There have been many rumors of a touch enabled Mac in the past, but this time around, details of the iMac Touch have been revealed in a patent discovered by Patently Apple.

iMac Touch

According the details in the patent, we can soon expect an iMac Touch and a Macbook Tablet soon. The iMac Touch can be operated with a mouse and a keyboard like a normal Mac, but it can also switch to a touchscreen interface. It can run both Mac OS X and iOS, switching between the two depending on the orientation of the iMac Touch. The built in accelerometer or a rotation sensor will help transition between the two OSes. The patent describes the UI transitions between Mac OS X and iOS in detail.

Macbook Tablet

It also describes a Macbook Tablet which can be used in the same way; it will run Mac OS X or iOS depending on the orientation of the tablet. This is a brilliant idea – the ultimate union of the computer and the tablet. If anyone can do it right, it’s Apple.

Head over to Patently Apple ^[1] to check out the full patent.