “flicking” like the coverflow photo iPhone interface
• Double tap to mark a window to drag it around
• Photo rotation
• There are also a number of space saving innovations on the new hardware which Steve demonstrates

And there is more. You can see the demo videos at the Macbook Air features page

This multi touch trackpad will prove revolutionary and it should only be a short time before we see this capability on the full line of Mac notebooks. Time to upgrade from my old G4. Now where is that Apple tablet notebook, Steve?

If you have a spare hour or two, jump into the Keynote stream on Quicktime and have a look for yourself. Steve demos the multi touch trackpad at the 1:00:00 mark.