Has Apple been slowly training us to use the tablet for years?

Mike Elgan over at Computerworld has an excellent piece this morning on titled ‘How Apple is training you for the future’. 

Visionary companies like Apple have better ideas for how we do just about everything relating to computers and media. They know they can invent and build the products. The big problem is convincing us to use them. 

That is a great point.  People aren’t just going to jump into a futuristic way of using a gadget.  Sure, a few of us will use what Apple tells us to use, but for the majority of the population, a gradual immersion is much more effective.

 He gives three examples of where Apple is currently doing this:

1. Virtual keyboards (iPhone ->tablet -> computers)
2. Mobile cable box and DVR (iTunes -> AppleTV)
3. Apps on demand (App Store on iPhone -> tablet -> Mac)

I’d add that Apple is doing this with multi-touch.  Ever since the first iPhone and MacBook Pro got multi-touch, Apple has been slowly adding the technology to its product line and expanding how much we can do with it.  It is pretty obvious from its patent portfolio that there is much more to come in the Multi-touch arena with the next iteration of products and software due next week.

But imagine if Apple had tried to do this all at once?  This language of multi-touch would be way too much for users to comprehend.