So maybe it was Apple’s fault that we have been suffering without multitouch

I’m sure by now that you are all aware that multitouch has come to a U.S. Android device at long last. This was fast becoming an issue akin to the iPhone not having copy and paste or SMS for the first couple years of its existence. Every interview you saw with a member of the Android team would feature at least a brief grill session on why multitouch (or “specific multitouch implementations” as Erick Tseng put it to Engadget) were missing on U.S. Android devices.

Now that we have multitouch the why probably seems less important, but I think the answer has been made crystal clear.

Yesterday was six months to the day since Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board. Yes, we received the official news on the morning of August 3rd, but chances are that all the real activity went down a day earlier. Obviously there were stipulations to that exit that just finally ran out yesterday blessing the Nexus One with its new found abilities. So it was Apple’s fault that we have all been suffering without multitouch for lo these many months.

As I said, the why seems significantly less important now that multitouch is in our grubby little hands, but it is comforting to me to know it wasn’t some obscure patent related paranoia on the part of Google which could have left us out in the unitouch cold forever. The important thing is that now that the seal has been broken on U.S. Android multitouch, presumably we will see it flow freely to those handsets stateside  that are capable of it (I’m looking at you Droid) and possibly most importantly everyone can stop asking when multitouch is coming.

So sit back, relax, and pinch and zoom to your heart’s content.

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