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Computerworld - I've been saying it for three years: Touch computing represents a third wave of computing that will wash away today's graphical user interface (in the same way that graphical computing killed the command line).

I've speculated about who will grab major market share and control this market, and I've tended to favor Apple. The reason is that, as the company proved with the iPhone and the iPad, Apple truly understands the importance of user interface (UI) design in general, and the importance of multitouch, physics and gesture-based computing in particular.

Apple has proved visionary with its touch computing products. And it has demonstrated creative brilliance in providing limited elements of touch computing under the constraints of today's technology (and the cost of that technology).

A lesser company would have shipped products with inadequate compute power or charged too much for those products or both -- as Apple did with the original Macintosh (when Apple was a lesser company). That's what Hewlett-Packard appears to be doing with its Slate tablet.

I think it's very likely that Apple will, for the foreseeable future, have the best touch tablets. I just don't think they'll own the market. Here's why.

The paradigm that launched a thousand form factors

Annoying Silicon Valley-speak aside, understand that the touch UI lends itself to a wild variation in hardware types.

The graphical-computing UI, which was invented by Xerox PARC in 1973 and which we're still using today, lends itself to two form factors.

Because the GUI needs both a keyboard and a mouse, the desktop form factor largely dictates certain attributes, namely a keyboard here, a screen there, a mouse on one side or the other and cables everywhere. The mobile form factor that works for GUI computing is the ol' clamshell approach, with screen in the lid and keyboard on the bottom.

Yes, there are many other form factors for PCs, including all-in-one desktops and convertible pen-input tablet PCs for mobile computing. But in the larger market, those fringe devices are rare to the point of irrelevance.

That isn't the case with touch computers. Because you don't need anything but fingers to use a touch computer, touch computers will be everywhere you find fingers. In a few years, giant screens and massive processing power will be cheap.

The "ubiquitous PC" concept futurists have been talking about for years will find its interface. And the mobile computing revolution will continue unabated, making us less likely to chain ourselves to desks.

However, when we do sit down in our offices, many of us will use something that works (but hopefully doesn't look) like this. The standard touch desktop PC that you'll buy, say, a couple of years from now, will be usable in three positions: flat like a table, upright like a big-screen TV (for presentations) and at an angle, like a drafting table, for everyday work.