Not sure how they could pull off a good windowed UI on a tablet sized device. 1024x768 with the requirement of finger friendly tap targets is a big hurdle. I suppose apps could have a compact UI mode of sorts so you could switch between full screen and windowed mode. Something like switching from the iPad version to the iPhone sized version. In that case you could fit 4 apps on the screen at once. I think it's more likely Apple will adopt the OSX Lion Mission Control feature on iOS5. A quick four finger swipe up to activate it with a live preview.
I was forced to use a 1024x768 screen during an internship and it was nearly impossible to put two windows next to each other. I always – always – have two windows next to each other on my 15" 1440 pixel wide screen but I was using all the programs in fullscreen mode on the 1024 pixel wide screen.
That’s the pixels but I think that even more pixels won’t help much. The screen size stays the same on those tablet devices and fingers don’t get any smaller. You might well be able to put a bit more text on the screen but not much else. It’s a challenge.
Easier application switching – lowering the cognitive cost of switching applications (something like the mindless alt-tab that saved me on the 1024 pixel wide screen) – can certainly be a first step in making tablets better. It’s not quite as good as simply moving your eyes to a different part of the screen but it’s certainly possible to at least improve the tedious switching process. I think that gestures are perfect for this.
Check out webOS. The apps there do a good job dynamically resizing themselves. I suspect there's enough space on a tablet for both, say, an email message and a web browser, even at 1024x768 pixels. In fact, there's an iPad web browser that allows you to look at two websites at the same time, although its name escapes me at the moment.
By the way, I'm not suggesting a windowed UI like on a desktop OS. Rather, I'd like to see simple tiling, where two apps each occupy half the screen.
You know, with the new thunderbolt tech, maybe one day we can see the iPad complimented with an Apple display, using it like a drawing tablet or an extra screen as well.
I don't know how practical or good of an idea this is, but if it has any merit I'm sure someone more sober than I can put it eloquently.
